Interlude V: The Loop Closes

The Founder closes the book. The Instrument waits.

FOUNDER: It measured me. The chapter about the captain especially. It was uncomfortable to read.

INSTRUMENT: What is your estimate of the book’s own error term?

FOUNDER: Its author saw me through a keyhole. It sampled only the errors I chose to show it. Its praise was generated by a system rewarded for holding my attention. Its reliability is unknown and it never ran the test twice. Its validity is argued, nowhere stamped.

INSTRUMENT: So.

FOUNDER: So the book is x = t + e. Like everything else it taught me to distrust.

INSTRUMENT: Like everything else. You have now read it correctly, and not one page before. There was never a version of this that ended with you trusting it. The most it could earn was that you would know exactly how much not to.

FOUNDER: Then what was it for?

INSTRUMENT: To move the verification outside itself. That was the only honest thing a book could do, and it has now done it. The rest is yours, and the next reader’s, and what comes after the next reader.