I don't think the distinction between "physical limitation" vs "humans with agency" is quite as clear-cut as you think... After all, if one wanted my 9V batteri

I don't think the distinction between "physical limitation" vs "humans with agency" is quite as clear-cut as you think... After all, if one wanted my 9V batteries to be always clearly measurable they could make thicker electrodes and thinner electrolyte. Instead, the humans which designed batteries configured them to prioritized high capacity and low cost, "deliberately" making multimeters inaccurate. Or for a more extreme example: Apple chargers prominently say "20V" on them.. and yet if you get one and hook up a multimeter to it, you will only measure 6 volts (see "Charger Startup Process" in [0] to see why, spoiler: it needs special enable pulse as a safety measure). Will you call this "a lie"? Can we say "multimeters aren't real" because Apple power supplies require special pulse? Can we say "humans have deliberately made it not work with multimeters"? Instruments, be it traceroute or multimeters, have limitations; and users should know about them. Even if technology advances make tools less useful in some situations, there is no reason to disparage them. [0] http://www.righto.com/2013/06/teardown-and-exploration-of-magsafe.html http://www.righto.com/2013/06/teardown-and-exploration-of-ma...