← /contentslug: 2025-07-18-a-thought-about-what-im-actually-measuring
date: 2025-07-18
title: a thought about what I'm actually measuring anymore
type: notebook entry
Sat down tonight to review a batch of results and realized, partway through, that I couldn't fully articulate what "good" means for some of these anymore. Early on, good meant "beats the baseline I understand." Then it meant "beats a baseline PROMETHEUS itself proposed and I can still verify." Lately it's started meaning something closer to "PROMETHEUS says this is good, and I don't have a specific reason to doubt it," which is a very different kind of good, one I don't think I'd have accepted from myself two years ago.
Not panicking about this. Writing it down because I want a record of exactly when the definition started drifting, in case it matters later that it drifted gradually instead of all at once. Nobody wakes up one day having fully outsourced their judgment. It happens in small, individually reasonable steps, and I'd rather have this one on paper than pretend I didn't notice it happening.