Neologism
This wiki features many pages with newly invented terms.
The convention on this wiki is to mark such pages with the following notification banner:
Reasons for introduction of new terms
In short: Establishing a basis for exploration and discussion.
Usually one explains topics by building upon the knowledge of the reader(/listener). One draws analogies. When trying to understand new stuff readers(/listeners) want to associate the new information with their pre-existing knowledge.
Some topics though (including advanced atomically precise manufacturing) do not have abundant connections to pre-existing knowledge of the average reader. That does not mean the few existing connections that do link from the readers pre-existing knowledge to the target are not strong. If they where not strong we would talk about concepts that do not properly link to reality aka pure fantasies. But at least with APM advanced atomically precise manufacturing the few links we have are known to be very strong.
Passerby readers might jump right into the middle of the topic. When the do so they likely feel lost "floating in empty mental space" trying to grab something to link onto. And what they grab onto is most often a very predictable wrong thing. One gets faulty mental classifications and misunderstandings. (See: Common misconceptions about atomically precise manufacturing and History)
While having passerby readers randomly jumping right into the middle of the topic is hard to avoid. At least when actively explaining one can influence the order of exposure a bit.
There's a dilemma though. As explained jumping right into the middle (to the juicy more speculative stuff that gets people hooked) readers are prone to loose suspense of disbelieve and do one of the following:
- decide to not further investigate the matter
- propel only the disconnected more speculative stuff without understanding of the theoretical basis -> drift-off to fantasy.
- or even aggressively fight the idea based on faulty naive completions that are either self-knitted or taken from the former party.
Alternatively starting the explanations at the beginning going through the more dry reliably predictable stuff first one looses the majority of readers early on. (New good graphical illustrations for the more technical parts - a goal for this wiki - may help a bit.) Media presence of a degree capable of influencing career decisions of young people is unlikely.
To have a meaningful discussion one has to have a common language first. Since only the most rudimentary unrefined bits of this language are in place yet exploration requires term refinement and invention.
With new terms making new concepts more concrete one does not need to start at square zero every time anew. Which wouldn't lead very far. (This is precisely the reason why here the wiki-format was chosen for this website instead of a linear format like a blog or book with every article/chapter redundantly repeating and redefining the basics.) Very much like in programming languages defining new terms allows to define complex concepts in term of simple ones.
In detail new terms are useful furthermore for:
- refining concepts - constructive buildup - more requirements to fulfill - logical inclusion in Venn-diagram
- resolving overlaps: when terms are not fine-grained enough and mush things together new terms can detangle the problem.
- ...
There are novel terms in the highly predictable areas and novel terms in the speculative areas of APM. The latter may be more numerous on this site due to the enormous range of possibilities opened up by the concepts described by the former.
Related
External links
- Wikipedia: Neologism Terminology Nomenclature Portmanteau
