Don’t tick boxes

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Modern dogma writ large. In the mortal, unlistened-to words of tiresome Victorian librettist Otto Büchstein, the victory of form over substance. This disposition that one should ticking a box should generate any comfort other than a false one, feeds on, just as it nourishes, associated dogmas: of cost reduction at all cost, that all unknowns can be known, that all vestiges of risk can neutralised, bifurcated, cauterised and eliminated to leave a pure, crystalline residue of concentrated reward. That history is at an end, that the universe can be brute-force computed, and the fact that it hasn’t yet is a minor inconvenience that we can tide over just as long as we check of few boxes and keep a clear audit trail.