P4195

WG21's consensus process selects for survivability through the committee's represented veto structure. It cannot certify technical quality or user welfare. The distinction is testable: Post-adoption correction rates for large contested features, compared against a baseline, would reveal whether the system's selection correlates with quality or substitutes for it. That measurement is future work. The consequence is that adoption is evidence that the proposal outlasted organized opposition, not that the design was best.