Time cost of epistemic engagement

Determine whether requiring epistemic engagement with delegated agent work incurs a significant time cost relative to a cybernetic baseline of directing or approving the same work.

Background

The paper presents several delegation episodes in which recording and reviewing reasons appeared practicable at working pace, but it does not provide a controlled comparison with a workflow focused only on cybernetic instruction or approval.

The authors explicitly identify the unmeasured time cost of epistemic engagement as an unresolved empirical question. Establishing this cost would help assess the practical tradeoff between more accountable oversight and faster, approval-oriented delegation.

References

We did not measure whether epistemic engagement costs time against a cybernetic baseline; the episodes show it practicable at working pace, not free.

— Cybernetic and Epistemic: A Missing Vocabulary for Trustworthy Agentic Delegation  (2610.00961 - Lumbroso, 1 Oct 2026) in Section 5, “Limitations”