Legibility

Legibility is how readable a thing is to power. To govern, tax, optimize, or automate something, a system must first make it legible — reduce its messy reality to categories it can process. That reduction is useful and also dangerous: whatever the categories can’t see, the system treats as if it doesn’t exist.

The asymmetry

Legibility runs in both directions, and the asymmetry is where power hides. Systems that can see you in detail while remaining opaque themselves hold an advantage that has nothing to do with being right. Much of the fight over AI is a fight over legibility: who is rendered readable, who gets to stay unreadable, and who decides.

The design question

The question is not “more legibility” or “less,” but symmetry: whether the parties can read each other on fair terms.