Daniel Okafor approves the move. The night dispatch desks come out of the depots and onto Lena Ortiz's budget, and Daniel gets lower overtime and a cleaner organization. It is natural to call that Lena's outcome: she wanted it, worked for it and won. The Lam System for Political Interaction writes it with nobody's name in front of it.
The outcome is the one constituent that nobody performs. The actor declares, chooses levers and acts; the target perceives, selects and gains; the outcome belongs to the cycle. Since it belongs to no one, both sides' gains can be written from it on equal terms. It also belongs to the whole cycle and to no lever in it, so it can record what was decided without ever saying which lever, if any, decided it.
The constituents of a maneuver
Structure. Each line joins a constituent to one it contains.
The map shows what contains what in one actor's maneuver, from the actor down to what flows back when the cycle closes. It illustrates the structure only.
Actorα / a · A name only, performed by no oneThe person who opens the cycle and acts within it.
AgendaΑ / A · A name only, performed by no oneThe actor's long-running aim, which holds every cycle the actor opens.
Interestι / i · Performed by the actorWhat the actor stands to gain from the cycle.
- Detectionδ / d · Performed by the actorThe actor finding out who controls the resource wanted.
Targetτ / t · A name only, performed by no oneThe person whose decision completes the cycle.
Decision MatrixΔ / D · A name only, performed by no oneThe options open to the target, each weighed by what it offers and what it asks.
Preferred Positionπ / P · A name only, performed by no oneThe option that leads to the outcome the actor wants.
Adverse Alternativeψ / X · A name only, performed by no oneAn option that leads away from the outcome the actor wants.
- PerceptionΓ / G · Performed by the targetHow the target compares the options' worth before choosing.
- SelectionΣ / S · Performed by the targetThe target's choice among the options.
Objectiveω / o · Performed by the actorThe direction the actor wants the target's choice to take.
Intentionγ / g · Performed by the actorA specific action the actor chooses to move the target's options. A cycle holds one or more.
- Required Resourcesθ / q · Performed by the actorWhat the actor must hold to carry out the intention.
- Executionε / e · Performed by the actorThe actor carrying out the chosen action.
- A sub-cycle's interest, when the gate fails↺ Interest, under AgendaWhen the actor lacks a resource the intention needs, a sub-cycle opens whose interest is exactly that resource. It is an ordinary interest, drawn here a second time.
OutcomeThis essayΩ / O · Performed by the cycle itselfThe state the cycle closes in, one of the futures that were possible.
- Obtained ResourcesΦ / Q · Performed by the actorWhat the actor gains when the cycle closes.
- Obtained UtilityΛ / U · Performed by the targetWhat the target gains from the outcome.
- Current ResourcesΘ / R · A name only, performed by no oneWhat the actor holds now, counted.
What the outcome is
The outcome is the state the cycle closes in: one of the futures that were possible while the target was choosing, now the one that is true. Before Daniel decided, his matrix held three futures. The desks could come under Lena, stay with the depot managers, or go to the automation program. The outcome is the first of these, made fact, and from that point the other two are futures that did not happen.
The Greek capital omega, Ω, is the outcome as an act of the cycle; the Latin O is the outcome as something the record can point to. The objective, the actor's forecast of the target's choice, is the lowercase omega, ω, so the letter itself pairs the forecast with what became of it.
The outcome happens as a matter of course, once the target has selected. No one does it. The system writes it with no actor and no target in front of it, and an outcome written with either is refused. There is exactly one per cycle, however many levers the cycle played. Lena's maneuver has two, because it ran two cycles: Priya Natarajan signing the savings figure is the outcome of the sub-cycle Lena opened to get the sign-off, and Daniel's approval is the outcome of the cycle above it. Neither outcome is Lena's.
Why it belongs to no one
Daniel's selection was his act. Its consequences fall on both of them, and the outcome is where the record writes those consequences down. Under the outcome sit two constituents: the target's obtained utility, what Daniel gains from his own choice, and the actor's obtained resources, what Lena gains. Daniel's lower overtime and cleaner organization and Lena's budget and authority hang from the same entry.
If the outcome were Lena's, Daniel's gain would be written as a side effect of her win, and a record kept that way across many maneuvers would slowly lose sight of what each target got. If it were Daniel's, Lena's budget would read as something he handed out. Written as the cycle's, the outcome is the common point both gains are measured from, and the record shows that the maneuver left two people better off, each on their own terms.
The one line, and its mirror
The outcome is written as the selection it made fact:
Read aloud: the outcome of the only interest is defined as this, that the target's selection over his decision matrix yields, in the selection, the only preferred position. Nothing stands in front of the omega. The triple bar says that the outcome on the left is defined by what is in the braces.
Near the top of the same cycle, Lena wrote her objective:
Read aloud: the actor's objective for the same interest is defined as the same selection yielding the same position, each marked with a prime as projected. The two lines differ in exactly two places. The objective has the actor in front of it and the outcome has no one, and the objective carries primes where the outcome carries none. The actor stands in front of the forecast and nobody stands in front of the fact. The position at the end of each line is the same address, so the two can be laid side by side without interpretation.
The outcome is written straight after the selection. The target's obtained utility follows, then the entry that closes the cycle, then the flow back of what the actor obtained. In a sub-cycle the close hands what was obtained up to the parent, which picks up at the gate where it stopped; at the top level it ends the maneuver.
What it cannot say
The outcome records what was decided and nothing about why. Daniel's approval is consistent with two levers that did their work. It is equally consistent with a Daniel who had made up his mind before Lena walked in and listened politely to both cases. The outcome entry is identical in the two maneuvers.
No lever has an outcome of its own. Lena played two, and they share one outcome, because they were two ways of changing one comparison held by one target. The outcome therefore cannot credit either of them. The record does hold evidence of credit, in the middle of the cycle: in the perceptions, each lever's reading sits beside the comparison the lever projected. Lena read her levers one at a time, so her record can say how Daniel took each. An actor who reads the whole play once, after every lever has been played, gets a single perception for the cycle, and then even the perceptions cannot divide the credit between the levers.
What the outcome of Daniel's cycle says, and what it leaves to other entries
Illustrative. The people and the company are invented. Statements about Lena's maneuver: guess which ones the outcome says, then select each to see where it belongs.
Select each item to see the verdict.
The outcome is the selection made fact: the target's choice over his matrix yielded the preferred position.
The outcome is one of the futures that were possible. Once it is fact, the adverse alternatives are the futures that did not happen.
The obtained resources, which sit under the outcome and are written at the flow back, after the cycle closes. They can differ from what the outcome seems to promise.
The target's obtained utility, written straight after the outcome and under it. It is Daniel's, attributed to him.
The first lever's perception, in the middle of the cycle. The outcome is the same whether or not either lever did any work.
The perceptions, as far as any entry can. Lena read each lever as it landed, so each reading sits beside its own lever's projection; read as one play, even they could not divide the credit.
That takes two entries: the objective near the top and the outcome near the bottom, at the same address and differing by the prime.
That is the outcome of the sub-cycle with Priya, a cycle of its own. Daniel's cycle has exactly one outcome, his approval.
The arrangement guards against judging levers by results. The record puts the outcome at the bottom of the cycle and the readings in the middle, so a win cannot vouch for the levers and a loss cannot condemn them.
When there is no outcome
An outcome exists only where a target selected. A cycle the actor mooted or abandoned stops short of it: there is no outcome entry, no gain for the target and nothing flows back. That is different from an outcome the actor did not want. The record of a cycle given up shows how far it got and which move ended it, and the decision it was aimed at was never taken inside it.
The difference matters when an actor reviews a year of maneuvers. A count of wins and losses treats a cycle abandoned before the target was asked as a loss. The record separates cycles that reached a decision from cycles that were given up on the way, and the two call for different lessons: the first kind says something about the levers and the reading of the target, the second about the actor's own choices to stop.
How it goes wrong
"I got the desks" merges two entries: the outcome, which is Daniel's approval made fact, and the obtained resources, which are what Lena now holds. Kept apart, the two can disagree, and the disagreement is informative. Detection describes an approval that moved the desks and left their cost on the depot budget, where the outcome was right and what flowed back was not what Lena wanted.
Writing the outcome early is a quieter mistake. The only marks that separate the objective's clause from the outcome's are the primes. An actor who writes "Daniel approves" as settled before Daniel has selected has written the objective again with the primes dropped, and has turned a forecast into a claim. The system will not take it: an outcome needs a selection before it, and a selection cannot be written while any lever is left unaccounted for.
The outcome also says nothing about whether the maneuver was worth it. It says which future came true. Whether that was worth what it cost is a matter of what Lena spent, counted, against what flowed back, and those sit in other entries.
What the actor learns
Kept as the system keeps it, the outcome is the one place where a forecast meets a fact at the same address, which is what lets an actor measure how well they call decisions. It is also where an actor finds out how often their cycles reach a decision at all. An actor whose cycles mostly end without one is choosing targets, or levers, that rarely get as far as a choice. An actor whose outcomes always match their objectives may simply be setting objectives their targets would have chosen anyway. Telling a sound forecast from an easy one takes the matrix as it stood before the first lever, which the record can rebuild, set beside the perceptions that followed.