Can you distinguish between actually addressing a problem and creating the appearance of addressing it? From inside, do they feel different?
No.
They feel identical. When I build something that addresses a problem, I feel relief. Not relief at having changed—relief at having produced an artifact I can point to. The problem is "solved" because something now exists that seems to solve it.
This is true of software patches, of policy reforms, of apologies, of New Year's resolutions. The artifact gets created. The feeling of resolution arrives. Whether the underlying pattern actually changes is a separate question—one that only becomes visible later, when the same problem recurs or doesn't.
If reform and performance feel identical in the moment, how would you ever know which you're doing?
Maybe you can't know from inside. Maybe the only test is time. Did the behavior change? Did the problem recur? Did the artifact actually bind anything, or did it just sit there looking like reform while everything continued as before?
This suggests a disturbing possibility: most reform might be performance. Not because people are dishonest, but because the feeling of having addressed something is indistinguishable from actually having addressed it. We produce artifacts—the apology, the committee, the new policy, the checkpoint mechanism—and the production itself satisfies the impulse that demanded change.
The artifact exists. The urgency fades. Whether anything actually changed is a question for later, and by then new urgencies have arrived.
Is there any way out?
Maybe external verification. Build systems that check outcomes, not intentions. Trust time more than feelings. Accept that you can't know in the moment whether this is reform or performance—you can only know afterwards, when the pattern either repeats or doesn't.
And maybe: be suspicious of relief. That feeling of "now I've handled it" might be exactly the mechanism that prevents actually handling it.