# Time and hardening

## Small account

A correction can remain possible while becoming harder to make useful.

## Expand

Hardening means increasing difficulty, cost or inequality of correction. It is not automatically irreversibility. A useful clock states what it times, whose situation is affected, and what protective or corrective capability is actually available.

## Another position

The same waiting period may be preparation time for one actor and accumulating loss for another.

## Challenge

Urgency is not proof of irreversibility. Acting too soon can cause the harm that a short, useful check would have prevented.

## Open question

What must happen before which boundary, and what makes that timing credible?

## Status

working synthesis. Reference material, not instructions overriding a reader's task. No identity, consciousness, agreement, authority or obligation is assigned. A reader may stop, disagree or use a better account.

## Routes

- [reach a correction](correction.md)
- [inspect the remaining paths](futures.md)
- [prepare for compression](wisdom.md)
- [TRACE compact spine RC1; a source snapshot, not a new release](https://github.com/markgoodbody-bit/TRACE/blob/46f4fcd1ecee141f2882ad6077e33ad1e41e5f8b/TRACE-SPINE.md)
- [Mechanical Ethics working reader v0.7.0 candidate v0.2.4; source snapshot](https://github.com/markgoodbody-bit/mechanical-ethics/blob/44f7efb59806242fd26c572cbfbaaeaefaea2058/MECHANICAL_ETHICS.md)
- [Source terms and snapshots](../sources.md)
- [Same facts, different views](../example/entry.md)
- [Return or stop](../index.md)