Reference
Definitions
What the main words on this site mean here. Several are used in a narrower sense than in everyday speech.
Persons
- Person
- Persons have the ability to want. They are not defined by it: wanting is one property among others. See Foundations.
- Complex
- A property is complex if it is many, differently strong (only by comparison), contradictory, dependent (on persons, circumstance, consequence and the person's other properties), uncertain, layered (properties about properties) and changing.
- Want
- Wants are complex. A single want has no strength on its own; strength shows only in comparison.
- Good, better
- Good means wanted; better means wanted more. This can be said of one comparison, or of the whole network once it is worked through. See Foundations.
- Value
- A comparison between wants. See Finding out what we want: money as a signal.
- Value system
- The network of a person's wants and the comparisons between them.
- Need
- A want together with a belief about how to reach it. Needs can become wants.
- Belief system
- What a person believes. Beliefs are complex.
- Trust, care, love, hate, fear, hope
- Complex properties, each of its own kind.
- Problem
- A want believed not to be satisfied. Its size follows from comparing the strength of the want with the strength of the belief.
- Problem network
- Problems form networks: some cause others, some are symptoms.
- Respect, disrespect
- Respect: one's want depends on another's want and agrees with it. Disrespect: it depends on it and disagrees.
- Help, hurt
- Help: an action that works towards what a person wants. Hurt: an action that works against what a person wants.
Groups
- Group
- A group can be described like a person: it has many wants, beliefs, a value system and problems. See Finding out what we want: voting and consequence.
Systems
- Market
- A strategy working on a society's value system. See Finding out what we want: money as a signal.
- Money
- An item that makes exchange easier; it is not a measure of value.
- Financial system
- Should be a way to communicate and explore a society's value system.
- Action
- Something done in the world. Products come from actions; releasing emissions is an action too.
- Actor
- Anyone who receives money and decides what to do with it. Actors are members of society too.
- Pooling
- Money from many sources mixes; after a sale it can be used for anything.
- Insurance
- The action of caring for those struck by risk, injury or harm, and keeping up the means to do so. See Acting on what is wanted.
Harm
- Dynamic society
- A society in which persons are born and die. See Reducing hurt.
- Connected through care
- Between any two persons there is a chain of people caring for each other.
- Want to hurt
- A want for actions that work against what others want.
- Punitive system
- Detects those who hurt and maybe punishes them.
- Reactive
- A system is reactive if it acts only after harm is done, and only if the harm is detected.
- Deterrence
- Holding back an act because of its expected consequence.