Colloquially known as “throwing good money after bad,” sunk cost is a concept from behavioral economics that reflects our tendency to keep going with an investment long after it turns south, because we are psychologically unable to let go of a once good thing.
Sunk cost is considered a fallacy, because it represents an example of behavior that is technically irrational while being culturally ubiquitous.
Gross Domestic Product, or GDP, is a broad measure of a nation’s economic output. It includes the value of all goods and services produced within a country’s geographic borders over a specified amount of time; often a year, for comparative annual GDP studies.
http://ourworldindata.org/data/growth-and-distribution-of-prosperity/gdp-growth-over-the-last-centuries/
A national banking crisis in America that eventually spread to threaten economies around the globe, the economic crisis of 2007-8 was precipitated by the financial industry getting deeper and deeper into highly leveraged risk with a specific type of financial product called a subprime mortgage.
The loans were not of very high quality, due to the effects of predatory lending and of companies āpushing their luckā in a deregulated market by knowingly offering mortgage credit to Americans who couldn’t really afford to buy the homes they were encouraged to purchase. Mortgage underwriters were often incentivized with large bonuses for subprime signups, and even relatively well-off home buyers were often shepherded into subprime loans with worse terms than the traditional 30-year mortgages they would have qualified for.
The mortgages were securitized as complicated new types of assets, re-packaged into large bundles of derivatives to better obscure the sources, and rated far more favorably than warranted by the nation’s credit rating agencies. Sold swiftly around the world and especially here in the U.S. to institutional investors (who manage, among other securities, the pensions and retirement funds of the country), the game of financial āhot potatoā ensured that almost no one in the complex chain of exchange had any incentive to take responsibility for the actual solvency of the underlying loans.
Eventually, the bubble popped and the house of cards came tumbling down. The downturn is widely regarded as the worst economic disaster in American history since the Great Depression of the 1930s, brought on by the stock market crash of 1929.
In post-recovery, much scrutiny remains over the question of whether one specific law ā the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 which separated commercial banking from investment banking in response to the Great Depression ā should be reinstated. Following its passage, the U.S. was able to stop the previous historical cycle of banking crises with regularity about every ~15 years:
…Until āstagflationā (high inflation coupled with stagnant growth) plagued the American economy in the 1970s, and the political establishment began to adopt policies heavily influenced by Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of economic thought, which borrowed heavily from an earlier wave of economic philosophy in the 1930s loosely congealed under the term āneoliberalism.ā Widespread financial deregulation ensued, leading to the full repeal of Glass-Steagall in 1999. Many economists now point to the deregulation spree as the ultimate cause of the 2007-8 financial crash.
For a great resource on this, check out Matt Taibbi (of Rolling Stone fame)’s book Griftopia: A Story of Bankers, Politicians, and the Most Audacious Power Grab in American History
The estate tax onlyĀ kicksĀ inĀ atĀ $5.4mĀ inĀ wealthĀ —Ā soĀ it’s notĀ aboutĀ theĀ “AmericanĀ worker”!
RepealingĀ itĀ wouldĀ giveĀ awayĀ $270Ā billionĀ toĀ richĀ elites.
TheĀ conceptĀ ofĀ “doubleĀ taxation”Ā isĀ aĀ redĀ herring,Ā becauseĀ mostĀ estatesĀ containĀ realĀ estateĀ assetsĀ whoseĀ capitalĀ gainsĀ haveĀ neverĀ beenĀ realizedĀ andĀ taxed.Ā
Inequality is the difference in measures of economic well-being between individuals in a group, among groups in a population, or among countries. Also known as economic inequality; inclusive of both income inequality and wealth inequality.
In the United States, the data broadly shows shared economic growth and prosperity in the post-WWII period until the 1970s, when things begin to take a turn: economic growth slowed and income inequality began to increase. For the past 40-50 years, income growth for lower and middle class Americans has stagnated while income growth at the top of the distribution remained growing strongly. Meanwhile as wages have stagnated, costs have risen dramatically, especially in key universal areas like housing, utilities, health care, and education.
Wealth is even more greatly concentrated than income. A recent Oxfam report found that the world’s richest 62 people control as much wealth as the bottom half of the entire population of the planet. In the U.S., the richest 20% of families owned about 89% of the country’s wealth as of 2013 figures.
Those at the top of the wealth distribution who benefit financially from the growing inequality find numerous ways to justify the architecture of the system, and retain much of the power and control over its design. Yet an overwhelming majority of the available historical and present-day data indicates that stark income inequality has wide-ranging negative effects on societies as a whole, from exacerbating social ills to deleterious effects on basic human needs.
Neoliberalism is the dominant economic orthodoxy in the modern era. It is both a political and a financial ideology, with the following extremist beliefs:
The insistence that governments and self-rule should be subordinated to the ultra-rich, to the oligarchs — that, to me, is the core essence of why this framework is evil. The staggeringly dissonant conviction about transforming sociopathy into global peace is a very close second.
Since the 1970s and accelerating with Reagan years, wealthy elites in the right wing have been spending gobs of their ill-earned wealth on creating a conservative movement echo chamber of think tanks, talk radio, literature, televangelists, YouTube streamers, and more — it is the vast right-wing conspiracy Hillary Clinton warned us about. It most certainly exists, and it most certainly is aggressively pursuing its political aims to disenfranchise the American people as fully as possible, so as to better walk away with an absurdly unjust share of the mutually created wealth by the wealth of intelligent and diligent labor here in the United States.
It appeals to the MAGA crowd because it allows them to vicariously tag along with the rich and powerful right-wing bigots who flaunt and dangle their wealth in front of the plebes by which to entice them to open up their wallets and send in a meagre donation for this or that white victimhood fund that does nothing but enrich the scam artists who run it as a hollow shell. It validates their hardcore white supremacy and casual racism alike, provides the sadistic satisfaction of attacking their enemies (symbolically and/or literally), gives them something to do and believe in, and keeps them entertained while their pockets are being fleeced in broad daylight.
Neoliberalism has succeeded in undermining some of the last shreds of democratic infrastructure and civic goodwill in society at this point in American political history. The defenses brilliantly architected by the Founders to ensure checks and balances would manage the power games in Washington to within workable levels have frayed even further under 4 years of Trump, and the vitriol of the January 6 coup attempt and insurrection that’s fueled further right-wing Big Lie entrenchment and domestic terrorist extremism.
Democracy is in crisis, and neoliberalism the culprit of this hostage story.
At least Joe Biden is correct in his analysis of the solution: we should tax the rich.
For all their angry rhetoric and now, overtly political violence, I maintain that it is the right wing that is profoundly insecure, anxious, and in need of soothing. They are panicking at the idea that the world can possibly change without their approval, and deprive them of their stolen superiority — they do not want the party to end for white male dominance of this entire planet.
Right-wing authoritarian adults latch on to symbols and ideologies and demagogues as “surrogates” for the childhood safety blanket they once needed — these are the “adult-acceptable” pablum substitutes.
We all have learnings in our lives we consider more precious than others — explanations and predictions that endure and keep on giving, versus those that fade away. Our core models form the backbone of our thinking and decision-making throughout our lives; it’s our grab bag of problem solving tools — and we want to have a resilient Swiss Army Knife at the ready at all times. These mental models help us understand a complex world, and prepare for all the changes that are inevitably ahead.
This set of core models below is my personal “desert island” set of model thinking concepts. These are the ones I really wouldn’t want to be caught dead leaving the house without.
Once these are on lock, head over to the unabridged models section for more model thinking goodness!
| Concept | Date | Field | Person | Definition |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| absolute value | 1806 | Math | Jean-Robert Argand | The value of x, regardless of its sign (or, its distance from zero). |
| activation energy | 1889 | Chemistry | Svante Arrhenius | The amount of energy required to get two or more compounds to react, in chemistry or physics. |
| adverse selection | 1860s | Money | ||
| "All the world's a stageā | 1599 | Arts | William Shakespeare | Shakespearean metaphor likening culture to a theatrical performance: "And all the men and women merely players;They have their exits and their entrances ..."āWilliam Shakespeare, As You Like It |
| annuity | 1970s | Money | A series of payments made at equal intervals. | |
| antifragile | 2012 | Math | Nassim Taleb | Things that can benefit from disorder, and grow stronger amidst chaos. |
| antimatter | 1928 | Physics | Paul Dirac | |
| appreciation | Money | |||
| a priori | Strategy | |||
| arrow of time | 1927 | Physics | Arthur Eddington | |
| asset | Money | |||
| asymptote | Math | |||
| availability bias | 1973 | Psychology | Kahneman and Tversky | |
| average | Math | |||
| bank reserves | Money | |||
| Base Rate Fallacy | Psychology | |||
| Bayes' Theorem | 1763 | Math | Reverend Thomas Bayes | A mathematical method of determining the updated probability of a certain event or case, given new information |
| Big Bang | 1949 | Physics | Fred Hoyle | |
| black holes | Physics | Stephen Hawking | ||
| Black Swan | 2007 | Math | Nassim Taleb | |
| blockchain | Money | |||
| boiling frog syndrome | Psychology | |||
| broken windows theory | Psychology | |||
| Butterfly Effect | 1963 | Physics | Edward Lorenz | |
| bystander effect | Psychology | |||
| capital gains | Money | |||
| carbon dating | 1940s | Physics | Willard Libby | A method of determining the age of an organic sample by radioactive decay. |
| carpe diem | Strategy | "Seize the day!" | ||
| catalyst | Chemistry | |||
| cause and effect | ||||
| caveat emptor | Strategy | |||
| Central Limit Theorem | 1733 | Math | Abraham de Moivre | |
| ceteris paribus | Strategy | "all other things being equal"; holding the effects of other variables constant to determine the effects on a single variable of interest | ||
| Chesterton's Fence | 1929 | Strategy | ||
| chilling effect | ||||
| compound interest | Money | |||
| Condorcet Jury Theorem | 1785 | Math | Marquis de Condorcet | |
| confirmation bias | Psychology | |||
| consent of the governed | Political philosophy | Concept of political philosophy in which a government's legitimacy and right to use state power is only justified if consented to by the people over whom said power is wielded. | ||
| correlation is not causation | ||||
| counterfactuals | ||||
| creative destruction | 1942 | Money | Joseph Shumpeter | Economist Joseph Shumpeter's idea for how the business cycle works: by innovation disrupting established processes and industries and forcing change into markets, often destructively and swiftly |
| crossing the Rubicon | History | Julius Caesar | Making a decision from which there is no turning back; a reference to Julius Caesar's overthrow of the Roman republic to found the Roman Empire in 49 BCE | |
| cryptocurrency | Money | |||
| dark matter | Physics | |||
| dead hand of the past | Political philosophy | Thomas Jefferson | Problem inherent in constitutional political philosophy, where eventually a people becomes ruled by "masters" no longer alive, who rule by "fiat" via a document, from beyond the grave. | |
| decision tree | Strategy | |||
| depreciation | Money | |||
| distribution | Math | |||
| diversity | Strategy | |||
| divident payments | Money | Periodic, usually quarterly, payouts to stockholders of the company when posting profits. Along with capital gains, one of the 2 primary reasons to invest in stocks. | ||
| Doppler Effect | 1842 | Physics | Christian Doppler | |
| Drake Equation | 1961 | Physics | Frank Drake | Estimation of the number of technological civilizations that might exist in the universe. |
| Dunbar Number | 1990s | Robin Dunbar | ||
| Dunning-Kruger Effect | A cognitive bias in which people mistakenly assess their cognitive ability as higher than it actually is, because they cannot recognize their incompetence in comparison to others. | |||
| Duverger's Law | 1940s | Political philosophy | Maurice Duverger | Holds that plurality-rule elections within single member districts ā such as the structure found in the U.S. ā tend to favor two-party systems |
| edge case | ||||
| elasticity | Money | The ability of pricing mechanisms to respond quickly or less quickly to changes in prevailing conditions | ||
| electromagnetic spectrum | Physics | |||
| emperor's new clothes | Strategy | |||
| entropy | ||||
| equilibrium | ||||
| event horizon | Physics | |||
| evolution | ||||
| exit strategy | Strategy | |||
| false negatives | ||||
| false positives | ||||
| falsifiabillity | ||||
| fiduciary duty | Ethics | |||
| fifth column | Strategy | A group who unites in secret to undermine a larger group from within. | ||
| first mover advantage | Strategy | |||
| force multiplier | Strategy | |||
| fractals | 1975 | Math | Benoit Mandelbrot | |
| fractional lending | Money | |||
| fundamental attribution error | ||||
| general relativity | Albert Einstein | |||
| general will | Political philosophy | Jean-Jacques Rousseau | ||
| Golden Mean | Math | Aristotle | Aristotelian theory of an ideal balance point between the many extremes we face in life; he advocated harmony between the various spheres of life for an experience of happiness | |
| Golden Rule | Ethics | Ancient | "Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you" is the essence of this ancient wisdom, often used as a shorthand version of Jesus's core teaching. | |
| Goldilocks Zone | ||||
| gravity | Physics | |||
| Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle | Physics | ----- Heisenberg | ||
| heuristics | Psychology | Mental shortcuts that we do as a matter of routine, especially when we're stressed or under other types of cognitive constraints. | ||
| inflation | ||||
| inflection point | ||||
| intellectual property | Money | IP | ||
| iron law of ligarchy | Political philosophy | Political theory positing that no matter how democratic a group may start out, over time it will develop into a bureaucracy ruled by a small handful | ||
| keystone | ||||
| Laffer curve | Money | |||
| Law of Large Numbers | 1713 | Math | Jacob Bernoulli | As the number of coin tosses approaches infinity, the number of heads encountered will converge on 0.5; helpful in calculations of probability. |
| least-barricaded gate | Strategy | Leon Trotsky | Metaphor about how social revolutions can take hold more easily in already weakened societies. | |
| length contraction | Physics | |||
| lifeboat ethics | Ethics | |||
| limiting factor | ||||
| long tail | Math | |||
| loss aversion | Psychology | |||
| Lost Einsteins | Money | |||
| map is not the territory | ||||
| margin of error | Math | |||
| Maslow's Pyramid | Psychology | ---- Maslow | ||
| mean | Math | |||
| median | Math | |||
| Median Voter Theorem | ||||
| mens rea | ||||
| Moore's Law | ||||
| moral hazard | Money | |||
| Narcissus & Echo | ||||
| Nash Equilibrium | Math | |||
| natural selection | Charles Darwin | |||
| negative interest rates | Money | |||
| Newton's Laws of Motion | Physics | 1st, 2nd, and 3rd laws | ||
| normal distribution | Math | |||
| null hypothesis | ||||
| observer effect | ||||
| Occam's Razor | Strategy | |||
| oligarchy | ||||
| opportunity cost | Money | What you miss out on by using a resource in a certain way -- what you would have done with the resource otherwise; what alternative use you would have put it to. | ||
| outlier | Math | |||
| paradox | Math | |||
| Pareto Principle | Money | ----- Pareto | ||
| path dependent | Math | |||
| Pavlov's dogs | Psychology | |||
| pearls before swine | ||||
| permutations | ||||
| Peter Principle | ||||
| phase shift | ||||
| Plato's cave | Philosophy | Plato | ||
| point of no return | Strategy | |||
| Polyanna Principle | Psychology | Tendency for people to remember pleasant events more accurately than unpleasant ones | ||
| Potemkin Village | ||||
| Prisoner's Dilemma | Strategy | |||
| probability | Math | |||
| Procrustean Bed | Strategy | Procrustes | Synonymous with ruthlessly enforcing conformity, the phrase comes from a Greek tale of extreme "form fitting" on the part of Poseidon's son Procrustes, a robber who is said to have attacked victims by cutting off men's legs or stretching them on racks accordingly to fit an iron bed size. | |
| proxy war | Strategy | |||
| Pyrrhic Victory | Strategy | |||
| quantum physics | Physics | |||
| quid pro quo | Strategy | |||
| Reagonomics | Money | |||
| received wisdom | ||||
| red shift | Physics | |||
| redundancy | Strategy | |||
| resilience | Strategy | Ability to bounce back into shape after having been pressed or stretched; elasticity. The capacity to recover quickly. | ||
| ripple effect | ||||
| risk | Money | |||
| root cause | ||||
| Rosetta Stone | ||||
| rounding | Math | |||
| rounding error | ||||
| rule of law | ||||
| Schrƶdinger's Cat | Physics | |||
| selection bias | Psychology | |||
| Single point of failure (SPoF) | A part of a system that, when it fails, brings down the entire rest of the system or stops it from working properly. | |||
| singularity | ||||
| six degrees of separation | ||||
| skin in the game | Ethics | |||
| social contract | Political philosophy | Jean-Jacques Rousseau | ||
| social contract | Political philosophy | John Locke | ||
| Socratic method | Socrates | |||
| special relativity | Albert Einstein | |||
| speed of light | Physics | Approx. 300 million meters per second | ||
| standard deviation | Math | |||
| stare decisis | "It has been decided" ā terminology used by a judge or court to indicate that the matter before them has already been decided by a previous ruling. | |||
| state of nature | Political philosophy | Thomas Hobbes | ||
| status quo | ||||
| Streisand Effect | ||||
| supply and demand | Money | |||
| sword of Damocles | ||||
| tabula rasa | Strategy | blank slate | ||
| tilting at windmills | Strategy | Miguel de Cervantes | ||
| time dilation | Physics | |||
| tipping point | Math | |||
| Tit-for-Tat | Strategy | |||
| too many cooks in the kitchen | Strategy | |||
| tragedy of the commons | ||||
| trickle down economics | Money | |||
| trolley problem | Ethics | |||
| turtles all the way down | ||||
| twin paradox | Physics | Albert Einstein | ||
| tyranny of choice | ||||
| usury | Money | |||
| variance | ||||
| veil of ignorance | 1971 | Political philosophy | John Rawls | |
| Venn diagram | Math | |||
| vulnerability | Psychology | Brene Brown | ||
| wave-particle duality | ||||
| wisdom of crowds | Strategy | Derived from the Diversity Prediction Theorem: the average prediction of a group of individuals will be more accurate than the prediction of one average member | ||
| wolves and sheep | Strategy | |||
| worst case scenario | Strategy | |||
| zero sum game | Strategy |
(notes / draft) What are the true origins of conservatism?
1930s, in opposition to Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal
3 main factions then:
After the Allies won World War II, a number of the early Hitler sympathizers “hid out” in anti-communist circles, allowing them to cloak their underlying fascism inside of the American Cold War project and give it a semi-presentable face in conservatism.
In the 1970s, 2 more conservative groups emerged for a total of 5 main sects:
4. neoconservatives — Ronald Reagan
5. the religious right — the Moral Majority, Jerry Falwell Sr. & Jr., Jimmy Swaggart, Jim & Tammy Fae Baker, Pat Robertson, Jesse Helms, Paul Weyrich, Paul Regnery, William Rusher, prosperity gospel
It feels like the 1930s all over again — and with good reason. The rise of American fascists and right-wing extremism around the world has been a known trend for decades, and America’s past flirtations with fascism had been largely swept under the rug by the then anti-semites who tried to put a stop to FDR’s New Deal and prevent the U.S. from getting into World War II.
They fought against labor unions and labor organizers, often using private militia as henchmen to do their dirtywork with plausible deniability for themselves. The KKK was just one of many instruments put to use in service of plutocratic aims to quell any “communist awakening” amongst their workers, lest they get any uppity ideas for themselves. They fell for the popular conspiracy theories of their time, which included Hitler’s bogus assertion that Jewish bankers controlled the world and had to be stopped before they destroyed the white race.
Those fascists, butthurt over America’s overwhelmingly popular decision to enter the war and stop Hitler from exterminating the Jews, seethed with jealousy at the post-war “liberal consensus” that flourished alongside the booming US economy, propelled first by the war effort and later by the peacetime success of the New Deal’s long shadow and the burgeoning of the American middle class.
The American fascists turned into the John Birch Society, and the McCarthyites, and the Libertarians, and the Moral Majority, and the Gingrich Revolution, and the Tea Party, and the MAGA / QAnon stew sloshing around mass media. The kooks on the far right — the kind of ilk so cray cray that even William F. Buckley excommunicates you from the Republican Party — have taken over the hen house now. Outrage sells, as Facebook well knows — and as two-bit dictators around the world have bribed Mark Zuckerberg to brainwash the masses using the most inanely illogical propaganda prolefeed, the world tilts dangerously towards authoritarianism and the end of our democracy as we know it. And with it, all hope for truth and light into the future for some time to come — the equivalent of a political meteor hitting the Earth.
The American fascists are still around, and now they have tools of propaganda that Goebbels could never have even wet dreamed of. They’re more powerful and more well-connected — to other sociopaths, malignant narcissists, and other pathological cult-leader types who might be of transactional service to each other from time to time. We’d be wise to keep an eye on these folks.
| Name | Type | Location | Known for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Roman Abramovich | Foreign agent | Russian oligarch close to both Putin and Trump | |
| ACU Strategic Partners | Foreign agent | A company seeking to build nuclear power plants in the Middle East in partnership with a sanctioned Russia company; Mike Flynn was working for them without having disclosed it to the US government as required. | |
| Sheldon Adelson | Businessperson | Las Vegas, NV | CEO billionaire of the Sands Corp casino empire (died, 2021) |
| AggregateIQ | Corporation | ||
| Todd Akin | Politician | Missouri | Politician who lost his Senate race to Clairse McCaskill in 2012 when he made the comment on TV about women having a way to "shut the whole thing down" to avoid becoming pregnant if raped. |
| American Energy Alliance | Non-profit | A tax-exempt nonprofit that advocated for corporate-friendly energy policies. Koch's Freedom Partners donated $1.5 million in 2012. | |
| American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) | Non-profit | Corporate-funded nonprofit that writes legislation for Republican legislatures, including spearheading the efforts to wrest partisan control over election results in 49 states. | |
| Americans for Prosperity | PAC | The Koch Brothers' Libertarian political advocacy arm | |
| Philip Anschutz | Colorado | CO oil and entertainment billionaire and founder of Qwest Communications | |
| Lee Atwater | |||
| Michele Bachman | |||
| Steve Bannon | Media personality | ||
| William Barr | |||
| Andy Biggs | Politician | AZ | House Republican |
| Black Legion | Extremist | Michigan | Secret society of black-hooded terrorists working in MI against labor unions and labor organizers in the 1930s. Legionnaires talked of staging a coup to oust FDR and imposing a fascist regime in the United States |
| David Bogatin | Oligarch | NYC | A top figure in the Russian mafia who bought 5 luxury condos in Trump Tower to launder money, he admitted in 1987. |
| Jacob Bogatin | Oligarch | David Bogatin's brother, and a partner of notorious Russian mob moss Semion Mogilevich | |
| Harry and Lynde Bradley | Kochtopus | Midwesterners who built their wealth on defense contracts | |
| Andrew Breitbart | Media personality | Founded both Brietbart and the Huffington Post | |
| Ruby Bridges | |||
| Mo Brooks | Politician | ||
| Brother's Circle | Criminal | Organized crime gang pursued by then-FBI head Robert Mueller circa 2011 | |
| Michael Brown | Ferguson, MO | Unarmed black man killed by the police in Ferguson, Missouri, sparking a series of riots in the city. | |
| Pat Buchanan | |||
| William F. Buckley Jr | Media personality | ||
| Doug Burley | Founding and leading both The Family and the National Prayer Breakfast of right-wing power brokers | ||
| Cambridge Analytica | |||
| Tucker Carlson | Media personality | ||
| Doug Casey | Ayn Rand devotee and "anarcho-capitalist" who specializes in how to profit from turmoil | ||
| Michael Catanzaro | Lobbyist | Partner at the CGCN Group lobbying firm who headed "energy independence" for the Trump transition team. | |
| Madison Cawthorn | |||
| Center to Protect Patient Rights | Dark money group funded by the Kochs to attack the ACA with fearmongering and vitriol | ||
| Mike Cernovich | Media personality | ||
| CGCN Group | Lobbyist | Lobbyist for the Koch brothers | |
| James Chaney | Activist | Neshoba County, MS | One of 3 civil rights activists murdered by local white supremacists when engaging in non-violent civil disobedience, along with Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman |
| Chris Christie | Politician | Governor of NJ | |
| Michael Cohen | Businessperson | Donald Trump's personal lawyer, sentenced to 3 years in federal prison for felony crimes, including campaign finance crimes | |
| Steven A. Cohen | Finance (SAC Capital Advisors) | ||
| Roy Cohn | |||
| Competitive Enterprise Institute | Think Tank | A Washington think tank that had been bankrolled by fossil fuel industries, particularly the Kochs. | |
| Continental Resources | Corporation | Oklahoma | OK-based shale oil company with a large and profitable fracking operation |
| Coors brewing family | Koch Investor | Colorado | |
| Ted Cruz | Politician | Texas | |
| Kim Davis | Public Sector | Kentucky | |
| Devos family | Koch Investor | Founders of the Amway marketing empire; Betsy DuVos is the Secretary of Education under Trump | |
| Amadou Diallo | New York | a West African immigrant mowed down by 41 shots from police when leaving his apartment on February 4, 1999. | |
| James Dobson | Media personality | conservative talk-show host | |
| Chester Doles | Former KKK leader who runs the white supremacist American Patriots USA. Nearly beat a Black man to death in 1993. Marched in 2017 in Charlottesville. | ||
| Dinesh D'Souza | Conservative gadly who alleged that Obama was "African" in outlook rather than American, absorbing his "radical" views from his Kenyan father | ||
| Doug Ducey | |||
| David Duke | White Supremacist | ||
| John Eastman | Ran against Kamala Harris in 2010 for California AG, then showed back up in 2020 to write an outrageous op-ed that Newsweek for some reason actually published, that claimed that she was "secretly" not a US resident and therefore not eligible to be the VP! Now the Kamala Harris birther | ||
| Myron Ebell | Outspoken climate change skeptic, who headed the Trump transition team for the EPA | ||
| Election Integrity Project California | Extremist | Election fraud group working with Leonard Leo | |
| Cassandra Fairbanks | |||
| Jerry Falwell, Jr | Televangelist | ||
| The Family | Lobbyist | Shadowy DC group with tremendous sway in Congress and around the world, following a distorted "strongman Jesus" version of Christianity. | |
| The Federalist Society | Extremist | ||
| Scott Fitzgerald | Politician | WI | House Republican |
| Michael Flynn | Lobbyist | ||
| For America | PAC | ||
| Fox News | Corporation | ||
| Freedom Partners | Kochtopus | The Koch Brothers' secretive donor club. | |
| FreedomWorks | Extremist | ||
| Kevin Gentry | VP of Special Projects and VP of the Koch Foundation | ||
| Greg Gianforte | Politician | body-slamming Guardian reported Ben Jacobs while running for a GOP House seat in Montana | |
| Newt Gingrich | Media personality | ||
| Tim "Baked Alaska" Gionet | White Supremacist | ||
| Rudy Giuliani | Politician | NYC | |
| GiveSendGo | "Christian" donation platform | ||
| Barry Goldwater | Politician | AZ | |
| Chuck Grassley | Politician | Senator | |
| The Great Awakening | |||
| Marjorie Taylor Greene | QAnon | GA | |
| Eric Greitens | |||
| Harold Hamm | Kochtopus | Billionaire founder of Continental Resources, an OK-based shale company with large fracking business & one of the charter members of the Kochs' donor circle. | |
| Orrin Hatch | Politician | Sen. Orrin Hatch raised concerns about funding certain entitlement programs. āI have a rough time wanting to spend billions and billions and trillions of dollars to help people who wonāt help themselves, wonāt lift a finger and expect the federal government to do everything,ā he said. | |
| Josh Hawley | |||
| Jesse Helms | |||
| Leona Helmsley | |||
| Diane Hendricks | The wealthiest woman in Wisconsin at $3.6 billion | ||
| Heritage Foundation | Think Tank | Washington, DC | |
| Honest Elections Project | Extremist | A conservative legal organization connected to Leonard Leo that files legal briefs to SCOTUS opposing mail-in ballots and other voting reforms that help more people to vote, | |
| Andrew Jackson | Politician | US President | |
| John Birch Society | Extremist | ||
| Andrew Johnson | Politician | US President | |
| Chuck Johnson | Media personality | Alt-right super troll | |
| Alex Jones | Media personality | Host of InfoWars, the 9/11 conspiracy show that put the genre on the map | |
| Jim Jordan | Politician | OH | A long-time Tea Party hyena, the Congressman known as Gym once helped his buddy cover up decades of sexual abuse of young wrestlers in their care. |
| Judicial Education Project | Extremist | A legal group tied to Leonard Leo, working to advance conservative takeover of the judiciary. | |
| Islam Karimov | Oligarch | Uzbekistan | Former Communist official who became the first president of Uzbekistan in 1991, and remained the country's dictator until his death in 2016. |
| Brett Kavanaugh | Judge | ||
| Dr. D. James Kennedy | creating a Dominionist "conversion" playbook | ||
| John F. Kennedy | Politician | ||
| Robert F. Kennedy | Politician | ||
| Martin Luther King | Activist | Civil Rights leader in the 1960s, and enemy of Southern politicians | |
| Charlie Kirk | Media personality | ||
| KKK | White Supremacist | ||
| Bill Koch | Businessperson | ||
| Charles Koch | Kochtopus | Kansas | industries: pipelines, oil refineries, lumber and paper, coal, chemicals, commodity futures, etc. |
| David Koch | Kochtopus | Kansas | industries: pipelines, oil refineries, lumber and paper, coal, chemicals, commodity futures, etc. (now deceased) |
| Fred Koch | Kochtopus | Kansas | Father of Charles and David, Fred Koch was an early and fervent acolyte in the ultra-conservative John Birch Society |
| Frederick Koch | Businessperson | New York | |
| Ku Klux Klan (see KKK) | White Supremacist | ||
| Ken Langone | Businessperson | Founder of Home Depot | |
| Lyndon LaRouche | Cult Leader | ||
| Robert LeFevre | Kochtopus | Charles Koch's mentor, a quasi-anarchist, who said, "government is a disease masquerading as its own cure" | |
| Leonard Leo | Extremist | Chairman of the Federalist Society, a legal organization working to pack the courts with conservative judges. | |
| Liberty Counsel | Christian special rights group | ||
| William S. Lind | |||
| Kelly Loeffler | Politician | Georgia | Insider trading immediately upon arriving at her unelected Senate seat when her husband, President of the NYSE, found a way to have some money arrive at Brian Kemp, the Governor, who appointed her. |
| Dana Loesch | Media personality | NRA spokeswoman | |
| Paul Manafort | Lobbyist | ||
| John McAfee | Businessperson | ||
| Michael McKenna | Kochtopus | Lobbyist and President of MWR Strategies lobbying firm, who have the Koch brothers as clients | |
| Rebekah Mercer | Oligarch | Daughter of NY hedge fund manager Robert Mercer; she helped guide the Trump transition team following the 2016 election | |
| Robert Mercer | Oligarch | ||
| MicroChip | Pro-Trump bot-king | ||
| Michael Milken | |||
| Semion Mogilevich | Criminal | Notorious Russian mob boss | |
| Stefan Molyneux | Media personality | Alt-right troll | |
| Sun Myung Moon | Cult Leader | Leader of the Moonie cult and self-proclaimed deity, Mr Moon served time in federal prison for tax fraud, among other charges. | |
| Roy Moore | Politician | Trump-backed politician and pedophile who narrowly lost the Alabama Senate race to Doug Jones in 2018. | |
| MWR Strategies | Kochtopus | Lobbying firm for the Koch brothers | |
| neo-Nazis | Extremist | ||
| Ralph Norman | Politician | House Republican who skirted the metal detectors to enter the House floor after the January 6 insurrection | |
| NRA | Extremist | National Rifle Association | |
| NYPD | Public Sector | New York Police Department | |
| Barack Obama | Politician | Chicago, DC, Los Angeles | The 44th President of the United States, and the first black person to hold the job. He was widely loathed by the Right despite his positive record. |
| John M. Olin | Kochtopus | Chemical and munitions company titan | |
| Norman Vincent Peale | Businessperson | Christianity as a business man's religion | |
| Mike Pence | Media personality | ||
| Rick Perry | Politician | ||
| Scott Perry | House Republican who skirted the metal detectors to enter the House floor after the January 6 insurrection | ||
| Jordan B Peterson | Academic | ||
| Mike Pompeo | Public Sector | Sec of State after the firing of Rex Tillerson; former CIA Director; former Republican congressman from KS and largest recipient of Koch campaign funds in all of Congress | |
| Jack Posobiec | Media personality | ||
| Lewis Powell | |||
| Sydney Powell | Also Associates with UFO believers and anti-vaxxers | ||
| Proud Boys | |||
| Thomas Pyle | president of the American Energy Alliance, funded by Exxon and the Kochs | ||
| QAnon | |||
| Nancy Reagan | |||
| Ronald Reagan | Politician | ||
| Pat Robertson | Televangelist | ||
| George Romney | |||
| Mitt Romney | Politician | ||
| Richard Mellon Scaife | Koch Investor | Heir to the Mellon banking and Gulf Oil fortunes, and Koch donor | |
| David Schnare | "Free-market environmentalist" who accused the EPA of having blood on its hands, who joined climate change denier Myron Ebell on the Trump transition team for the EPA | ||
| Stephen Schwarzman | Finance | ||
| Rick Scott | |||
| Jeff Sessions | |||
| Marc Short | Ran the Koch Brothers' secretive donor club, Freedom Partners, before becoming Mike Pence's senior advisor during the 2016 presidential transition | ||
| Sinclair Broadcasting Group | Corporation | ||
| Paul Singer | Koch Investor | Finance (Elliott Management hedge fund). Supported Rudy Giuliani. | |
| SNCC | Non-profit | ||
| Richard Spencer | Media personality | ||
| State Policy Network | Funded in part by the Kochs | ||
| Roger Stone | Lobbyist | ||
| Richard Strong | Strong Capital Management Mutual Fund | ||
| Tea Party | Intensely antitax group | ||
| Peter Thiel | Businessperson | ||
| Three Percenters | |||
| Turning Point USA | |||
| Unification Church | |||
| Unite the Right | Activist | ||
| University of Texas at Austin | |||
| Ricky Vaughn | |||
| George Wallace | Politician | Alabama | |
| Joe Walsh | |||
| Kelli Ward | Politician | AZ | GOP Chair |
| Ron Watkins | Identified as the most likely suspect to be Q | ||
| Weev | White Supremacist | Andrew "Weev" Auernheimer | |
| Paul Weyrich | White Supremacist | ||
| Darren Wilson | Police officer who brutally killed a Black man, Michael Brown, in Ferguson, MO in 2014. | ||
| WikiLeaks | Foreign agent | ||
| Milo Yiannopoulos | |||
| TYPE (raw) | Type | pivot | |
| Businessperson | Academic | ||
| Businessperson | Activist | TYPE (raw) | |
| Businessperson | Businessperson | ||
| Businessperson | Corporation | Businessperson | |
| Businessperson | Criminal | Corporation | |
| Businessperson | Cult Leader | Koch Investor | |
| Businessperson | Extremist | Lobbyist | |
| Businessperson | Foreign agent | Media personality | |
| Businessperson | Judge | non-profit | |
| Corporation | Kochtopus | Politician | |
| Corporation | Lobbyist | Public Sector | |
| Corporation | Media personality | Think Tank | |
| Koch Investor | Non-profit | Type | |
| Koch Investor | Oligarch | Grand Total | |
| Koch Investor | PAC | ||
| Koch Investor | Politician | ||
| Koch Investor | Public Sector | ||
| Koch Investor | QAnon | ||
| Koch Investor | Televangelist | ||
| Koch Investor | Think Tank | ||
| Koch Investor | White Supremacist | ||
| Lobbyist | |||
| Lobbyist | |||
| Lobbyist | |||
| Lobbyist | |||
| Lobbyist | |||
| Lobbyist | |||
| Lobbyist | |||
| Lobbyist | |||
| Media personality | |||
| Media personality | |||
| Media personality | |||
| Media personality | |||
| Media personality | |||
| Media personality | |||
| non-profit | |||
| Non-profit | |||
| Non-profit | |||
| Non-profit | |||
| Politician | |||
| Politician | |||
| Politician | |||
| Politician | |||
| Politician | |||
| Politician | |||
| Politician | |||
| Politician | |||
| Politician | |||
| Politician | |||
| Public Sector | |||
| Public Sector | |||
| Think Tank | |||
| Think Tank | |||
| Type |
Mental models are different ways of mapping or viewing a system or a problem. They are frameworks that help explain what’s going on, and predict what’s likely to happen next.
Model thinking is an excellent way of improving our cognition and decision making abilities. Thinking in models helps us understand how new concepts fit with older observations, and what theories and metaphors are likely to endure.
I will continue to add to this list over time as well as fill in the number of holes that remain in the set. Learning about new mental models is one of my favorite activities — it’s the closest thing to a superpower I can think of.
| Term | Type | Topic | Definition |
|---|---|---|---|
| 80/20 rule | Model | Economics | Also known as a power law, or the Pareto Principle |
| absolute advantage | |||
| absolute value | Term | Math | the value of a function irrespective of its sign (positive or negative) |
| accessibility | Psychology | How easy something is to call to mind | |
| acquittal | Legal precedent | ||
| activation energy | Term | Science | A chemistry term that describes the minimum energy required for a chemical system to react |
| adverse selection | |||
| a fortiori | |||
| akrasia | Term | A state of mind where someone acts against their own better judgment due to weakness of will. | |
| alea iacta est | Metaphor | Metaphor | In Latin, "the die is cast" -- attributed to Julius Caesar as he crossed the river Rubicon, leading an attack on Rome: a metaphor for a point of no return |
| allocation | Method | Economics | |
| "All the world's a stageā | Metaphor | Arts | Shakespearean metaphor likening culture to a theatrical performance: "And all the men and women merely players;They have their exits and their entrances ..."āWilliam Shakespeare, As You Like It |
| Amara's Law | Theory | Science & Technology | We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run |
| annuity | Term | Economics | a series of regular payments |
| antifragility | Model | Economics | when something grows stronger under stress; when there is more upside to downside of experiencing a shock to the system |
| antimatter | Theory | Science & Technology | |
| a priori | Philosophy | ||
| arbitrage | Model | Economics | |
| archetypes | Symbol | Philosophy | An ideal type; a model after which others are fashioned. |
| arrow of time | Science & Technology | ||
| artificia docuit fames | Ancient Wisdom | Philosophy | Latin saying meaning, "sophistication is born out of hunger" -- a metaphor for innovation and genius being awakened by challenge, difficulty, and constraints |
| ASCII | Term | Science & Technology | American Standard Code for Information Interchange: a standard character translation table used by computers to convert numerical representations into printable characters |
| asking a fish about water | Metaphor | Metaphor | |
| astroturfing | Method | ||
| asymmetric encryption | Term | ||
| asymptotes | Term | Math | A line is approaching a limit, but never quite reaches it. |
| autophagy | |||
| availability bias | Model | Psychology | |
| averages | Method | Math | a measure of central tendency of a set of data, whether the mean, media, or mode |
| balance sheet | Method | Economics | |
| balancing loop | Systems theory | ||
| Baldwin Effect | Model | Science & Technology | As organisms learn to shape their environment, they can alter the path of evolution. For example, with the advent of dairy farming, selection pressures began favoring lactose absorption genes in humans. |
| bank reserves | Economics | ||
| bank run | Economics | ||
| base conversion | Math | ||
| Base Rate Fallacy | Psychology | ||
| base weighting | |||
| Bayes' Theorem | Method | Math | an algebraic method of determining the updated probability of a certain event or case, given new information |
| bend the knee | Metaphor | Social psychology | |
| beta | Economics | In finance, a term that refers to investments tracking the broad market performance of an exchange or industry sector | |
| The Big Bang | Term | Science & Technology | The massive explosion which spawned our entire universe, back at the beginning of time. |
| The Big Crunch | Theory | ||
| binary numbers | Term | Math | |
| binomial distribution | Term | Statistics | |
| Binomial Theorem | Theory | Math | |
| black hole | Theory | Physics | |
| Black-Scholes model | Model | Economics | |
| Black Swan | Model | Economics | |
| blockchain | Term | Science & Technology | |
| boiling frog | Metaphor | Philosophy | A metaphor for the common occurence of slow, gradual changes over time not being noticed, like the (contested) legend of a scienfitic experiment that boileg a frog alive by starting with tepid water and slowly turning up the temperature. |
| bond | Economics | ||
| Boyle's Law | |||
| boundary object | |||
| bounded rationality | Psychology | A central challenge to the c. 1776 ideas of Adam Smith regarding the Invisible Hand of markets, this 20th c. psychological theory posits that rather than making optimized rational decisions, at most times the average person is "satisficing" or making the most expedient choice under considerable constraints and lack of available information | |
| bricolage | Method | Arts | Combination of many types and forms into one piece; a pastiche or mashup of style and cultural referents |
| broken windows theory | Theory | Law | |
| Butterfly Effect | Model | Science & Technology | |
| bystander effect | Social psychology | ||
| cadence | Arts | ||
| camel's nose | Philosophy | a metaphor describing how allowing a smaller innocuous act may lead to larger acts that are undesirable | |
| capital gains | Economics | Money that is earned as a result of a stock investment appreciating in value ā the capital "gains in value" | |
| capital requirements | Economics | Actual cash on hand for banks to theoretically offer at a given time, with the rest lended out as leverage | |
| carbon-14 | Science & Technology | ||
| carbon dating | Science & Technology | A way to scientifically determine the age of an object | |
| carpe diem | Philosophy | in Latin, "seize the day" -- a reference often used to motivate oneself and others to act boldly and live vigorously in the moment | |
| cartel | Economics | ||
| catalyst | Science & Technology | ||
| categorical data | Statistics | ||
| causa-sui project | Psychology | ||
| cellular automata | Math | ||
| central limit theorem | Statistics | ||
| central tendency | Statistics | a measure of the midpoint of a data set; includes mean, median, and mode | |
| ceteris paribus | Economics | "all other things being equal"; holding the effects of other variables constant to determine the effects on a single variable of interest | |
| charge preservation | Science & Technology | ||
| charlatan | Psychology | one who aspires to wealth &/or fame through trickery and deception | |
| Chesterton's Fence | Metaphor | ||
| chilling effect | History | ||
| cognitive bias | Psychology | ||
| collapse | Systems theory | ||
| comparative advantage | Economics | ||
| composite events | Statistics | in probability | |
| compound interest | Economics | ||
| conditionals | Math | ||
| Condorcet Jury Theorem | Statistics | ||
| confidence interval | Statistics | the range of values over which a predicted outcome may lie; the amount of certainty one has about the predicted value falling within the estimated range | |
| confirmation bias | Psychology | ||
| conflation | Psychology | ||
| consent of the governed | Politics | Concept of political philosophy in which a government's legitimacy and right to use state power is only justified if consented to by the people over whom said power is wielded. | |
| consequentialism | Philosophy | ||
| constraints | Math | ||
| Consumer Sentiment Index | Economics | ||
| continuous vs. discrete variables | Statistics | ||
| Copernican theory of the solar system | Science & Technology | ||
| correlation | Statistics | ||
| correlation coefficient | Statistics | ||
| cosine | Math | ||
| counterfactual | |||
| countervailing power | Economics | Economist John Kenneth Galbraith's concept for how collective worker power is needed to balance against growing corporatism in the economy | |
| creative destruction | Economics | Economist Joseph Shumpeter's idea for how the business cycle works: by innovation disrupting established processes and industries and forcing change into markets, often destructively and swiftly | |
| credo quia absurdum | "I believe because it is absurd" ā Tertullian's defense of belief in the miracles attributed to Christ | ||
| critical mass | Science & Technology | ||
| crossing the Rubicon | Metaphor | History | Making a decision from which there is no turning back; a reference to Julius Caesar's overthrow of the Roman republic to found the Roman Empire in 49 BCE |
| cross-sectional data | Math | ||
| crowdfunding | Economics | ||
| crowdsourcing | Systems theory | ||
| cryptocurrency | Economics | ||
| dead hand of the past | History | Problem inherent in constitutional political philosophy, where eventually a people becomes ruled by "masters" no longer alive, who rule by "fiat" via a document, from beyond the grave (Thomas Jefferson's concept) | |
| death spiral | |||
| decision theory | Systems theory | ||
| decision tree | Systems theory | ||
| de minimis | Law | ||
| depreciation | Economics | ||
| derivatives | Math | ||
| diminshing marginal utility (DMU) | Economics | ||
| directory structure | Computers | ||
| dispersion | Statistics | the amount of variation within a set of data; how spread out the data points are from each other | |
| distributions | Statistics | ||
| divergent thinking | Psychology | ||
| diversity | |||
| Diversity Prediction Theorem | |||
| dividend payments | Economics | Periodic, usually quarterly, payouts to stockholders of the company when posting profits. Along with capital gains, one of the 2 primary reasons to invest in stocks. | |
| Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 | Economics | definitive financial regulation of the financial industry following the 2007-8 financial crisis | |
| domain dependence | |||
| double helix | |||
| doxa | Social psychology | common belief or opinion | |
| Drake Equation | Science & Technology | 1961 estimation of the number of technological civilizations that might exist in the universe, conceived by Dr. Frank Drake | |
| dualism | Philosophy | ||
| Dunbar number | Psychology | ||
| Dunning-Kruger Effect | Psychology | A cognitive bias in which people mistakenly assess their cognitive ability as higher than it actually is, because they cannot recognize their incompetence in comparison to others. | |
| Duverger's Law | Politics | Holds that plurality-rule elections within single member districts ā such as the structure found in the U.S. ā tend to favor two-party systems | |
| economies of scale | Economics | ||
| edge case | |||
| elasticity; price elasticity | Economics | the ability of pricing mechanisms to respond quickly or less quickly to changes in prevailing conditions | |
| elasticity of demand | |||
| elasticity of supply | |||
| electromagnetic spectrum | Science & Technology | ||
| electron cloud | Science & Technology | refers to the true nature of an electron's existence around an atom, wherein its location in space is not a definite point, but a fuzzy region of probable occurence | |
| elephants and flies | Economics | sales concept to quickly segment leads into size buckets, from elephants > deers > rabbits > mice > flies | |
| elephant and rider | Psychology | psychological idea about how our unconscious and semi-conscious desires dominate us, but can be directed by reason (Jonathan Haidt et al) | |
| embargo | |||
| emperor's new clothes | |||
| encryption | Math | ||
| ensemble learning | Science & Technology | ||
| epistemology | Philosophy | ||
| e pluribus unum | Politics | Latin: "one out of many" ā one of several phrases on the American dollar bill, it refers to the unity of the nation as made up of its many peoples and as such, signifies the republic. | |
| equilibrium | Science & Technology | ||
| equity | Economics | ||
| equity crowdfunding | Economics | ||
| error-embracing | Psychology | ||
| event horizon | Physics | ||
| exception handling | |||
| exchange rates | Economics | The value of one country's currency as measured against another | |
| existentialism | |||
| exit strategy | Economics | ||
| externalities | Economics | ||
| extrapolation | Statistics | ||
| factorial | Math | ||
| factum tacendo, crimen facias acrius | Philosophy | He who does not stop a crime is an accomplice. | |
| fact /value problem | Philosophy | ||
| fake news | Media | ||
| false positives | Science & Technology | ||
| false consensus effect | Social psychology | ||
| falsifiability | Science & Technology | ability to be proven untrue; a requirement for a theory to be called scientific | |
| Feynman Technique | Science & Technology | A method of learning and remembering difficult concepts by simplifying them until you can explain it to a new student or layperson who knows nothing about that concept. | |
| fiat money | |||
| fiduciary duty | Economics | ||
| fifth column | Politics | a group who unites in secret to undermine a larger group from within | |
| file system | Metaphor | Computers | |
| filter bubble | Metaphor | Social psychology | |
| first principles | Philosophy | ||
| fishing expedition | Metaphor | ||
| fitness function | Term | Science & Technology | in AI, refers to a set of selection criteria applied to a set of potential solutions to a problem to allow only the better candidates to survive to the next generation |
| flĆ¢neur | Term | Arts | |
| force multiplier | Science & Technology | ||
| fractals | Math | ||
| fractional reserve banking | Method | Economics | |
| fractions | Term | Math | |
| fragility | Philosophy | ||
| framing | Psychology | ||
| free trade | Method | Economics | |
| free will | Philosophy | Philosophy | |
| freshwater vs. saltwater economists | Economics | ||
| Friend of the Court filing | Law | ||
| FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) | Social psychology | ||
| fundamental attribution error | Psychology | ||
| future value | Economics | ||
| gain | Term | Arts | in audio recording, a control that allows more or less of the source sound into the channel being recorded |
| game theory | Math | ||
| Gates' Law | Theory | Philosophy | the idea that software development speed halves every 18 months, negating the acceleratory effects of Moore's Law and preventing computing from leaping greatly forward |
| Gaussian distribution | Term | Statistics | the Normal distribution |
| GDP (Gross Domestic Product) | Model | Economics | the sum of all public and private goods produced within a given period; a measure of a country's economic health |
| generalists and specialists | Philosophy | ||
| genetic algorithms | Science & Technology | an approach to AI based on evolutionary models, in which multiple candidate solutions to a problem are generated randomly by mutation and recombination, then iterated over thousands of generations through fitness functions to weed out the best of each generation | |
| germ theory of disease | |||
| Gettier problem | Philosophy | ||
| GOFAI | Science & Technology | "Good Old-Fashioned Artificial Intelligence" ā reference to the style and general algorithmic approach of early artificial intelligence work, which fell out of popularity over the decades in favor of more organic neural net and evolutionary approaches | |
| Golden calf | |||
| Golden Mean | Theory | Philosophy | Aristotelian theory of an ideal balance point between the many extremes we face in life; he advocated harmony between the various spheres of life for an experience of happiness |
| Golden Rule | Ancient Wisdom | "Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you" is the essence of this ancient wisdom, often used as a shorthand version of Jesus's core teaching. | |
| Goldilocks Zone | Model | ||
| gold standard | Legal precedent | ||
| gravity waves | Physics | ||
| habeas corpus | Legal precedent | Law | |
| habitus | Social psychology | ||
| Hanlon's Razor | Model | Philosophy | never attribute to malice what is adequately described by carelessness |
| hard determinism | Philosophy | ||
| harmonics | Arts | ||
| hearts and minds | Politics | ||
| hedge funds | Economics | ||
| hedonism | Philosophy | Philosophy | |
| Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle | Theory | Science & Technology | |
| hexadecimal numbers | Term | Math | base 6 |
| heuristics | Psychology | Mental shortcuts that we do as a matter of routine, especially when we're stressed or under other types of cognitive constraints. | |
| hormesis | Science & Technology | When a small dose of a toxic substance is actually beneficial to the living thing that ingests it | |
| hydra | Metaphor | ||
| iatrogenics | Health | harm done by the healer | |
| ice core dating | Science & Technology | ||
| id, ego, superego | Model | Psychology | Freud's psychological model of the conscious and unconscious mind. |
| implicit cost | Economics | ||
| Imposter Syndrome | Model | Psychology | A psychological pattern in which one doubts their own accomplishments and has a generalized fear of being exposed as a fraud. |
| index number; indexing | Statistics | ||
| inferior goods | Economics | ||
| inflation | Economics | ||
| inflection point | Math | The point of a curve at which a change in the direction of the curve occurs. | |
| interest | Economics | ||
| interest rate | Economics | ||
| internal rate of return (IRR) | Economics | ||
| Internet of Things (IoT) | Term | Science & Technology | |
| intersection | Math | ||
| interventionism | Social psychology | ||
| IP addresses | Term | Science & Technology | |
| iron law of oligarchy | Theory | Politics | Political theory positing that no matter how democratic a group may start out, over time it will develop into a bureaucracy ruled by a small handful |
| It from Bit | Theory | Physics | John Wheeler's theory about the fundamental informational nature of the universe |
| Keynesian economics | Theory | Economics | |
| Keynesian Put | Model | Economics | |
| Kronos Effect | Model | Economics | the tendency of a successful corporation to seek to acquire and/or drive its upstart competitors out of business |
| Laffer Curve | Theory | Economics | |
| law of excluded middle | |||
| Law of Large Numbers | Scientific Law | Math | As the number of coin tosses approaches infinity, the number of heads encountered will converge on 0.5; helpful in calculations of probability. |
| least-barricaded gate | Metaphor | Politics | Trotsky's metaphor of how social revolutions can take hold more easily in already weakened societies |
| lecturing birds how to fly | Metaphor | Metaphor | |
| length contraction | Model | Physics | |
| less is more | Philosophy | Metaphor | |
| L'etat c'est moi | Philosophy | Politics | "I am the stateā |
| leverage | Economics | ||
| lifeboat ethics | Philosophy | Philosophy | |
| light-weight process | Computers | ||
| limit of a function | Term | Math | if the graph of an equation seems to approach a numerical value but never quite reaches it, we say that number is the limit of the function (approaching from the negative or positive direction; sometimes directionality is important) |
| limiting factor | Systems theory | ||
| linear regression | Method | Math | |
| liquidity | Economics | ||
| local min | Model | Systems theory | idea that to grow out of a stasis or plateau, you likely have to endure a period of "setback" that is a lower dip or minimum value from where you are now, but is what's required to get over the activation energy to reach the next level |
| locus of control | |||
| logarithm | Math | ||
| logical fallacies | Philosophy | ||
| long tail | Theory | Statistics | In a power law distribution (of population, ages, items, etc.), the region of the graph that tapers off quickly after the initial segment of high data points |
| loss aversion | Psychology | ||
| Lost Einsteins | Theory | http://doctorparadox.net/models/lost-einsteins/ | |
| loyalists and mercenaries | Systems theory | ||
| maker's time and manager's time | Model | Systems theory | |
| M1 | Economics | ||
| M2 | Economics | ||
| mandala | Ancient Wisdom | Religion | Introcate and elaborate patterns created with colored sand by Buddhist monks, who blow away their creations at the end to signify their celebration of impermanence. |
| Manichaean | Philosophy | a narrowly-defined dualistic worldview of good against evil | |
| man on horseback | Metaphor | Synonym for a demagogue. Comes from French general Georges Ernest Boulanger, and refers to a military leader who presents himself as the savior of the country during a crisis and either assumes or threatens to assume dictatorial powers. | |
| map is not the territory | Metaphor | Metaphor | |
| margin of error | Statistics | ||
| marginal benefit | Economics | ||
| marginal cost | Economics | ||
| marginal returns | Economics | ||
| marginal utility | Economics | ||
| market share | Economics | ||
| Markov chain | Term | Math | |
| Maslow's Hierarchy of needs | Model | Psychology | |
| mean | Term | Statistics | the average value of the numbers in a data set; take the sum of all values and divide by the total number of values in the set |
| median | Term | Statistics | |
| Median Voter Theorem | Theory | Politics | |
| megalopsychon | Philosophy | Philosophy | Concept in Aristotelian ethics of living with grandeur and taking risks with dignity; being nonsmall |
| mens rea | Legal precedent | Law | "guilty mind" ā establishing the intent of a perp can help to establish criminal liability |
| mercantilism | Theory | Economics | |
| meritocracy | Model | Systems theory | |
| metaphysics | Philosophy | Philosophy | |
| mirror neurons | |||
| mode | Term | Statistics | |
| monopoly | Economics | Market condition in which there exists only one seller of a resource | |
| monopsony | Economics | Market condition in which there exists only one buyer of a resource | |
| Moore's Law | Theory | Science & Technology | Named after Gordon Moore, the model predicts the doubling of transistors on a circuit of equivalent size every 18 months to 2 years. This has many consequences for both technology and economics, including the predictable drop in price of generating the same amount of computing power each period. |
| moral hazard | Economics | when one party takes on additional risk, knowing that other parties will bear the brunt of the risk in event of a loss | |
| Moravec's Paradox | |||
| MVP (minimum viable product) | Term | Economics | |
| naive cynicism | Psychology | State of mind in which people believe others to have more egocentric bias than is warranted or is actually the case. | |
| Nash Equilibrium | Theory | Math | |
| nasty, brutish, and short | Ancient Wisdom | Philosophy | |
| natural laws | Science & Technology | ||
| natural selection | Scientific Law | Science & Technology | |
| necessity is the mother of invention | Common Wisdom | Myth/Metaphor | |
| negative externalities | Economics | ||
| neomania | Social psychology | love of the modern for its own sake | |
| neural net | Term | Science & Technology | |
| net present value (NPV) | Model | Economics | |
| neuroplasticity | Science & Technology | ||
| Newton's first law | Scientific Law | Physics | an object in motion will stay in motion, unless acted upon by a force |
| Newton's second law | Scientific Law | Physics | F = ma, or an object of mass m feeling a force F will accelerate by an amount a |
| nodes | Term | Math | |
| noosphere | Data science | Sphere of human thought ā all interacting minds on earth. An early 1900s concept from Teilhard de Chardin | |
| nominal figures | Economics | ||
| nonlinearity | Math | ||
| Normal distribution | Scientific Law | Statistics | |
| normal goods | Economics | ||
| normalized weighted average | Statistics | ||
| normative and descriptive | Philosophy | ||
| noumena | Philosophy | ||
| novus ordo seclorum | Symbol | Government | A new order for the ages; Latin phrase seen on the dollar bill |
| null hypothesis | Method | Science | |
| observer effect | Science | ||
| Ockham's Razor | Theory | Philosophy | A philosophical rule of thumb that favors the simplest explanation. Also known as the "law of parsimony" |
| octal numbers | Math | base 8 | |
| oligopoly | Economics | ||
| omphalos | Politics | ||
| opportunity cost | Model | Economics | What you miss out on by using a resource in a certain way -- what you would have done with the resource otherwise; what alternative use you would have put it to. |
| options | Economics | ||
| orders of magnitude | Scientific Law | Math | |
| ordinally ranked data | Statistics | ||
| organizational debt | Economics | ||
| oscillations | Science | ||
| out-group bias | Social psychology | ||
| outlier | Model | Statistics | |
| paradox | Model | ||
| paragon | Model | Culture | A standard against which something can be judged ā an exemplar example of a thing |
| path dependent | |||
| pax Romana | History | ||
| pearls before swine | Metaphor | Myth/Metaphor | |
| P/E Ratio | Economics | Price to earnings ratio: standard measure of relative stock performance | |
| permutations | Math | ||
| Peter Principle | Theory | Systems theory | |
| phase shift | Science | ||
| philosopher kings | |||
| Philosopher's Stone | Unsolved Mystery | ||
| phonemes | |||
| plant a seed | Metaphor | ||
| Platonic forms | |||
| Platonicity | Philosophy | adherence to crisp abstract theory & forms that blind us to the mess of actual reality | |
| Plato's Cave | Model | Philosophy | allegory in The Republic about a cave dweller whose only picture of reality is the shadow on the cave wall thrown by the fire |
| pluralism | Government | ||
| point of no return | Myth/Metaphor | ||
| polling | Statistics | ||
| Pollyanna Principle | Model | Psychology | tendency for people to remember pleasant events more accurately than unpleasant ones |
| populism | Government | ||
| positron | Physics | an antimatter electron | |
| Potemkin Village Effect | Model | Systems theory | tendency of systems to create the appearance of functioning normally ā to appease the operators who wish it so ā even when they are not |
| precision | Math | ||
| present value | Economics | the expected current value of an income stream | |
| price ceiling | Economics | ||
| price floor | Economics | ||
| prima facie | |||
| principle of indifference | Statistics | in probability, when there is no basis to choose some outcomes as more likely than others, they are given equal weight (1/2 chance of a particular side of a coin, 1/52 to get a particular card from a deck, etc.) | |
| prisoner's dilemma | Math | ||
| private equity (PE) | Economics | ||
| probability | Math | ||
| probability distribution | Statistics | ||
| Procrustean bed | Philosophy | ||
| profit | Economics | ||
| propaganda | Social psychology | originally, a way to "propagate" any idea; used by both sides in WWI, it thereafter took on a sinister connotation when American & British citizens felt hoodwinked by their govt's use of it | |
| proper frame | Physics | in physics, the frame of reference that accelerates with you and determines your age | |
| proportionality | Math | ||
| prospect theory | Psychology | ||
| proximate cause | |||
| proxy war | Politics | ||
| pseudoscience | |||
| PTSD | Psychology | ||
| punctuated equilibrium | Science & Technology | ||
| Pygmalian Effect | Social psychology | ||
| Pyrrhic victory | Myth/Metaphor | ||
| quantum computing | Science | ||
| qubit | Science | ||
| quid pro quo | Law | ||
| quota | |||
| r > q | Thomas Piketty's elegant demonstration of the rise of inequality | ||
| random walks | Math | ||
| range | Statistics | in a set of numbers, the difference between the highest value and the lowest value in the data set | |
| rara avis | Myth/Metaphor | "rare bird" in Latin | |
| rate of return | Economics | ||
| realism | Philosophy | ||
| recursion | Math | ||
| red shift | Physics | ||
| reductio ad absurdo | Philosophy | collapsing things too far, in a way that destroys real significance | |
| reductio ad finem | Philosophy | To analyze to the end ā break the concept down into its conponent parts. | |
| redundancy | Systems theory | having multiple pathways within a system to accomplish the same task or achieve the same objective | |
| reference frame | Physics | a frame that does not accelerate; also known as a Lorentz frame | |
| regnat populus | |||
| regression analysis | Statistics | ||
| reincarnation | Religion | ||
| reinforcing loop | Systems theory | ||
| relativity | Physics | Einstein's central insight that the experience or perceived passage of time depends greatly on the conditions of the observer, particularly with respect to velocity and gravity | |
| resilience | Systems theory | ability to bounce back into shape after having been pressed or stretched; elasticity. The ability to recover quickly. | |
| respice finem | "consider that you will die" ā i.e. live life as you would in order to be proud of it by the time it's over | ||
| res publica | Government | pertaining to the state | |
| retrodiction | |||
| revenue | Economics | ||
| risk | Economics | ||
| risk-weighted assets (RWAs) | Economics | ||
| root cause | |||
| rounding | Math | ||
| rounding error | Math | ||
| run on the bank | |||
| sampling | Statistics | ||
| samsara | Religion | ||
| scarcity | Economics | ||
| Schelling's Tipping Model | |||
| search intent | Media | ||
| second-order thinking | |||
| selection bias | Psychology | ||
| self-governance | |||
| set theory | Math | ||
| ship of Theseus | Myth/Metaphor | ||
| SIFI | Economics | systemically important financial institution; post-2008 financial crisis designation for banks deemed "too big to fail" (currently, firms holding more than $50b in assets) | |
| sigma | Statistics | standard deviation, named for the Greek letter denoting the statistical term | |
| signal path | Physics | ||
| significant figures | Math | aka "sig figs" | |
| simulation | Philosophy | ||
| sine | Term | Math | |
| sine wave | Term | Physics | |
| singularity | Theory | Physics | |
| SIR model | Science | contagious disease modelling based on possible patient states (susceptible, infected, recovered) | |
| site navigation | Method | Media | |
| six degrees of separation | Theory | Statistics | |
| six sigma | Method | Motorola-originated concept of ensuring quality control to a very fine point, by ensuring that parts or other production outputs are manufactured to be within a certain quality range up to 6 times the standard deviation. | |
| situational preparedness | |||
| squaring the circle | Unsolved Mystery | A notorious philosophical problem first posed by Plato, the phrase has come to be used to allude to the grandiosity and infeasibility of someone's plans. | |
| skew | Statistics | ||
| skin in the game | Economics | ||
| slope of a line | Math | ||
| social contract | Philosophy | Profoundly impactful document in political philosophy from Jean Jacques Rousseau in 18th c. France, refuting the rights of monarchs to rule the people | |
| Socratic method | Method | Philosophy | Technique of instruction or conversation where the teacher or moderator proceeds by asking the student or pupil a serious of questions, enticing her or him to come up with their own answers to the issues related to the subject at hand. |
| solipsism | |||
| sorting | Math | ||
| speech act theory | Theory | Philosophy | British philosopher J.L.Austin's concept that all uses of speech carry a performative aspect |
| speed of light (c) | Physics | approx. 300 million meters per second | |
| Single point of failure (SPoF) | Term | A part of a system that, when it fails, brings down the entire rest of the system or stops it from working properly | |
| spread | Statistics | ||
| standard deviation | Statistics | ||
| standing waves | Term | ||
| stare decisis | Legal precedent | Law | "it has been decided" ā terminology used by a judge or court to indicate that the matter before them has already been decided by a previous ruling |
| status quo | Culture | ||
| stochastic terrorism | Term | Social psychology | |
| stocks and flows | Model | Systems theory | |
| Stoicism | Ancient Wisdom | Philosophy | |
| Streisand Effect | Metaphor | Social psychology | when the act of attempting to hide information only makes it more prominently spread, especially via the Internet |
| strict father morality | George Lakoff's terminology to describe the conservative worldview | ||
| strict liability | Law | crimes which have no mens rea requirement, such as rear-ending of another vehicle (where it is always the rear-enders' fault no matter what the circumstances | |
| subsidy | Economics | ||
| success to the successful | Systems theory | reinforcing loop within complex system ā especially economies ā wherein the spoils of victory include the means to alter the rules of the game further in the favor of the previous winners | |
| summum malum | Ancient Wisdom | Politics | ultimate evil ā some posit cruelty as this ultimate evil |
| supply and demand | Model | Economics | |
| supply chain | Term | Economics | |
| sword of Damocles | Metaphor | ||
| symmetric encryption | Term | ||
| tabula rasa | Blank slate | ||
| tachyon | Physics | hypothetical particle that travels faster than the speed of light | |
| tangent | Math | ||
| tariff | |||
| tempus edax rerum | Ancient Wisdom | Arts | "Time devours everything." ā Ovid |
| tempus fugit | Ancient Wisdom | Time flies | |
| tempus neminem manet | Ancient Wisdom | time waits for no man | |
| Third Story | Philosophy | the story an impartial third-party observer might tell; a version of events any unbiased person could agree on | |
| Thucydides Trap | |||
| tilting at windmills | Metaphor | Arts | A reference to the novel Don Quixote, denoting the ongoing pursuit of useless attacks against an implacable enemy |
| time dilation | Thought Experiment | Physics | |
| time series data | Statistics | ||
| time value of money | Theory | Economics | |
| tipping point | Model | Systems theory | |
| too many cooks in the kitchen | Metaphor | ||
| touchstone | Metaphor | Myth/Metaphor | A black stone once used to judge the purity of gold or silver ā now signifying a standard against which something should be judged. |
| trade-offs | Model | Economics | |
| tragedy of the commons | Theory | Systems theory | |
| transitivity | Term | Math | |
| trolly problem | Thought Experiment | Philosophy | |
| turtles all the way down | Theory | Philosophy | |
| twin paradox | Thought Experiment | Physics | |
| tyranny of choice | Theory | Systems theory | |
| Unicode | Term | Computers | |
| union | Term | Math | |
| universal law | Philosophy | Philosophy | |
| usury | Term | Economics | the act of charging interest on borrowed money; for thousands of years there have been religous proscriptions against lending money with interest in various societies |
| utility | Philosophy | ||
| variance | Term | Statistics | |
| Veil of Ignorance | Model | Philosophy | Philosopher John Rawls' model for making better ethical decisions, in which the decider chooses a course of action based on the predicate that s/he will not know which of the groups or persons affected by the decision they personally would be. This method creates natural incentives to find the fairest outcome for all groups, since the decider doesn't know which group they will "end up in" on the other side of the decision. |
| Venn diagram | Model | Statistics | |
| via negativa | Philosophy | indirect description of a thing by describing what that thing is not | |
| Volcker rule | Legal precedent | Economics | financial rule preventing consumer lending banks from speculative trading in securities for their own profit |
| wave function | Physics | ||
| wave-particle duality | Theory | Physics | |
| wheel of life | Symbol | Religion | |
| when life gives you lemons | Metaphor | Philosophy | You try to make lemonade! Another way of saying, "let's try and make the best of this unfortunate situation." |
| winner-take-all market | Economics | ||
| wisdom of crowds | Model | Social psychology | derived from the Diversity Prediction Theorem: the average prediction of a group of individuals will be more accurate than the prediction of one average member |
| wolves and sheep | Metaphor | Philosophy | |
| wormhole | Theory | Physics | |
| worst case scenario | Model | Myth/Metaphor | |
| zero sum game | Model | Math | |
| z score | Term | Statistics |
Data literacy is the newest frontier. The world of information has a pale twin universe of disinformation, deep fakes, fake news, and true believers — keeping track of reality will become more and more important and valuable into the future.
See also: Dictionaries
It’s not just here at home that fascism seems to have taken root in the population. There are many burgeoning nationalist movements resurrecting right-wing populism around the world, and as per many experts’ warnings, authoritarianism is on the rise around the globe.
Many of the right-wing populist thatches that have sprung up are at least in part, seeds planted by Vladimir Putin in his quest for Russian revanchism against the West following the end (or so we thought…) of the Cold War. Rumoured to be the richest man in the world by far, the former KGB agent was working in East Germany when the Berlin Wall fell, and has been pursuing his Lost Cause grievance ever since.
Given how seemingly easy it is for Charles Koch to buy American elections as the 15th richest person in the world, imagine what someone far wealthier could accomplish. Marine Le Pen’s National Front in France took campaign cash directly from The Kremlin, Viktor Orban’s Hungary is Putin’s strongest ally in the EU, and the UK’s Brexit campaign acted as the canary in the coalmine for later disgraceful invasions of other nations’ sovereignty — perhaps most notably, election interference in the 2016, 2018, and 2020 US elections.
As such, it would be foolish not to see what’s happening here in America as part of a broader wave of right-wing populism and authoritarian fever that is very dangerous. We need to find out a lot more information about how all these puzzle pieces fit together, and get to the bottom of the real conspiracy clearly going on — if we can find it through all these smokescreen conspiracy theories clogging the propaganda waves.
| Country | Flag | Party | Abbreviation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Austria | š¦š¹ | Freedom Party | FPO |
| Belgium | š§šŖ | Flemish Block | VB |
| Britain | š¬š§ | UK Independence Party | UKIP |
| Britain First | |||
| National Front | |||
| Czech Republic | Freedom and Direct Democracy | SPD | |
| Denmark | š©š° | Danish People's Party | DPP |
| Finland | š«š® | True Finns | |
| France | š«š· | National Front | FN |
| Germany | š©šŖ | Alternative for Germany | AfD |
| Patriotic Europeans Against Islamization of the West | Pegida | ||
| Greece | š¬š· | Syriza | |
| Hungary | ššŗ | Movement for a Better Hungary | Jobbik |
| Fidesz | |||
| Italy | š®š¹ | Northern League | |
| National Alliance | |||
| Japan | šÆšµ | Nippon Kaigi | |
| The Netherlands | š³š± | Party for Freedom | PPV |
| Liveable Netherlands | |||
| Pim Fortuyn's List | LPF | ||
| Norway | š³š“ | Progress Party | |
| The Philippines | šµš | ||
| Poland | šµš± | Law and Justice party | |
| Portugal | šµš¹ | Popular Party | |
| Serbia | Serbian Radical Party | SRS | |
| Spain | šŖšø | (Catalonian secession) | |
| Sweden | šøšŖ | Sweden Democrats | |
| Switzerland | šØš | Swiss People's Party | SVP |
| United States | šŗšø | Republican Party | GOP |
On May 31, 1921, a mob of murderous whites descended on the Greenwood neighborhood of Tulsa, Oklahoma dubbed Black Wall Street, and razed it to the ground. They dropped homemade bombs in the first ever domestic aerial attack on American soil, during the Tulsa Race Massacre following the end of World War I.
Over three hundred Blacks were murdered and hastily buried or burned. Police and other state officials were complicit; no one was ever charged for the crimes and insurance companies refused to honor Black business owner’s claims from the destruction of their livelihood and senseless slaughter of their friends, families, and community. A generation of wealth was wiped out overnight, with deep economic repercussions passing down to ensuing descendants.
The Confederates managed to memory hole the Tulsa Race Massacre event clean out of history for the most part, until the 100-year anniversary of the event — arriving at a time of perhaps maximum racial polarization and most extreme partisanship in this country since the civil rights era. Nor is it the only example of mass murder and destruction of Black property and assets — there are plenty others we’ve never heard about in school. That’s why it’s so important to bear witness, and to remember, and to tell and retell the stories of our past — even the painful ones. Especially the painful ones.
We glibly believed it could never happen here even though we’ve been warned again and again. And in some sense, even though it’s been here all along — hiding in plain sight. It could happen here, and it did, because it’s happened here before. This authoritarianism dictionary charts the rise of language, ideology, tactics, and historical movements over the modern political period, to arm us with the knowledge we need to understand the tricks of the trade.
For a long time it was convenient to think of authoritarian personality as primarily a European problem, or in any case, a phenomenon that happened elsewhere. We are still waking up (…again) to the scope and depth of the problem, while anti-government groups organize relatively openly and we have yet to see justice for the January 6 attack on our capital. There is much work to be done, and in the meantime we can always continue to educate ourselves about our nation’s history — and the role of slavery, white supremacy, and racism in the shaping of the country and the future class structure of today’s America.
The myth of white innocence is toxic to this understanding. Those who say they “don’t see” race or “don’t want to talk about” race put their white privilege on full display in demanding their right to opt-out of the discussion on race. They’re not interested in having a discussion on race — they’re interested in silencing events like the Tulsa Race Massacre and ensuring we lack the language even to describe the horrors being visited upon human beings by the silencers. The only “discussion” they want to have about the matter is spoken in the words of Smith & Wesson, Chapter AR-15.
White supremacy, in fact, in part inspired Hitler and the Nazis. In turn, the Nazis inspired the original America First movement at the hands of Charles Lindbergh, a notoriously avowed anti-Semite who vociferously opposed America’s involvement in World War II. Lindbergh and the other early movement conservative extremists lost the battle, but the Allies won the war — and — fascism as an ideology was defeated in the popular mind for a goodly while.
But prejudice is a beast that never sleeps — only fitfully slumbers and simmers beneath the surface. It has been rebuilding covertly for years and decades, if it can even be said to have gone away.
I’ll be adding to this authoritarianism dictionary over time, as I can chip away at it and as new words get added to the lexicon. It’s highly encouraging that the American people were able to throw off the would-be dictator Trump, but the Republican party continues to press their seditious aims in his name. They continue to trade on the Confederate ideals long defeated, discredited, and dishonored in this nation. Let’s educate each other on the techniques being used against us by the powerful to limit our frames, and to inhibit our awareness, our choices, and our awareness of our choices.
The hour is late, and we must act with all haste.
| Term | Topic | Definition |
|---|---|---|
| 1st Amendment | government | |
| 2nd Amendment | government | |
| 13th Amendment | white supremacy | The Amendment that put an end to slavery. It was passed by Congress and ratified by 2/3 of the states in 1865. |
| 14th Amendment | white supremacy | The second Constitutional Amendment passed following the Civil War, the Fourteenth Amendment granted citizenship to freed African American former slaves, along with equal civil and legal rights as specified in the Constitution. |
| 15th Amendment | white supremacy | Third and last of the Reconstruction Amendments, the Fifteenth gave African Americans the right to vote -- and prohibited any type of voter discrimination on the basis of race. |
| 19th Amendment | misogyny | The woman's Suffrage Amendment gave women the right to vote in the United States. |
| 4chan | alt-Right | A notorious internet message board with an unruly culture capable of trolling, pranks, and crimes. |
| 8chan | alt-Right | If 4chan wasn't raw and lawless enough for you, you could try the even more right-wing "free speech"-haven 8chan while it still stood (now 8kun). Described by its founder Frederick Bennan as "if 4chan and reddit had a baby," the site is notorious for incubating Gamergate, which morphed into PizzaGate, which morphed into QAnon -- and for generally being a cesspool of humanity's worst stuff. |
| 8kun | alt-Right | The rebranded incarnation of 8chan after being booted offline and haggling with its founder, Frederick Brennan. |
| abortion | religious extremism | The safe medical procedure for ending a pregnancy. |
| active measures | Russian | A style of political warfare originating in the Soviet Union in the 1920s incorporating spycraft, disinformation, propaganda, sabotage, and destabilization, among other offensive programs targeting the USSR's geopolitical foes including the United States. |
| ad populum | ||
| aggrieved entitlement | white supremacy | A term coined by sociologist Michael Kimmel, who documents the perceived emasculation of America's white male uneducated class and their reactionary rage against social justice and marginal groups getting the spotlight. |
| America's "original sin" | white supremacy | A reference to the institution of slavery. |
| amoral | abuse & control | Without morality; without empathy or compassion. |
| anti-abortion | religious extremism | |
| anti-Communist | conspiracy theory | The Cold War Red Scare was promulgated by Senator Eugene McCarthy with help from lawyer Roy Cohn -- who later famously weaned Donald Trump in his image. The John Birch Society and movement conservatives seethed about ehe enemies within, as middle America set about booming with the Boomers for an entire generation of widely shared prosperity. |
| anti-intraception | psychological warfare | Psychologist Theodor Adorno's term for individuals who resist self-reflection and exhibit the absence of looking inward. |
| anti-racism | ||
| anti-tax | plutocracy | Grover Norquist is a little piggie |
| armed robbery | organized crime | Holding someone or something up at gunpoint. |
| Ashe experiments | psychological warfare | |
| ASPD | abuse & control | antisocial personality disorder |
| assassination | paramilitary | The killing of a head of state or other important figure for political or ideological reasons, as opposed to murder as a crime of passion. |
| astroturfing | psychological warfare | Pretending a well organized and financed operation is a grassroots groundswell |
| authoritarianism | government | |
| banality of evil | ||
| banana republic | plutocracy | politically unstable countries whose economies are monocultures controlled by an oligarchy; puppet states |
| bandwagon | ||
| The Big Lie | ||
| birth control | misogyny | |
| birtherism | ||
| bitcoin | alt-Right | The original cryptocurrency represents an entirely new form of money; a way to store value digitally usig the blockchain. |
| Black Codes | white supremacy | |
| BLM | white supremacy | Black Lives Matter |
| BLM (US) | government | Bureau of Land Management |
| blockchain | alt-Right | Digital ledger of events and transactions that powers cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. |
| blood libel | conspiracy theory | |
| Blue Checks | psychological warfare | Reference to Twitter's "verified" feature for certain members, who have satisfied the company that they are who they say they are. Originally the feature was meant to identify the official accounts of news sites and reporters, so it has both an association with -- and a legitimate lineage from -- the media industry. |
| bolt hole | End Times | A type of retreat or refuge for those in the survivalist subculture, to be absconded to in case of disaster or apocalypse. |
| Brooks Brothers Riot | Sedition Caucus | |
| Brown v. Board of Education (1954) | white supremacy | Supreme Court decision ordering the desegregation of schools. Resistance to the ruling took the form of "states' rights" advocates, among much else. |
| bug-out location (BOL) | End Times | Another name for a bolt hole or survivalist refuge location. |
| Calexit | Sedition Caucus | Movement to split the state of Californnia into East and West states |
| Calvinism | ||
| capital gains tax | plutocracy | |
| carried-interest tax | more significant for private equity than for hedge fundsa subset of capital gains taxationWarren Buffettās famous complaint that he is taxed at a lower rate than his secretary: āIt offends our values as a nation when an investment manager making fifty million dollars can pay a lower tax rate on her earned income than a teacher making fifty thousand dollars pays on her income.ā | |
| cathexis | A kind of fusion the people of a nation may claim to feel with the fascist leader. | |
| Citizens United | ||
| civil society | ||
| Civil War | white supremacy | |
| climate change denialism | ||
| CloudFlare | Big Tech | A company that protects websites from cyberattacks, it dropped support for 8chan after the mass shooting at a Walmart in El Paso. The shooter had posted his anti-immigrant manifesto on 8chan before the event, another in a series of eerily similar patterned shootings in Christchurch, New Zealand and a San Diego synagogue. |
| Cluster B | abuse & control | |
| collective narcissism | abuse & control | |
| Columbine Massacre | political violence | |
| Communism | government | |
| The Confederacy | political violence | |
| conscience | ||
| conspiracy theory | psychological warfare | |
| convict leasing | white supremacy | |
| covert narcissist | psychological warfare | |
| Critical Race Theory | ||
| critical theory | ||
| crocodile tears | ||
| crying wolf | ||
| cultism | ||
| cults | abuse & control | |
| cultural Marxism | ||
| dark money | plutocracy | |
| death cult | ||
| deep state | conspiracy theory | Networks of opposition within governments who undermine the official regime |
| democratic socialism | government | |
| desegregation | white supremacy | |
| disinformation | psychological warfare | |
| domestic violence | abuse & control | |
| Doomsday Clock | End Times | |
| double standard | misogyny | |
| down ballot | government | |
| doxing | abuse & control | Researching and broadcasting personally identifiable information about an individual |
| Drain the Swamp | MAGA | Campaign slogan of Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential contest. |
| El Paso Walmart shooting | ||
| Emancipation Proclamation | white supremacy | |
| empathy | ||
| estate tax | plutocracy | |
| "Eternal Rome" | Ideology positing Russia as a geopolitical bulwark of conservatism against a weak-kneed West (part of Alexander Dugin's reformulation of Eurasianism theory) | |
| exfiltration | cybersecurity | The removal or copying of data from one server to another without the knowledge of the owner |
| facial recognition | surveillance capitalism | |
| Fairness Doctrine | 1949 FCC policy requiring broadcast networks to present controversial issues important to the public in a non-partisan way, that was repealed under Reagan in 1987. | |
| fake news | disinformation | |
| false flag | Russian | covert operations designed to deceive by appearing as though they are carried out by other entities, groups, or nations than those who actually executed them |
| fascism | government | |
| fellow travellers | ||
| fifth column | ||
| fifth world war | Russian | non-linear war; the war of all against all |
| filibuster | ||
| Financial Crimes Enforcement NEtwork (FinCEN) | organized crime | Department within the Treasury that handles and maiontains FBAR filings from US persons holding in excess of $10,000 in foreign banks. |
| FISA Court | organized crime | |
| FISA warrant | organized crime | |
| fiscal policy | plutocracy | |
| flat earthers | ||
| Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) | psychological warfare | Legal statute requiring those persons lobbying on behalf of a foreign government or other entity to register such with the U.S. government. |
| foreign bank account report (FBAR) | organized crime | Required disclosure to the US treasury by persons holding in excess of $10,000 in funds in foreign banks. |
| forensics | law enforcement | |
| forever wars | ||
| The Frankfurt School | ||
| Freedmen's Bureau | ||
| FreedomFest | Conservative evangelical event annually in Las Vegas | |
| Free Speech | ||
| free trade | plutocracy | |
| fronto-paralimbic area | Part of the brain associated with empathy, along with the anterior insula | |
| fundamentalism | ||
| Gab | alt-Right | |
| GamerGate | alt-Right | |
| genocide | ||
| gift tax | plutocracy | |
| "global cabal" | conspiracy theory | euphemism in far-right Russian discourse to refer to a perceived "Jewish conspiracy" behind the international order of institutions like NATO and the EU |
| globalists | ||
| Grand Jury | 16 to 23 people impaneled to hear evidence from a legal prosecution, and decide if said prosecution has a caseworthy set of evidence to bring charges. | |
| Greensboro Massacre | white supremacy | |
| Great Awakening | ||
| Great Migration | white supremacy | |
| Great Society | government | |
| greed | ||
| Guantanamo | ||
| human trafficking | organized crime | |
| hybrid warfare | psychological warfare | |
| hypercapitalism | ||
| incel | misogyny | "involuntary celibate" -- a male individual who believes society owes him sex |
| inflation | plutocracy | |
| information warfare | disinformation | |
| interest rates | plutocracy | |
| internationalist | ||
| interposition | white supremacy | Dubious theory underpinning the idea of states' rights, which is that individual states have veto power over any laws passed by the federal government |
| Iran-Contra | ||
| iron triangle | A conspiracy between organized criminals, corrupt government officials, and business leaders to turn the state into a kleptocracy -- or "rule by thieves" | |
| Jim Crow South | white supremacy | |
| Johnson Amendment | prosperity gospel | Allowed televangelists to funnel tax-free riches into luxury goods and political advocacy |
| Karen | white supremacy | |
| kleptocracy | Literally, "rule by thieves" -- a system of government in which the people at the top steal wealth from the nation and its people for themselves and their cronies. | |
| Kochtopus | plutocracy | Term for the sprawling political machinery of the Kansas-based billionaire Koch Industries inheritees, Charles and David. |
| kompromat | Russian | compromising material on a head of state or other important figure; typically used for blackmail purposes |
| lamestream media | alt-Right | |
| liberalism | government | Political and ethical framework based on individual liberty via human rights and equal protection |
| literacy tests | ||
| lobbying | government | |
| "Lock her up!" | MAGA | |
| Logan Act | government | |
| Lost Cause religion | conspiracy theory | After the Civil War, the Confederates never accepted defeat. Instead, they wove a noble victim mythology into white southern Christianity, in an attempt to memory hole the terrorism they'd wrought -- and wished to continue practicing without scrutiny or accountability, thank you very much. |
| lynching | white supremacy | |
| machine learning | Big Tech | |
| Mafia state | organized crime | A systematic corruption of government by organized crime syndicates. |
| MAGA | MAGA | "Make America Great Again" -- one of Donald Trump's campaign slogans. |
| malignant envy | psychological warfare | |
| malignant narcissism | abuse & control | |
| manosphere | misogyny | |
| Marxism | government | |
| mental predation | abuse & control | |
| #MeToo | misogyny | |
| microaggressions | ||
| micropenis | misogyny | |
| micro-propaganda machine | The āmicro-propaganda machineā (MPM) ā an influence network that can tailor peopleās opinions, emotional reactions, and create āviralā sharing episodes around what should be serious or contemplative issues | |
| minority rule | ||
| mirror neurons | ||
| misogyny | misogyny | |
| MK Ultra | ||
| money laundering | organized crime | |
| narcissism | abuse & control | |
| narcissistic collusion | abuse & control | |
| natality | Hannah Arendt's term, and her most hopefuly theory for the future of humankind -- that it will continually be renewed by the literal birth of new generations of humans to reinterpret the human condition and our existence in the world. | |
| national debt | plutocracy | |
| national deficit | plutocracy | |
| national security | ||
| NDA | Non-disclosure agreement | |
| negging | abuse & control | |
| neomania | obsession with the new -- a hallmark of American culture | |
| New Deal | government | |
| New Jim Crow | white supremacy | |
| non-linear warfare | Russian | |
| normalcy bias | ||
| novichok | Russian | military-grade nerve agent developed by Russia and used in the poisoning of former FSB agent turned Putin critic Andrei Skripal and his daughter in Lonson in March, 2018 |
| nullification | white supremacy | |
| obstruction | ||
| Oklahoma City bombing | ||
| oligarchy | plutocracy | |
| one-party state | government | |
| open source intelligence | intelligence | |
| oppo | intelligence | short form of opposition research |
| outrage industry | surveillance capitalism | |
| PAC | ||
| Palantir | surveillance capitalism | |
| paralipsis | disinformation | A rhetorical device in which the speaker feigns ignorance of the thing he or she is saying; "Saying / not saying" -- it offers a thin veneer of plausible deniability in a naked attempt to escape accountabilitty for saying exactly that. |
| paralogic | psychological warfare | |
| paranoia | ||
| pathocracy | organized crime | |
| patriarchy | misogyny | |
| peculiar institution | white supremacy | slavery |
| peonage | white supremacy | |
| plausible deniability | organized crime | |
| Plessy v. Ferguson | government | 1896 |
| plutocracy | government | |
| poll tax | ||
| ponerology | The study of evil | |
| populism | government | |
| postmodernism | disinformation | |
| post-truth | disinformation | |
| Potemkin village | government | Any structure or facade built expressly for the purpose of making the situation appear more favorable than it really is |
| Powell Memo | plutocracy | Lewis Powell's 1970s memo to the wealthy white male elite, in anger over the crackdown against tobacco companies, as a call to arms to organize politically against "anti-capitalist" forces |
| PR | abuse & control | public relations |
| previous question rule | A parliamentary rule present in the initial decades of the Senate, borrowed from British law, that allowed the majority proponents of a bill or measure to call an end to debate about the provision with a short warning period of usually about 5 minutes. | |
| Progressive Era | government | |
| propaganda | abuse & control | |
| prosperity gospel | ||
| prosocial behavior | ||
| psychopath | abuse & control | |
| psyops | Russian | Psychological operations |
| PUA | misogyny | "Pick Up Artist" -- a self-styled lothario who helps train other would-be casanovas in his ways of manipulative charm |
| Pulse Nightclub shooting | ||
| race riots | white supremacy | |
| race war | white supremacy | |
| rape culture | misogyny | |
| Reagonomics | conspiracy theory | |
| Big Tech | ||
| regression | ||
| retweet | Big Tech | When a Twitter user amplifies the tweet of another, by "retweeting" it out to her or his network |
| RICO | ||
| Right anterior insular cortex | Part of the brain associated with empathy; psychopaths have a deficit here | |
| right-wing authoritarian | government | |
| Roe v. Wade | ||
| Ruby Ridge | white supremacy | |
| running out the clock | ||
| sadism | ||
| sadopopulism | government | |
| Sandy Hook school shooting | ||
| Second Wave Feminism | misogyny | |
| Section 230 | Big Tech | |
| senicide | ||
| sexual assault | misogyny | |
| sexual harassment | misogyny | |
| shadow profiles | surveillance capitalism | Data that Facebook collects on people who are not members of Facebook, via association with their friends who are |
| sharecropping | ||
| shared reality | ||
| show trials | Russian | |
| Signal | Big Tech | encrypted messaging app |
| sit-ins | ||
| SJW | white supremacy | Social Justice Warriors -- used as a pejorative by the alt-Right |
| socialism | government | |
| sociopathy | abuse & control | |
| sockpuppet accounts | disinformation | Fake social media accounts used by trolls for deceptive and covert actions, avoiding culpability for abuse, aggression, death threats, doxxing, and other criminal acts against targets. |
| SMS | Big Tech | texting |
| special interest groups | government | |
| spearphishing | cybersecurity | An email designed to appear as if from a trusted source, to solicit information that allows the sender to gain access to an account or network, or installs malware that later enables the sender to gain access to an account or network |
| spite voter | government | |
| stand your ground | ||
| stochastic terrorism | paramilitary | |
| suffrage | government | The right to vote, sometimes referred to as "the franchise." |
| SuperPAC | ||
| supremacy | ||
| surveillance capitalism | ||
| surveillance state | ||
| swatting | alt-Right | hoaxed reports to emergency services intended to provoke a SWAT team response at the target's home; a form of Internet-based attack used by Gamergate, the alt-Right, and other groups and individuals |
| symbolic violence | ||
| tax avoidance | plutocracy | |
| tax fraud | organized crime | |
| tax havens | plutocracy | |
| Third Wave Feminism | misogyny | |
| totalism | psychological warfare | |
| total war | Russian | |
| trial balloon | psychological warfare | Information put out or leaked to the media to gauge public reaction. |
| trickle-down economics | conspiracy theory | |
| truth decay | conspiracy theory | |
| The Turner Diaries | white supremacy | |
| Tulsa Race Massacre | white supremacy | A mob of murderous whites descended on the Greenwood neighborhood of Tulsa, dubbed Black Wall Street, and razed it to the ground. They dropped homemade bombs in the first ever domestic aerial attack on American soil. Over three hundred Blacks were murdered and hastily buried or burned. Police and other state officials were complicit; no one was ever charged for the crimes and insurance companies refused to honor Black business owner's claims from the destruction of their livelihood and senseless slaughter of their friends, families, and community. |
| Big Tech | ||
| Uberman | ||
| unmasking | cybersecurity | Intelligence protocol redacting American identities from transcripts of foreign intercepts |
| vast right-wing conspiracy | ||
| volcel | ||
| Voting Rights Act | white supremacy | |
| Waco, TX | paramilitary | |
| wag the dog | abuse & control | |
| wage gap | misogyny | |
| Watergate | ||
| watering hole | cybersecurity | hacker attacks that infect entire websites |
| whataboutism | Russian | Classic debate tactic of old Soviet apologists to deflect criticism of Soviet policy; whenever an American would levy a critique, the response would be, "What about the bad things America does?" |
| white collar crime | organized crime | |
| white nationalism | white supremacy | |
| women's liberation | misogyny | |
| word salad | ||
| World War I | WWI gave job opportunities to blacks in the North, causing a great migration -- as well as a backlash and resistance from Southern law enforcement. | |
| World War II | ||
| Yes California | Movement to secede from the US entirely, run by Marcus Ruiz Evans, Louis J. Marinelli |