cold-reading

A cold reading is what the four positions (widening, entailment, comparative, detection) perform. Cold names two things at once: command of established patterns, which is what makes an item assessable, and absence of investment in the framing, which is what makes the contribution possible. A reading with only the second is naivety, not expertise.

When to use

Use it for the instrument's act: the assembler builds the visible world, the definition supplies the object and the question, the reading returns items, and the ingest verb validates them.

When NOT to use

Do not call a cold reading a review or an audit: a review weighs and recommends, and a reading is forbidden both. The fidelity audit of a shipped intent is warm work and keeps its own name.

Related terms

• record families — the one page that maps the record families and how they relate
• warm, the researcher's reserved reasoning the reading is blind to
• position, the four places a reading is commissioned at