# Optimize for Invariant Preferences When the Future Is Unpredictable ## Claim When a team cannot predict which future will arrive, it should prioritize the small set of preferences that hold true across every plausible future rather than chase whichever direction looks most interesting right now. <!-- atomicity: 1 idea ✓ --> ## Scope & conditions - Requires actually identifying which preferences are genuinely invariant — the test fails if a team mislabels a contested preference (e.g. a specific feature direction) as universal. - Does not resolve *how* to weigh the invariant preferences against each other when they conflict (e.g. security work that slows performance); it only argues for their priority over novel or interesting work. - The Josepha Haden Chomphosy source (former WordPress Executive Director) names "secure, not slower, easy to use" as WordPress's three invariants; the general form of the claim is domain-independent, but the specific list is not. - Weakens when the environment itself is the thing changing fastest — invariant preferences are easiest to identify in mature ecosystems with a stable user base, harder in genuinely novel markets. ## Evidence Drawing an analogy from municipal governance (city residents predictably want better streets, schools, and parks regardless of which administration is in office) to open source (WordPress users predictably want it more secure, no slower, and easier to use regardless of which features ship), the claim is that a decision-maker facing genuine uncertainty about the future should treat these invariants as the prioritization filter for any new proposal — "does this make it more secure, not slower, and easier to complete a real task?" — rather than debating the merits of each new direction from scratch. ## Links - [[3. Resources/Permanent Notes/A Metric Is Vanity Only Against Your Own Outcome Data]] — applies-in: an invariant-preference filter only works if it's actually measured against outcomes, not treated as a slogan. - [[3. Resources/MOCs/Product & Startup Instincts MOC]] — applies-in: a portable prioritization heuristic for roadmap decisions under uncertainty. - [[3. Resources/MOCs/Open Source Governance MOC]] — applies-in: names a filter a governance body could use to evaluate proposals, though the source episode itself never applies it to a concrete decision. ## Tests / falsifiers - Would a team applying this test to a real backlog actually reject proposals that are popular but don't serve the invariants? If the test never says no to anything, it isn't doing filtering work. - Track whether a project that adopts a published invariant-preference scorecard shows measurably different release priorities than one that doesn't, controlling for team size and maturity. ## Maintenance - Last tended: 2026-08-16 - Next review: 2026-11-16 ## Source - [[3. Resources/Readwise/Articles/Perspectives With Josepha Haden Chomphosy]] — Crossword S11E10, the three-predictables test. - [[3. Resources/Literature Notes/Perspectives With Josepha Haden Chomphosy (Crossword S11E10)]] — Literature Note with full claim atoms.