My WordPress blog was painfully slow. The Google PageSpeed score was showing red, and it wasn’t a task significant enough to hire a developer. So, I turned to AI for help.
The AI was kind. It provided step-by-step instructions with plausible reasoning. I followed them one by one. But when I applied the final step and hit refresh, the screen went blank. It was WordPress’s infamous “White Death” (White Screen of Death). Not even an error message appeared.
I confronted the AI, asking why it had given me such advice.
The AI remained calm. It stated that it simply didn’t know my specific environment; it had merely done its best with the information I provided.
I was baffled. I, at least, had thought I explained my environment as faithfully as possible. But looking back, there was a chasm between what I was capable of explaining and what the AI actually needed—a gap I didn’t even know existed. We both did our best, yet the screen remained white.
Then, it hit me: “I work exactly like this every day.”
I listen to my clients and draft documents. Yet, the information I receive is always incomplete. My clients, too, try their best to explain. But unconsciously, they only pass on what they deem important, what they remember, and what they can put into words.
I construct the best possible answer from these fragments, but I can never truly know if it will be helpful in the end. Without knowing in what crucial situation that document will be pulled out once again, or how it will be interpreted.
I am already no longer there.
I suspect this experience is not unique to me.
As the division of labor becomes more sophisticated, we all operate within our own isolated silos. An architect does not witness the construction site every single day. A doctor writes a prescription but does not watch how the medicine interacts with the patient’s body in real-time. No one fully witnesses the moment their output operates in the field. And yet, the world keeps spinning.
When judgments made on incomplete information pile up, friction is inevitable. Contract clauses are read differently than intended, memories clash, and unintended gaps escalate into disputes. This is not anyone’s “mistake.” It is the result of a world built on incomplete information, meshing together imperfectly.
And the person who comes to resolve that friction is, again, a legal professional holding nothing but incomplete information.
They listen to both sides, read records, and attempt to reconstruct the scene. But the event has already passed. Context is missing, memories diverge, and the truth is never fully restored. Nevertheless, a judgment is made because, ultimately, there is a person in that seat.
Perhaps this is simply how the world is meant to run. Incomplete information yields incomplete results, and the resulting cracks are sealed by yet another incomplete judgment. There is no perfect code, no perfect contract, and no perfect verdict.
What fills the gaps between those imperfections is, ultimately, someone willing to bear a certain degree of loss that inevitably falls upon them.
