# nature boy is a cfo your ongoing dealings *have* to be recursively modeled if you want them to self-balance indefinitely. (nb: you might not want that.) recursion has a vanishing point - if the balance is coming *from there*, and the function adjusts around it, you're golden. by contrast, linear modeling of relationship will keep biting you *here*, on *this* side of the horizon, and eventually you'll see that the bites have a pattern, and at *some* point something will click but maybe we can get ahead of it by documenting this oxygen masks on a plane are an *event*, in a crisis scenario salaries aren't like oxygen masks on a plane, in the "first I do mine, then I do yours" way. there's no "mine is accomplished and achieved and now I can help you" with salaries. it's like ... wifi signal? wifi in a house that keeps getting bigger? you and me are in the center of the house, *always* getting the best signal, and everyone else is expanding the house in their own individual directions? crucially, we gotta be transparent about what the supply looks like. if we can't light up a new wing of the house and you know that and you build it anyway, the conversation gets to stay very simple linear modeling gets us employees refinancing their mortgages while their executives wonder about third homes, without anybody ever making a choice that feels locally wrong recursive modeling gets us a continuous flow of improvement for everybody, at nobody's expense, because obviously we're gonna keep upgrading the wifi what do you want? (*I* don't even like this next point, but I think Reagan just didn't know enough math.) \[pause] bodies understand recursion. bodies *are* recursion, and thus our "feeling" toolkit comes preloaded for this kind of reasoning. the village well model *works* when everybody can see and touch everybody else. bodies-wielding-language is different. the negotiation of bodies-wielding-language is different. I don't think we've really had a "thinking" toolkit for recursive finance. (ahhh, interesting. I'm noticing that my writing process is developing a parallel to my music process. I don't know where the song is going, but it never ends on a passionate swell. the song always puts me back down afterwards. I'm starting to see that in my writing, too.) --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://www.isaacbowen.com/2025/08/17/nature-boy-is-a-cfo.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.