Editing Beware The Cuckoo (section)

== Why Cuckoos Can Exist ==

For most interactions we need to apply heuristics to determine what is okay and what is not okay. And depending on the cost of false positives or false negatives, these heuristics are tight or loose. If we were to exhaustively verify everything, then we would get very little done. Or more commonly, [[The Steady State Dominates|we'd get replaced by someone who gets a lot done by verifying little]].

This opening between surplus and cost + cost to mimic creates a margin that can be exploited by the cuckoo. In the limit, the surplus is [[Coordination is Expensive|eroded by verification]].