Mission › Honesty & Transparency
Honesty & Transparency
Goal vs Result
A goal is what Kronos is trying to achieve; a result is what has been achieved. The whole program depends on never printing one as the other.
The single most important distinction
Almost every honesty rule on this site reduces to one distinction: a goal is not a result. A goal is a target the program is working toward; a result is an outcome that has occurred and been measured. Kronos has ambitious goals and, in hardware terms, few results yet — because the machines are not built. Saying so clearly is the whole game.
| Kind of statement | Honest label |
|---|---|
| Q_sci 3.424 design point | goal / target |
| Net-electric burner via direct conversion | goal |
| Reproducible published analysis | result |
| First tritium ~2030 | future goal, not yet result |
How goals masquerade as results
- Achievement verbs ('achieved', 'demonstrated') attached to targets
- Present tense for future capability ('the machine produces...')
- Dropping the word 'design' or 'target' from a design target
- Quoting a projected number without its date or conditions
A program with honest goals and honest results is trustworthy even when its results are modest. A program that dresses goals as results is untrustworthy even when its goals are excellent. We would rather be the first kind.