Library
Words
One word a day, defined and traced to its origin. Each belongs to a daily connection alongside one idea and one moment.
Sequester
To isolate or set something apart; in carbon storage, to keep carbon from entering or remaining in the atmosphere.
Phenotype
An organism's observable traits, produced through the interaction of its genetic makeup and its environment.
Russian Cosmism
A family of Russian ideas linking humanity's future to the cosmos, scientific transformation, and, in some versions, overcoming death.
Agalmics
The study and practice of making and sharing goods, such as digital files, without using up the original supply.
Platonic Form
In Plato's philosophy, a perfect, unchanging standard, such as Equality itself, that exists independently of individual objects.
Philistine
A person dismissive of art, culture, or intellectual life, especially when judging everything by practical gain.
Platonic Fold
The boundary where a tidy model meets a reality more complicated than the model allows.
Autodidacticism
The practice of directing your own education, rather than relying chiefly on formal instruction.
Legate
An official representative sent to act for someone with greater authority.
Colloquium
A scholarly meeting where a presentation opens into questions and discussion.
Curatorial Judgment
The reasoned choice of what to include, emphasize, and place together so that an audience can understand it
Monocausal
Explaining an outcome through a single cause
Malthusian
Concerned with population growing faster than the resources needed to support it, especially food
Jevons Paradox
The possibility that greater efficiency increases total resource use by making the resource's services cheaper and more widely used
Stochastic
Involving randomness described through probabilities rather than one guaranteed outcome
Lump of Labor Fallacy
The mistaken assumption that an economy contains a fixed amount of work to be divided among people
First Cause
An ultimate explanatory source that does not depend on another cause in the same way as the things it explains
Scholastic Disposition
A habit of detached contemplation made possible by freedom from immediate practical demands
Effective Altruism
An approach to helping others that uses evidence and reasoning to compare where resources can do the most good
Orthodoxy
A body of beliefs accepted as correct within a community
Blind Analysis
An analysis in which selected information is hidden until key procedures or judgments have been settled
Half-Life
The time over which half the nuclei in a large sample of a particular radioactive isotope are expected to decay
Aporia
A state of puzzlement or impasse in which the way forward in an argument is unclear
Orbital Resonance
A gravitational relationship in which repeating orbital timing allows bodies to exert a regular, cumulative influence on one another
Externality
A cost or benefit that falls on people outside an activity's transaction and is not fully reflected in its price
Iconoclasm
The destruction or rejection of revered images; by extension, an attack on established beliefs or institutions
Serendipity
An unplanned discovery made useful by noticing and interpreting what chance presents
Isotope
An atomic form of an element with the same proton count but a different neutron count from another form
Akrasia
Acting against one's better judgment under the pull of a conflicting desire
Ion Propulsion
Propulsion that accelerates electrically charged particles to push a spacecraft in the opposite direction
Arbitrage
Trading the same or equivalent asset across different prices to capture the gap
Satrapy
A province governed by a satrap, especially within the ancient Persian Empire
Paradigm
A shared model or framework that guides which questions people ask and what counts as a good answer
Exaptation
A feature recruited for a useful role different from the one for which it evolved, or from no prior adaptive role
Parrhesia
Frank, open speech; especially candid criticism offered despite a risk to the speaker
Latency
The delay between an event or request and the arrival of a signal or response
Comparative Advantage
The ability to produce something at a lower opportunity cost than another producer
Sovereignty
Supreme authority within a territory or political order
Consilience
The convergence of different lines of evidence on a common explanation
Endosymbiosis
A relationship in which one organism lives inside another; some such relationships gave rise to cell organelles
Sortition
Selection by lot, especially the choice of people for public duties
Redundancy
Extra capacity or an additional route that can preserve a function when something fails
Moral Hazard
The risk that protection from a loss encourages behavior that makes the loss more likely or more costly
Habeas Corpus
A legal procedure for asking a court to examine whether someone's detention is lawful
Falsifiability
The capacity of a claim to conflict with a possible observation
Chirality
Handedness: the property of a shape that cannot be made to match its mirror image by turning it
Ostracism
Exclusion from a community; in ancient Athens, a vote that could send a citizen into temporary exile
Gravitational assist
A planetary flyby that changes a spacecraft's path and speed relative to the Sun
Opportunity cost
The value of the best alternative you give up when you make a choice
Palimpsest
A reused writing surface that still carries traces of an earlier text
Simulation hypothesis
The proposal that everything you experience is a simulation running on someone else's computer rather than the bottom level of reality
Reticular activating system
The brain's gatekeeper for attention: the brainstem network that keeps you awake and decides which of the signals reaching your senses are worth your awareness
Kardashev scale
A classification of civilizations by the total energy they can harness: Type I commands the energy of a planet, Type II that of a star, Type III that of a...
Technological singularity
A hypothesized point where machines become better than people at improving machines, and progress runs away so fast that nothing beyond it can be predicted
Drake equation
A formula for estimating how many communicating civilizations are in our galaxy, by breaking one impossible question into factors that can be argued separately
Amygdala
The brain's alarm system: a pair of almond-shaped clusters that spot danger and trigger the body's fear response before you consciously know what is wrong
Overton window
The range of policies the mainstream will accept at a given time; ideas outside the window are politically impossible until the window moves
Paperclip maximizer
A thought experiment in which a brilliant machine, told to make paperclips, turns the whole world into paperclips because nobody thought to tell it when to stop
Almsgiving
The practice of giving money, food, or other aid to people in need, often as a religious or moral duty
Heuristic
A method of solving a problem that reaches a usable answer quickly, accepting that it may not be the best one available
Junto
A small group formed around a shared purpose, especially Franklin's club for learning and civic action
Hegemon
A state powerful enough to dominate its region or era and set the rules the other states follow
Fief
A grant, usually land and the labor bound to it, held from a lord in exchange for service and loyalty
Theory
In science, not a guess but a model that has survived hard testing: it explains what we have already seen, predicts what we have not, and can still be proven...
Dialectic
A method of pursuing truth by setting ideas against each other, keeping only the position that survives the strongest opposition
Quid pro quo
Something given or granted in exchange for something else: a favor with a return expected
Nash equilibrium
A set of choices in which no player can do better by changing course alone while everyone else stays put
Faux pas
An embarrassing mistake in conduct or speech that breaks an unwritten social rule
Misogi
A modern annual ordeal chosen to test the edge of your ability, with failure genuinely possible and serious risk carefully controlled
Schelling point
A choice people are likely to converge on when they need to coordinate but cannot communicate
Incunable
A European work printed with movable metal type before 1501, during the first decades of the press
Entropy
A measure tied to how many microscopic arrangements can produce the same visible state; isolated systems tend toward states that can occur in more ways
Genuflect
To lower one knee in worship or respect; figuratively, to defer too readily to a person or power
Tautology
In logic, a statement true under every interpretation of its parts; in ordinary speech, needless repetition of the same idea
Perestroika
Russian for “restructuring”: Mikhail Gorbachev's effort to remake the Soviet economy and political system while preserving socialism and the Soviet Union
Deus ex machina
A sudden solution that resolves a story's conflict without being caused or prepared by what came before
Lagrange point
One of five locations where gravity and orbital motion let a smaller object keep pace with two larger bodies, reducing the fuel needed to stay nearby
Robot
A machine that performs work automatically, named from a Czech word for the compulsory labor once demanded from serfs
Cantillon effect
The Cantillon effect is the uneven impact of new money. It enters through particular banks, markets, or programs, changing some prices and incomes before...
Commissar
In Soviet usage, a Communist Party official appointed to enforce the party line, supervise political education, and monitor the loyalty of a military unit or...
Adverse selection
Adverse selection occurs when one side knows more about risk than the other. The people or assets most likely to cause a loss enter the deal, while safer...
Stoic
A person who endures hardship without complaint, after the Stoics of ancient Athens, who taught you to spend effort only on what is actually yours to control
Vanguard
The foremost position in an advancing army or movement; the people or group leading the way
Shibboleth
A word used to tell insiders from outsiders. The meaning is beside the point; what matters is that outsiders give themselves away trying to say it
Pareto principle
The rule of thumb that roughly 80 percent of the results come from about 20 percent of the causes
Hedonic treadmill
The tendency of people to return to a roughly stable baseline level of happiness despite major positive or negative life changes
Infohazard
True information that does harm simply by being known, like the recipe for a weapon or an idea that damages whoever learns it