Seemingly sudden crashes in tech and markets are not abrupt events but the result of "interpretation debt"—when a system's output capability grows faster than the collective ability to understand, review, and trust it, leading to a quiet erosion of trust.
The ultimate failure point for a complex system is not the loss of its functional power but the loss of its ability to be understood by insiders and outsiders. This erosion of interpretability happens quietly and long before the more obvious, catastrophic collapse.
Similar to technical debt, "narrative debt" accrues when teams celebrate speed and output while neglecting shared understanding. This gap registers as momentum, not risk, making the system fragile while metrics still look healthy.