[!todo] Seed note. A starting point, not a finished note yet.
Strategic misrepresentation is the deliberate understatement of cost and overstatement of benefit by project promoters who know the optimistic forecast is what wins approval and funding. Flyvbjerg invokes it to explain why megaproject overruns are so consistent and so one-directional: at least part of the pattern is not a fooled brain but a rigged bid. The distinction matters because it determines the cure. Honest optimism bias yields to debiasing tools like Reference Class Forecasting, but no forecasting method touches a forecaster who already knows the right number and reports a different one on purpose; that requires changing incentives, accountability, and who controls the frame. Seeded from Reference Class Forecasting.