What does decision readiness require?#
Five conditions at once: a clear decision, the right expertise, enough understanding of the current state, the evidence to hand, and time to act. Missing any one produces an approval instead of a judgment, and the audit trail cannot tell the two apart. Readiness also decays: an agent reloads its context on every run, while a person's mental model goes stale the moment they step away.
Why is "insert a human" the wrong question for decision readiness?#
Because a human in the loop who cannot really judge is not a safety mechanism. The gate adds delay, leaves the risk where it was, and places accountability on someone never positioned to exercise it: what Madeleine Elish calls a moral crumple zone.
Comprehension engineering makes people decision-ready, and time to decision-ready shows whether it works.