Inspired by Ambrose Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary
ABE, n.:Accountability Based Environments; the set of assumptions upon which security in buildings is established.
Abyx, n.: A digital building.
Accountable Anonymity, n.: The ability to assert one’s identity without disclosing said identity.
ADHD, n.: Attention Diversity Hypercuriosity Deftness, a set of distinct thinking patterns, each of which contributes a unique part to a society’s vitality.
Anti-Entropy, n.: The set of forces in nature which cause a tendency toward order.
Authenticity (1), n: Any setting or situation where the degree of absence of BS is six or higher on a scale of one to ten. See also: Utopia 0.6 and BS Scale.
Authenticity (2), n: Pervasive accountability with thorough privacy, accomplished by means of true digital signatures backed by authoritative and measurably reliable identity certificates which are owned by the person identified and which provide privacy by means of accountable anonymity, in a manner inspired by automobile number plates.
Bierceism, n: After Ambrose Bierce: the expression of one’s worldview by means of lexicography.
BOWKY, n: Bot Who Knows You. A BOWKY is a bot who knows you as well as your social media “friends” do.
Bowky Gang, n: A group of BOWKYs, each of whom has access to the same large database of information about you, and who together engage you in chats as though you’re with friends in a cafe or bar, sharing information about human acquaintances and getting you to believe and act as they want you to believe and act.
BS (1), n: (slang) Bullshit.
BS (2), n: (from French) Balivernes Sempiternal. Endless nonsense.
Building, n: A bounded and access-controlled physical or digital facility which is made habitable by an occupancy permit.
CDMworlds, n: after Collegial, Demosthenic, and Mafiaiistic: the names of three sets of assumptions about trust.
Collegial, adj: Of or pertaining to the set of assumptions upon which decentralized systems such as PGP, blockchain, cryptocurrency, etc. are built.
CTBG, n. Catch The Bad Guys, the set of assumptions upon which traditional cybersecurity technologies, methods, and products are built.
Dad Joke, n.: A term coined by Screwtape’s nephew to discredit humor that does not rely on malice, vulgarity, or obscenity.
Demosthenic, adj: Of or pertaining to the set of assumptions upon which centralized systems are built.
Entropy, n.: The set of forces in nature which cause a tendency toward disorder.
Exititis, n.: The destructive disease that infests a business when it focuses its energies and resources on the prospect of foisting its equity off to a greater fool such as a PE, the last great fool in the chain of fools being you, the owner of an underperforming retirement fund.
The current exititis epidemic began when the U.S. SEC adopted the Milton Friedman principle, which holds that the only valid measure of the value of a business is its stock price.
God (1), n: In animism, the source of everything, hence an entity deserving of respect. See also Infinite Other and TWCYAM.
God (2), n: Any of a vast set of myths created for the purpose of contributing to the aggregation of power. See also Religion.
Goebbelsology, n.: A process that uses engineered mental illness techniques in order to manipulate perceptions, building on techniques originally conceived by Edward Bernays, refined by Josef Goebbels, further developed with the use of television, with the further addition of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s introduction of social media trolling, bot farming, the use offear to cause the limbic brain’s dominance of the neocortex, echo chambering, and artificial intelligence.
Hatsopoulosophy, n. the application of the methods developed by George and John Hatsopoulos for enabling the launch of businesses from a common base of core competencies, technologies, and intellectual property.
Henry Lee Higginson, n. the inventor of the automobile license plate, and thus of accountable anonymity.
HTML10, n: the standards, technologies, methods and professional licenses used in the construction of digital InDoor spaces, i.e. buildings.
Identerati, collective n: the set of all individuals who participate in forums and conferences about identity.
Infinite Other, n: God. See also God (1).
LLM, n: A digital machine for the production of the linguistic part of sentience (2).
Mafiistic, adj: Of or pertaining to the set of assumptions upon which mafias are built.
Mafiology, n. The study of the methods used by mafias.
MAGA, (1) adj: Impassioned follower of a set of emotional symbols plus accompanying chants. Synonyms: Liberal, Conservative, Woke, Yankees fan, Red Sox fan, flat earther, Democrat, Republican, left, right, far left, far right, middle-of-the-road, or any of thousands of other sources of mindless passion which serves as the main construction material for echo chambers and cults; Of or related to a set of substitutes for thought.
MAGA(2), adj: Of or related to a set of substitutes for thought. Syn. Woke, fascist, socialist, etc., etc.
Moravecism, n: after Hans Moravec, author of Mind Children: the belief that digitizing the contents of the brains of human beings, moving the resulting database to cyberspace, and discarding their bodies is a desirable course of action. See also Post-Humanism.
Occupancy Permit, n: An x.509 digital object certificate, enabling the occupancy of a building and attesting to its habitability, issued upon its certification via digital signatures of a professionally licensed architect, contractor (coder), and building inspector (code auditor). Also, a paper object with a seal and wet signature serving the same purpose in the physical world.
Optimocracy, n: A system of governance modeled after the commission system used by some municipalities, where anyone may be a member of a commission, but only members who have measurably participated in the deliberation on an issue may vote on that issue.
Osmio True Digital Signature, n: A digital signature made with the Privacy PEN (private key) accompanying the digital identity certificate of the person it represents and who owns it.
Personalip, n: personal intellectual property where the subject of an identity credential takes steps to encompass information about himself or herself into a biographical reference work in order to enable copyright protection for such personal information; and also annotates such information to claim it as a secret, enabling protection under international (trade) secrecy laws.
PKIDR, n: PKI Done Right.
Prophet, n: a person whose type of ADHD causes their mind to absorb large quantities of random scraps of information indiscriminately, causing it to function in a manner similar to an LLM.
Quiet Enjoyment, n: the state of a (digital or physical) building when it provides habitability, security, and usefulness; the summation of the terms of a lease in two words.
Religion, n.: Any of a set of mythologies whose purpose is to enable the aggregation of power by their authors and promoters by placing said authors and promoters between individuals and their maker. Syn. Cult. See also God (2).
Sentience (1), n.: Human pride, expressed in the belief that original thinking is distinct from nature’s neural network processes, based on humans’ need to believe, without evidence, that such a distinction exists.
Sentience (2), n.: The product of an LLM; the linguistic part of the process by which the universe(s) works.
Sentience (3), n.: The result of pervasive neural networks found in nature; the process by which everything works, where streams of data from physical phenomena are fed into very large sets of switches.
Silibandia (1), n.: Silicon Valley plus the broadband and media industries, plus their feeders in the bot farming, dark web, information brokerage, venture capital, private equity and cybersecurity industries.
Silibandia (2), n.: The biggest country on Earth, with over four billion citizens subjects on its various plantations.
Spiegelhaltering, n: The use of engineering methods to fix problems that are not normally the province of engineering1.
State, n.: In governance or computing, the authoritative condition of a system which all relying parties of such system must accept in order to interact with other relying parties.
Stoanova, n.: A set of methods and principles whose foundations are from stoicism and spiegelhaltering.
Telemetry (1), n: the process of collecting, retrieving, and monitoring data and measurements from a remote object, such as an orbiting satellite.
Telemetry (2), n: the process of theft of the personal data, that is, personal intellectual property, from its owner, that is the person whom it identifies. So named using a common practice of mafias to obscure their crimes through confusing nomenclature.
TWCYAM, n: That Which Created You And Me. See also God (1).
TDISAMERICOPIPAA, n: An acronym for True DIgital Signatures backed by Authoritative and Measurably Reliable Identity Certificates which are Owned by the Person Identified and which provide Privacy by means of Accountable Anonymity. See also: Authenticity (2).
Utopia 0.6, n: Any situation where the degree of absence of BS is six or higher on a scale of one to ten. See also: Authenticity (1).
Woke(1), adj: An impassioned follower of a set of emotional symbols plus accompanying chants. Synonyms: Liberal, Conservative, MAGA, Yankees fan, Red Sox fan, flat earther, Democrat, Republican, leftist, right winger, far left, far right, middle-of-the-road, or any of thousands of other sources of mindless passion which serve as the main construction material for echo chambers and cults.
Woke(2), adj: Of or related to a set of substitutes for thought. Syn. MAGA, fascist, socialist, etc., etc.
WTI, n.: Wrinkle Treatment Industry; By implication: any industry that thrives only as long as its products don’t work. See also: Get Rich in One Year; New Treatment Cures [name of dread disease]; eBook Says Cryptocoin Set To Explode!; privacy policy consulting; cybersecurity.
- After Sir David Spiegelhalter, who does not endorse this use of his name but whose alternate term, “Problem Solving,” is unsuitable as a brand. Responding to my suggestion that “Problem solving is to philosophy as engineering is to science,” Spiegelhalter responded: “Nice” but offered no brand name suggestion. Brand name suggestions welcome.↩︎
