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Technology & Systems

Digital dynamics, complex systems, and modern cognition

11 categories149 words

All 11 Categories

Digital Dynamics

Metaphors and terms from the information age and computing

Systems & Complexity

Vocabulary for understanding how things interact, evolve, and emerge

Modern Cognition

Psychology, metacognition, and the study of thinking

Information Theory

Concepts from Shannon's theory of communication and information

Linguistics & Semantics

The study of language structure and meaning

Cognitive Architecture

The structure and mechanisms of thought and mental processing

Philosophy of Mind

Philosophical inquiry into consciousness, thought, and mental phenomena

Neural Computation

Concepts from artificial neural networks and deep learning

Epistemics & Uncertainty

Knowledge, belief, confidence, and the limits of knowing

Reasoning Patterns

Forms of inference and logical thinking

Communication Theory

How meaning is conveyed, negotiated, and understood

All 149 Words in Technology & Systems

Complete vocabulary list for easy reference and copy-paste.

🌐Digital Dynamics18

Term	Definition	Example
signal-to-noise	the ratio of useful information to irrelevant data	"Twitter has a low signal-to-noise ratio during breaking news events."
bandwidth	the energy or mental capacity required to deal with a situation	"I don't have the emotional bandwidth to deal with this right now."
latency	the delay before a transfer of data begins following an instruction	"There was a noticeable latency between my question and his answer."
protocol	a set of rules governing the exchange or transmission of data	"We need to establish a protocol for how we share files."
abstraction	the quality of dealing with ideas rather than events; hiding complexity	"The interface provides a layer of abstraction over the complex database."
interoperability	the ability of computer systems or software to exchange and make use of information	"Interoperability between the two platforms is crucial for the merger."
scalability	the capacity to be changed in size or scale	"The startup focused on the scalability of its business model."
granularity	the scale or level of detail present in a set of data	"We need more granularity in these sales reports to spot the trend."
recursion	the repeated application of a recursive procedure or definition	"Understanding recursion is a rite of passage for programmers."
algorithm	a process or set of rules to be followed in calculations	"The hiring algorithm may inadvertently introduce bias."
token	a tangible representation of a fact, quality, or feeling	"Think of words as tokens of meaning passed between minds."
default	a preselected option adopted when no alternative is specified	"Cynicism has become his default mode of thinking."
beta	a trial version of software; a preliminary stage	"The project is still in beta, so expect some bugs."
deprecated	regarded as obsolete and best avoided	"That management style is deprecated in modern companies."
batching	grouping tasks to be performed together	"I'm batching my emails to increase productivity."
encryption	the process of converting information or data into a code	"He spoke in metaphors, a form of social encryption."
brute force	relying on sheer power or repetition rather than ingenuity	"They solved the problem through brute force rather than elegance."
sandbox	an isolated environment for testing	"This meeting is a sandbox for new ideas—no judgment allowed."

🕸️Systems & Complexity18

Term	Definition	Example
emergence	the process where complex patterns arise from simple interactions	"Consciousness is often cited as an example of emergence from neural activity."
feedback loop	a system structure where outputs circle back as inputs	"The microphone created a screeching feedback loop."
nonlinearity	a relationship where output is not directly proportional to input	"Climate change exhibits nonlinearity, where small changes can have massive effects."
antifragility	the property of systems that benefit from shocks and volatility	"Muscles show antifragility by getting stronger after the stress of exercise."
critical mass	the minimum amount required to start or maintain a venture	"The social network reached critical mass and grew exponentially."
tipping point	the point at which a series of small changes becomes significant enough to cause a larger change	"We have reached a tipping point in the adoption of electric vehicles."
entropy	a measure of disorder or randomness in a system	"Organizations naturally tend toward entropy without active management."
homeostasis	the tendency toward a stable equilibrium	"The thermostat maintains the building's thermal homeostasis."
redundancy	the inclusion of extra components for reliability	"The aircraft has triple redundancy in its flight control systems."
bottleneck	a point of congestion in a system that slows down the overall process	"The approval process became a bottleneck for the entire project."
catalyst	an agent that provokes or speeds up significant change or action	"The crisis served as a catalyst for regulatory reform."
synergy	interaction of elements that when combined produce a total effect greater than the sum of individual elements	"The merger aimed to create synergy between the two departments."
hysteresis	dependence of the state of a system on its history	"Unemployment shows hysteresis; it stays high even after the economy recovers."
network effect	phenomenon where a product gains value as more people use it	"The telephone is a classic example of the network effect."
second-order effect	the consequence of a consequence	"We considered the immediate result, but missed the second-order effect on employee morale."
resilience	the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties	"The system's resilience was tested by the sudden traffic spike."
fractal	a complex pattern where the same pattern occurs at every scale	"The coastline is fractal; it looks similar whether viewed from space or up close."
black swan	an unpredictable event that is beyond what is normally expected and has potentially severe consequences	"The 2008 financial crisis was described by some as a black swan event."

🧠Modern Cognition17

Term	Definition	Example
metacognition	awareness and understanding of one's own thought processes	"Journaling is a powerful tool for metacognition."
cognitive dissonance	the state of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes	"The cognitive dissonance of loving animals but eating meat troubled him."
neuroplasticity	the ability of the brain to form and reorganize synaptic connections	"Learning a new language demonstrates the brain's neuroplasticity."
heuristic	a mental shortcut that allows people to solve problems and make judgments quickly	"We use heuristics to make decisions when information is incomplete."
confirmation bias	the tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of one's existing beliefs	"He only read news that supported his confirmation bias."
Dunning-Kruger effect	a cognitive bias where people with low ability overestimate their ability	"His confidence despite his ignorance was a classic case of the Dunning-Kruger effect."
mental model	an explanation of someone's thought process about how something works in the real world	"First principles thinking is a powerful mental model for innovation."
flow state	a mental state of operation in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed	"The coder entered a flow state and worked for hours without pause."
cognitive load	the amount of working memory resources used	"Simplifying the UI reduced the user's cognitive load."
priming	a phenomenon whereby exposure to one stimulus influences a response to a subsequent stimulus	"Talking about money before the negotiation was a form of priming."
framing effect	a cognitive bias where people decide on options based on whether the options are presented with positive or negative connotations	"The framing effect makes '95% fat-free' sound better than '5% fat'."
loss aversion	people's tendency to prefer avoiding losses to acquiring equivalent gains	"Loss aversion explains why people hold onto losing stocks too long."
anchoring	a cognitive bias where an individual relies too heavily on an initial piece of information	"The initial price set the anchoring point for the entire negotiation."
liminality	the quality of ambiguity or disorientation that occurs in the middle stage of a rite of passage	"Adolescence is a space of liminality between childhood and adulthood."
epistemic humility	a humble attitude toward one's own beliefs and knowledge	"Science requires epistemic humility—admitting what we don't know."
steelmanning	the practice of addressing the strongest possible version of an opponent's argument	"Try steelmanning his objection instead of attacking a straw man."
hallucination	a perception of something not present	"Large language models are prone to hallucination when facts are scarce."

📡Information Theory12

Term	Definition	Example
entropy	a measure of uncertainty or randomness in information; the average information content	"The entropy of the message was high, indicating unpredictability."
redundancy	the use of more information than necessary; repetition that aids error correction	"Natural language has high redundancy, allowing us to understand garbled speech."
compression	reducing the size of data by eliminating redundancy	"Effective compression preserves meaning while removing unnecessary bits."
encoding	converting information from one form to another for transmission or storage	"The brain encodes experiences into neural patterns."
decoding	extracting the original information from an encoded form	"Decoding the signal required understanding the sender's conventions."
signal-to-noise ratio	the proportion of meaningful information to irrelevant interference	"The meeting had a low signal-to-noise ratio—mostly off-topic chatter."
bandwidth	the capacity of a channel to transmit information; cognitive processing capacity	"I don't have the bandwidth to take on another project."
lossless	preserving all original information through transformation	"The summary was not lossless—key nuances were omitted."
lossy	sacrificing some information for efficiency or simplicity	"Human memory is inherently lossy, retaining gist over detail."
channel capacity	the maximum rate at which information can be reliably transmitted	"The channel capacity of human attention is surprisingly limited."
bit	the fundamental unit of information; a binary choice	"Each yes/no question extracts one bit of information."
mutual information	the amount of information one variable contains about another	"The high mutual information between the signals suggested a common source."

🗣️Linguistics & Semantics12

Term	Definition	Example
semantics	the study of meaning in language; what words and sentences signify	"The semantic content was clear, though the phrasing was awkward."
syntax	the rules governing how words combine into phrases and sentences	"The sentence was syntactically correct but semantically nonsensical."
pragmatics	how context influences the interpretation of meaning	"Pragmatically, 'Can you pass the salt?' is a request, not a question."
morphology	the study of word formation and internal structure	"The morphology of 'unhappiness' reveals three meaningful units."
deixis	words whose meaning depends on context (I, here, now, this)	"Deictic expressions like 'tomorrow' shift meaning with each utterance."
anaphora	using a word to refer back to something mentioned earlier	"In 'John said he was tired,' 'he' is an anaphoric reference to John."
polysemy	a single word having multiple related meanings	"The polysemy of 'bank' (river/financial) causes ambiguity."
disambiguation	resolving which meaning is intended when multiple are possible	"Context usually enables disambiguation without conscious effort."
compositionality	the meaning of a whole derived from its parts and their arrangement	"Idioms violate compositionality—'kick the bucket' isn't about buckets."
lexicon	the vocabulary of a language; a mental dictionary of words	"Her lexicon expanded dramatically after a year of reading."
phoneme	the smallest unit of sound that distinguishes meaning	"The phonemes /p/ and /b/ distinguish 'pat' from 'bat'."
morpheme	the smallest meaningful unit in a language	"The word 'cats' contains two morphemes: 'cat' and '-s'."

🧠Cognitive Architecture12

Term	Definition	Example
attention	the cognitive process of selectively focusing on relevant information	"Divided attention degrades performance on complex tasks."
working memory	the system for temporarily holding and manipulating information	"Working memory limits how many items we can juggle simultaneously."
retrieval	accessing stored information from memory	"Retrieval cues help us access memories that seem forgotten."
chunking	grouping individual pieces of information into larger units	"Experts chunk chess positions into meaningful patterns."
priming	exposure to one stimulus influencing response to a subsequent stimulus	"Seeing 'doctor' primes faster recognition of 'nurse'."
spreading activation	activation of one concept triggering related concepts in a network	"Spreading activation explains why one memory leads to another."
pattern recognition	identifying regularities or structures in sensory input	"Pattern recognition allows us to read despite varied handwriting."
schema	a mental framework for organizing and interpreting information	"Our restaurant schema includes expectations of menus and servers."
cognitive load	the total amount of mental effort being used in working memory	"High cognitive load impairs learning and decision-making."
automaticity	performing tasks without conscious attention due to practice	"Reading becomes automatic, freeing attention for comprehension."
inhibition	suppressing irrelevant information or prepotent responses	"Cognitive inhibition prevents us from blurting out inappropriate thoughts."
metacognition	thinking about one's own thinking; awareness of cognitive processes	"Metacognition helps learners identify gaps in understanding."

🪞Philosophy of Mind12

Term	Definition	Example
intentionality	the property of mental states being about or directed at something	"Beliefs exhibit intentionality—they are always beliefs about something."
qualia	the subjective, conscious qualities of experience (the 'what it's like')	"The qualia of seeing red cannot be fully conveyed in words."
representation	a mental state that stands for or depicts something else	"Mental representations allow us to think about absent objects."
functionalism	the view that mental states are defined by their functional roles	"Functionalism suggests minds could be implemented in different substrates."
emergence	complex properties arising from simpler components that lack those properties	"Consciousness may be an emergent property of neural activity."
substrate independence	the idea that mental processes don't depend on specific physical material	"Substrate independence implies silicon could support consciousness."
symbol grounding	connecting abstract symbols to real-world meaning and experience	"The symbol grounding problem asks how words acquire meaning."
phenomenal consciousness	the subjective, experiential aspect of mental states	"Phenomenal consciousness is what makes experiences feel like something."
propositional attitude	a mental state relating a person to a proposition (believes that, hopes that)	"Propositional attitudes like belief and desire explain behavior."
dualism	the view that mind and body are fundamentally different substances	"Cartesian dualism posits a non-physical mind interacting with the body."
physicalism	the view that everything, including mind, is ultimately physical	"Physicalism holds that mental states are brain states."
epiphenomenalism	the view that mental events are caused by physical events but have no causal power	"Epiphenomenalism treats consciousness as a byproduct without influence."

🔮Neural Computation12

Term	Definition	Example
transformer	a neural network architecture using self-attention for sequence processing	"Transformers revolutionized natural language processing."
embedding	a dense vector representation of discrete items like words	"Word embeddings capture semantic relationships in vector space."
attention mechanism	a technique allowing models to focus on relevant parts of input	"Attention mechanisms let the model weigh which words matter most."
latent space	a compressed representation where similar items are close together	"In latent space, semantically similar concepts cluster together."
token	a unit of text (word, subword, or character) processed by a model	"The model processes text as a sequence of tokens."
weight	a learnable parameter that determines connection strength in a network	"Training adjusts weights to minimize prediction errors."
activation	the output of a neuron after applying a non-linear function	"ReLU activation introduces non-linearity to the network."
gradient	the direction and rate of steepest increase of a function	"Backpropagation computes gradients to update weights."
inference	using a trained model to make predictions on new data	"Inference is computationally cheaper than training."
fine-tuning	adapting a pre-trained model for a specific task	"Fine-tuning on medical texts improved diagnostic accuracy."
context window	the maximum amount of text a model can process at once	"Longer context windows enable understanding of full documents."
softmax	a function converting raw scores into a probability distribution	"Softmax ensures the output probabilities sum to one."

🎯Epistemics & Uncertainty12

Term	Definition	Example
calibration	the alignment between confidence levels and actual accuracy	"Well-calibrated forecasters are right 70% of the time when 70% confident."
epistemic humility	acknowledging the limits of one's own knowledge	"Epistemic humility prevents overconfidence in uncertain domains."
hedging	qualifying statements to acknowledge uncertainty	"Hedging with 'probably' signals appropriate uncertainty."
confabulation	producing false information without intent to deceive; filling gaps	"Memory confabulation creates coherent but inaccurate narratives."
hallucination	generating plausible but false or unsupported content	"The model hallucinated a citation that doesn't exist."
grounding	connecting claims to verifiable sources or evidence	"Grounding responses in documents reduces hallucination."
epistemic status	the degree of certainty or evidence supporting a claim	"She prefaced her speculation with its epistemic status."
credence	a degree of belief in a proposition, often expressed as probability	"His credence in the hypothesis was about 60%."
uncertainty quantification	measuring and communicating the degree of uncertainty in predictions	"Uncertainty quantification reveals when models are unreliable."
known unknowns	things we are aware we don't know	"Planning for known unknowns is easier than for unknown unknowns."
Knightian uncertainty	uncertainty that cannot be quantified with probabilities	"Novel situations involve Knightian uncertainty, not just risk."
overconfidence	having more certainty than warranted by evidence	"Overconfidence leads to underestimating risks."

🔗Reasoning Patterns12

Term	Definition	Example
deduction	reasoning from general premises to a logically certain conclusion	"Deduction guarantees truth if the premises are true."
induction	inferring general principles from specific observations	"Induction from past sunrises suggests tomorrow's sun will rise."
abduction	inferring the best explanation for observed evidence	"Abduction: the ground is wet, so it probably rained."
analogical reasoning	drawing conclusions based on similarities between cases	"Analogical reasoning from atoms to solar systems guided early physics."
counterfactual	considering what would happen if something were different	"Counterfactual thinking: 'If I had left earlier, I wouldn't be late.'"
inference chain	a sequence of reasoning steps leading to a conclusion	"The inference chain broke down at the third step."
modus ponens	if P then Q; P is true; therefore Q is true	"Modus ponens: if it rains, streets are wet; it rained; streets are wet."
modus tollens	if P then Q; Q is false; therefore P is false	"Modus tollens: if it rained, streets are wet; streets are dry; it didn't rain."
syllogism	a form of deductive reasoning with two premises and a conclusion	"All men are mortal; Socrates is a man; therefore Socrates is mortal."
heuristic	a mental shortcut that enables quick but imperfect judgments	"The availability heuristic judges frequency by ease of recall."
satisficing	accepting a good-enough option rather than seeking the optimal one	"Satisficing saves time when optimization costs exceed benefits."
transitivity	if A relates to B and B relates to C, then A relates to C	"Transitivity: if A > B and B > C, then A > C."

💬Communication Theory12

Term	Definition	Example
illocutionary	the intended action performed by an utterance (requesting, promising)	"The illocutionary force of 'I promise' is making a commitment."
perlocutionary	the effect an utterance has on the listener	"The perlocutionary effect was persuading her to change her mind."
implicature	what is suggested but not explicitly stated	"Saying 'It's getting late' implicates that we should leave."
speech act	an utterance that performs an action (promising, apologizing, ordering)	"Saying 'I do' in a wedding is a speech act that creates marriage."
common ground	shared knowledge, beliefs, and assumptions between communicators	"Effective communication builds on common ground."
turn-taking	the system by which speakers alternate in conversation	"Turn-taking conventions vary across cultures."
maxim of quantity	provide as much information as needed, but not more	"Violating the maxim of quantity makes responses seem evasive or verbose."
maxim of relevance	make contributions relevant to the current exchange	"Off-topic remarks flout the maxim of relevance."
maxim of manner	be clear, brief, and orderly; avoid obscurity and ambiguity	"Jargon-heavy writing violates the maxim of manner."
presupposition	something assumed to be true for an utterance to make sense	"'Have you stopped lying?' presupposes you were lying."
register	a variety of language appropriate to a particular context	"Formal register differs from casual conversation."
code-switching	alternating between languages or varieties within a conversation	"She code-switched between Spanish and English with her family."

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