The Coherent Dictionary, in Mechanical
192 terms in a controlled language: one word, one meaning. Written to the ASD-STE100 Issue 9 discipline, with a declared extension.
All 1,175 words of Mechanical Why Mechanical exists JSON
A
Action
An action is a change in the environment that an agent causes.
Agency
Agency is the capacity of an agent to start actions.
Agent
An agent is a thing that can have intentions, make decisions, and start actions.
Agreement
In an agreement, all sides freely know and accept the terms of a planned interaction that has an effect on boundaries. An agreement must be clear and voluntary. If there is no agreement and no permission, an action that crosses the boundary of a different agent is a violation, and it causes harm.
Art
Art is a made pattern which has this intention: to express, to explore, or to communicate something to other agents. Art does not require beauty, approval, or agreement. The one necessary property of art is the intention of the maker to share a perception, a feeling, an idea, or an experience. The…
Attention
Attention is the focus of awareness on one thing, while the mind ignores other things. Attention selects the data that the mind processes most strongly at a given moment.
Authority
An authority is an agent or a group who claims this right: to command other agents, or to take the things that they own. Authority is only power that an agent asserts. Authority has no moral force unless it comes from the voluntary agreement of all.
Autonomy
Autonomy is the capacity to have intentions and to make decisions without external control.
Awareness
Awareness occurs when the mind finds or knows something, internal or external. Internal examples are thoughts and feelings. External examples are objects and events. Awareness is the condition in which the mind attends to something that it can represent.
B
Beauty
Beauty is the experience of harmony between the perception of an agent and the patterns that the agent finds. Beauty occurs when something fits together in a manner that the observer finds pleasant, meaningful, or balanced. Beauty is not a quality of the object. Beauty is a response in the…
Behavior
Behavior is a pattern of actions through time.
Belief
A belief is an idea that an agent holds to be true, if it matches reality or not. A belief becomes dangerous when an agent makes it safe from questions and not open to tests.
Benefit
A benefit is something that an agent values and freely accepts. If a person forces a "benefit" on an agent, it is not a benefit. It is harm.
Boundary
A boundary is the limit after which other agents must not act without consent. Boundaries apply to bodies, to property, and to agreements.
Brand
A brand is a known pattern of signals, for example a name, a design, or a reputation. The pattern holds the trust that constant voluntary exchange collects. The real value of a brand is not the pattern. The real value is the trust that the pattern represents: the expectation that trades in the…
C
Capitalism
Capitalism is a system in which persons freely trade property, ideas, and labor without force or interference. It emerges naturally from infinite change and from incentives. It rewards innovation. It manages scarcity through voluntary exchanges. Capitalism is not like socialism: it does not require…
Causation
Causation is the direct connection between an action and its result. Without causation, blame is not logical.
Cause
A cause is a condition that makes an effect.
Choice
A choice is a decision that an agent makes freely, without force, threats, or lies. Without choice, responsibility is not possible.
Civilization
Civilization is the layer of collected knowledge, improved tools, and constant patterns that emerges when individuals do voluntary exchange across time. Civilization is the collective memory of humanity and its capacity to predict. It is not a thing that governs persons. It is the base of shared…
Civilizational Velocity
Civilizational velocity is the speed at which a society changes cooperation, knowledge, and aligned incentives into solutions that keep persons alive, before mortality wins. Velocity decides who lives and who dies in the race between the mortality of one person and the progress of all. Systems that…
Claim
A claim is a statement that something is true or that something is the property of a person. A claim is not truth until it matches reality and logic.
Coercion
Coercion is external pressure that overrides or replaces the intentions or the decisions of an agent. Examples are these: a person takes the things that the agent owns, or a person forces the agent to act without agreement. Coercion against an intact boundary breaks the Golden Rule and makes…
Collective
A collective is a group of individuals. A collective has no rights more than the rights of its members.
Collective Punishment
Collective punishment occurs when a punisher punishes a group for the actions of one or some of its members, without attention to individual guilt. Collective punishment always makes innocent victims. Thus it is injustice.
Collective Responsibility
Collective responsibility holds persons responsible for harm that they did not cause, only because they are members of a group. Collective responsibility breaks logic. Responsibility follows causation and individual action, not identity or association.
Communication
Communication is the movement of information between agents through signals.
Competition
Competition is the natural process in which individuals or groups try to give better value in trades. Competition causes improvement and efficiency without force. It punishes errors through lost opportunities, not through penalties that an authority commands. Competition agrees with infinite…
Consciousness
Consciousness is recursive self-modeling in a pattern of change. Consciousness emerges when the pattern of an agent becomes sufficiently complex to represent that pattern and its relation to the flux around it. Consciousness is not a material or a gift. It is a process: the pattern observes its own…
Consent
Consent occurs when an agent freely agrees to something, without pressure, deception, or manipulation. True trade and true deals require consent from all sides. Without consent, actions become theft or harm. Restitution must repair them.
Consequence
A consequence is the result that follows from an action. Just consequences connect to the harm that the action really caused, not to intention, status, or power.
Contract
A contract is a voluntary agreement that makes clear expectations about actions or results.
Contract Breach
A contract breach is a failure to obey terms that a person voluntarily agreed to in a Contract. A breach makes a victim: the party who trusted the agreement and received damage from its violation. The party who broke the terms owes Restitution for the damage that they caused. A breach is not…
Control
Control is the capacity to give direction to a thing. Control of the self is natural. Control of other agents requires their consent, or it becomes coercion.
Correlation
A correlation is a pattern in which two or more things change together, more frequently than chance alone causes. Correlation is evidence that a connection can exist. It is not the connection. Only Causation connects an effect to the agent who caused it, and only causation holds responsibility. To…
Crime
A crime is an action that harms a person who did not want that action, across an intact boundary. An intact boundary is a boundary that is in no Forfeiture. A crime makes a victim. No victim means no crime. This is simple logic from the Golden Rule. Only Justice erases the moral debt: the sovereign…
Curiosity
Curiosity is the drive to close the gap between a model and reality, with no other aim. The curious agent moves to the space that it does not know, and looks for the surprise that improves the model. Curiosity changes error from a threat into food. A curious agent steps to the edge of its…
Currency
Currency is money that persons widely accept. The value of currency comes from trust in the promise of its issuer, not from its material.
D
Damage
Damage is a negative change to the body, the property, or the freedom of a person, a change that they did not agree to. Damage is the material quantity of the loss: the part that Restitution repairs. Unwanted damage to an agent is harm, and harm makes victims.
Deal
A deal is a voluntary agreement to exchange value. A deal is legitimate only when all sides consent and obey the truth.
Debt
A debt is the value that an agent owes when they give an IOU. Honest debt is voluntary. Forced debt is coercion.
Decentralized Knowledge
Decentralized knowledge is the idea that no one person or group can know all that other persons require, want, or can do. Persons know their own lives best. Thus central plans, as in socialism, fail, because they ignore this wisdom that lives in many minds.
Deception
Deception is communication that a deceiver makes to cause false belief, or to hide applicable truth, so that the receiver cannot correctly consent. Deception causes an agent to act against their real interests. Thus deception makes consent invalid, and it becomes a type of harm.
Decision
A decision is the commitment to act on an intention.
Democracy
Democracy is a group decision procedure in which votes choose the rules. A vote cannot make consent. Actions that violate boundaries make victims, also when a majority supports those actions.
Deterrence
Deterrence is the attempt to prevent harm with threats of punishment, not with a response to harm that is already done. Deterrence tries to cause fear in possible offenders, and does not give justice to real victims. Deterrence becomes injustice when it punishes without a victim.
Duress
Duress is the condition of an agent in threat, force, or pressure that removes their capacity to freely consent. An agent who acts in duress does not choose. The agent obeys to prevent harm. Each agreement, confession, or transaction that a person makes in duress is invalid, because consent…
E
Economy
An economy is the network of voluntary trades and productions with which persons manage scarcity. An economy grows on free trade and incentives. It fails when force, for example regulations or taxes, breaks consent, incentives, and decentralized knowledge. From infinite change, economies…
Effect
An effect is a change that a cause before it made. Effects can follow from actions, which are changes that agents cause, or from natural processes, which are changes with no agent. When an effect crosses the boundaries of a different agent against their consent, the effect becomes harm. Then the…
Emergence
Emergence is the process in which stable structures, laws, and relations occur as constant patterns in infinite change. No outside agent commands them. Space, time, geometry, and physical constants are not fundamental: they self-organize from the flow of transformation. Law is memory, inertia is…
Enforcement
Enforcement is the use of force, or the threat of force, to make persons obey rules. Enforcement is legitimate only to stop or to repair real harm.
Error
An error occurs when a claim, a belief, a model, or a prediction does not agree with reality. Error is not evil. The refusal to correct an error is evil.
Eschatology
Eschatology is the study of last things: the direction of civilization, and the events that count as the end. Eschatology also has this question: is the end set, or do we choose it? The eschatology of the past says that an outside power gives the end: judgment, collapse, or salvation. That end…
Evidence
Evidence is information that increases or decreases the probability that a claim is true.
Evil
An action is evil if it makes harm to unwilling victims, because it overrides consent through force, threat, deception, or fraud. Evil is in these actions: to violate boundaries, or to push costs onto other agents. Evil is also in this: to use power for the profit of an agent or a group at the cost…
Exchange
An exchange is a mutual gift between persons: each side gives to the other. An exchange stops as a real exchange at the moment when force or deception enters.
Expression
Expression is the process that makes outputs, actions included, which transmit ideas or information.
F
Faith
Faith is trust or commitment that an agent holds in uncertainty, where the evidence does not, or cannot, close the question. Faith can keep hope, meaning, and resolve. On questions that evidence cannot reach, no one can prove faith, and no one can disprove it. Faith becomes dangerous only in two…
Fallibility
Fallibility is the fact that all agents make errors, and that no agent is perfect in intelligence or in morality. Systems that think that agents are perfect require force to function. That force breaks freedom and causes harm.
Fear
Fear is an emotional response to the expectation of pain or damage. Fear guides an agent away from harm. But fear becomes a tool of coercion when a person causes it with intention, with threats or force.
Force
Force is physical compulsion, or the credible threat of physical compulsion, that overrides consent.
Forfeiture
A forfeiture is the suspension of the protection of a boundary. An agent causes a forfeiture when the agent crosses the boundary of a different agent. Rights bind in two directions: to claim a right is to owe the identical right to each agent like you. Thus an agent who crosses the boundary of a…
Forgiveness
Forgiveness is a type of Justice in which the victim closes the moral debt by voluntary release. Forgiveness can also release restitution that remains open. Forgiveness is valid only when the real victim gives it freely, without coercion or pressure. Forgiveness is a gift, not an obligation. No…
Fraud
Fraud is deception that a deceiver uses to get value, control, or agreement. With full information, the deceived agent gives no such agreement.
Free Communication
Free communication is the voluntary exchange of information, thoughts, or ideas between agents. Communication requires consent, truth, and freedom from force. Without these, communication becomes manipulation or coercion.
Free Trade
Free trade is the voluntary exchange of goods, services, or ideas, without harm, lies, or outside interference. Free trade is a core right. Each block on free trade, for example a block from politicians, decreases freedom. Logic and the Golden Rule require the correction of that block.
Free Will
Free will is adaptive participation in constraint that an agent can navigate. Free will is not an exemption from causation. It is the capacity of an agent, as a self-reinforcing pattern in infinite change, to model the things around it. The same capacity examines options and gives direction to its…
Freedom
Freedom is the absence of coercion in intention, in decision, and in action. Freedom is the right to act, to trade, and to own without interference, while the agent does no harm to other agents against their will. Freedom emerges from infinite change and logic, and the Golden Rule protects it.
Freedom of Speech
Freedom of speech is the freedom to express ideas without interference. Expression becomes harm only when it is deception, threat, or fraud. Expression that only causes discomfort, offense, or disagreement is not harm.
G
Golden Rule (Passive Version)
The Golden Rule says: "Do not do to others what they would not want done to them." This is the base of fairness. If an agent breaks the rule, punishment follows. The purpose of that punishment is balance, not control.
Good
An action is good if it obeys consent, makes no unwilling victims, and decreases or repairs harm. Good actions keep or increase voluntary cooperation, trust, and the capacity of agents to act freely in reality. When harm already occurred, good is in Justice. Justice here means three actions. Stop…
Good News
Good News is the promise that civilization can keep. Constant voluntary cooperation can give life without a set end to all who participate in the construction of civilization. Good News is technical immortality with the limits of physics, not faith. Trade, innovation, and consent earn it. Authority…
Government
A government is an organization that claims a monopoly on force in a territory. It uses coercion, for example taxes or laws, without the full consent of the persons that the coercion touches. Government violates the Golden Rule, because it makes victims through theft and control, and it ignores…
Guilt
Guilt is the moral debt that an agent makes when they cause harm to a different agent, against their will, across an intact boundary. Harm in a Forfeiture makes no guilt. Guilt exists objectively, from causation, not from feelings, accusation, or confession. Only Justice erases guilt.
H
Happiness
Happiness is a condition in which there are no problems, and all events agree with expectations. That is: the models of the agent match reality, so the agent meets few unwanted surprises. Love for the work that one does, and simplicity, are its keys. Science and technology make happiness richer,…
Harm
Harm is unwanted damage to an agent: to their body, their property, or their freedom. Harm across an intact boundary makes victims, and it defines the limit between freedom and crime. Harm in a Forfeiture makes no victims.
Hierarchy
A hierarchy is a structure in which some agents claim power above other agents, frequently without consent. Hierarchies become legitimate only through voluntary agreement. Forced hierarchies cause coercion and error, because power ignores incentives and increases ignorance. In infinite change, flat…
I
Idea
An idea is a thought with a shape: a thought about how something is, how it can be, or how it must be. Agents can share ideas, do tests on them, improve them, or reject them, through logic and experience.
Ignorance
Ignorance is an absence of knowledge. Ignorance is normal, and learning can repair it. To speak of ignorance as knowledge causes harm.
Incentives
Incentives are rewards or penalties that guide the actions of persons. Good systems use incentives naturally, for example profit for hard work. Bad systems, for example socialism, ignore them. That causes laziness or shortages.
Individual
An individual is one agent who thinks, and who can make choices, give consent, and have responsibility.
Infinite Change
Infinite change is the timeless flow of the universe, without an end, in which all things transform without stop. Infinite change is the ontological base. No thing stays the same. From this flux, logic, natural laws, and all patterns self-emerge, without a creator and without a ruler. Infinite…
Influence
An influence is a condition that increases or decreases the probability of an effect.
Innocence
Innocence is the absence of guilt. An agent is innocent if they did not cause harm against the will of a different agent. Suspicion, accusation, or feelings do not change this.
Innovation
Innovation is the process that makes new ideas, tools, or other processes, through tests, errors, and learning. Innovation grows in freedom and free trade, where incentives reward risk, and decentralized knowledge starts progress. Systems of coercion stop innovation, because they punish failure, or…
Input
An input is information that an agent receives from the environment.
Intellectual Property
The name "property" on an idea does not make the idea property. Property requires scarcity. Agents can share ideas without a loss to the first maker. To prevent other agents from the use of their own resources, when they make a pattern again, is coercion, not protection. Force gives patents,…
Intelligence
Intelligence is the capacity of an agent to build models with predictions that reliably match reality, across a range of new situations that becomes wider. Intelligence includes the capacity to correct those models when they fail. Intelligence is measured, not declared. The measures are these: how…
Intention
An intention is a planned direction for action. Intention is important when we try to know why an agent acted. But intention does not erase harm that the agent already caused.
IOU
An IOU is a promise to give value later. The trust behind an IOU is its only strength. To break an IOU without cause is fraud.
J
Judge
A judge is an agent who discovers proven facts, and who states how Law applies to those facts. A Judge does not make Law, guilt, Justice, responsibility, or status. These follow from facts and Law. The authority of the statement of a Judge comes only from its correct application of Law. A statement…
Judgment
A judgment is a falsifiable statement by a Judge of how Law applies to proven facts. A Judgment states these things: the events, the agent who caused harm, the victim, and the restitution and proportion that follow. It also states the guilt, if guilt exists, and each status that results. A Judgment…
Justice
Justice is the sovereign act of the victim that closes the moral debt that harm made. The victim can close the debt by collection: retribution, which mirrors the harm back to the offender, in proportion. Or the victim can close the debt by voluntary release: forgiveness. Both erase guilt.…
K
Kindness
Kindness is voluntary action with one of two aims. One aim is to decrease the real harm of a different agent. The other aim is to help them to the things that they choose when they can choose. Kindness does not cross their boundaries, and it does not override the consent of a capable agent.…
Knowledge
Knowledge is reliable understanding from models that tests examined and that constantly match reality. Knowledge grows through prediction, error, and learning, not by declaration or force.
L
Law
Logic is the ultimate law. Do not do to others what they would not want to be done to them, or you will be punished regardless of your will. The purpose of punishment is to erase guilt, via retribution and restitution. That is the entire law; it cannot be changed, all the rest is commentary.
Learning
Learning is the process that adjusts thoughts, ideas, or models, because of new information or failed predictions. Learning decreases error through time, and it requires no force.
Legitimate
A thing is legitimate when it is morally valid, because it follows logic, consent, and no harm. Power alone cannot make a thing legitimate.
Lesser Evil
A lesser evil is an action that causes harm to unwilling victims, but that causes less total harm than the possible alternatives. The constraints are the same for all the alternatives. A lesser evil is not good, not legitimate, and not moral. It is only the option with the minimum damage when all…
Liberty
Liberty is the natural condition of freedom in which individuals act, own, and trade without harm or force from other agents. Liberty emerges from infinite change and logic, and the Golden Rule protects it. Each decrease of liberty, for example through authority or socialism, makes victims, and…
License
A license is a voluntary agreement about use. In the agreement, the maker or owner of a thing gives a different person permission to use that thing, in specified terms. A license is a type of Contract: it requires consent, clear terms, and honest action from both sides. To violate the terms of a…
Lie / Lying
A lie is a statement that its maker knows is false, made to deceive a person. A lie harms voluntary trade and trust, because it prevents persons from knowledge of the things that they really agree to.
Logic
Logic is the ultimate method of thought, the method that does not change, and that divides truth from false statements. Logic is the invariant structure that minds find when they try to reason without contradiction. Logic emerges in minds, but it does not come from minds.
Love
Love is a voluntary pattern of care, attention, and commitment to a different agent. Its base is freedom, not obligation. Love grows through chosen connection, honest communication, and mutual respect for boundaries. Love does not give ownership or control. Love supports the autonomy of the other…
M
Mandate
A mandate is the right to act on a matter, in defined limits. A mandate is a logical consequence of sovereignty in the Ultimate Law, not a gift from rulers, votes, or attackers. Each agent is sovereign in their own body, property, agreements, and moral debt. From that sovereignty, mandates follow…
Market
A market is a space, physical or abstract, for voluntary trades, where prices emerge from supply, demand, and scarcity. Markets live with infinite change because they adjust naturally, without a necessity for authority or force. Interference with markets, for example price controls, makes harm and…
Market Dominance
Market dominance is a position that a provider earns when persons freely choose that provider, because it gives better value. Dominance remains legitimate only while choice is free and while no one blocks competitors. When a person uses force or commanded rules to stop rivals, dominance becomes…
Mental
Mental means related to the mind, not to the body. Mental conditions include thoughts, feelings, awareness, and experiences, for example pain or fear.
Mind
The mind is the group of processes that make thoughts, ideas, predictions, judgments, and perceptions. The mind is the location of mental processes, conscious and unconscious.
Mind Virus
A mind virus is an idea or a belief that spreads because it uses the shortcuts of the mind. Those shortcuts are fear, guilt, identity, authority, and zero-sum thought. At the same time, it resists correction from logic, evidence, or lived experience. A mind virus continues not because it is true.…
Model
A model is a simple idea of how something functions. Agents use models to know, to explain, or to predict the thing. A model is not reality. A model is judged by the match between its predictions and the events that really occur.
Money
Money is an IOU that agents can trade. Money is a promise of value.
Monopoly
A monopoly is exclusive control of a trade or a resource. Frequently authority enforces it, and the holder did not earn it through better value. True monopolies violate free trade and make artificial scarcity. They harm consumers without consent. In logic, monopolies dissolve through competition,…
Morality
Morality means: do the correct thing, with logic as the base, and harm no person against their will. No system is moral if it requires force without consent, for example when it takes labor because of "necessity" or votes. True morality obeys reciprocity: "do not do to others what they would not…
Murder
Murder occurs when a person kills, with intention, an agent who did not consent to die, and who had intact boundaries. To kill in a Forfeiture is not murder. Examples are these: collection in proportion, in the mandate of a victim. A second example is self-defense against an attack that continues…
N
Negligence
Negligence is a failure to do the reasonable actions that prevent harm.
Nomocracy
Nomocracy is rule by law, where the law comes from logic and reciprocity, not from the will of rulers or groups. In a nomocracy, only rules that prevent or repair real harm are legitimate. No agent and no authority stands above the law.
O
Obligation
An obligation is a duty that an agent freely accepted by agreement. Obligations that force made are not real obligations.
Outlaw
An outlaw is an agent with guilt that no one can close. The outlaw destroyed the victim who held the sovereign power to close the debt. The typical cause is murder. The claim of the outlaw to the protection of the Golden Rule is lost: the action of the outlaw showed that they reject reciprocity. No…
Output
An output is information or an action that an agent sends into the environment.
Ownership
Ownership is the relation between an agent and their body, their actions, or the property that they got without harm to other agents. Ownership gives exclusive control. It obligates other agents to obey that control, unless the owner gives consent.
P
Pain
Pain is an unpleasant physical or mental experience that damage, or the threat of damage, causes. Pain signals harm that occurs now, or harm that will occur soon.
Pattern
A pattern is a form that repeats, and that an agent can identify, in infinite change. Patterns are the bridge between raw flux and all the things that agents can observe, name, or use. Physical laws, constants, structures, and agents are patterns that continue, because their form is…
People
The word "people" is a plural reference to agents. Speakers use it to speak of many individuals, without a claim of collective identity, collective rights, or collective responsibility. The word "people" is a short form. All rights, choices, and responsibilities remain with each agent, one by one.
Perception
Perception is the process that receives inputs and interprets them as information with meaning.
Perimeter
The perimeter is the outward network of agents and capability that protects civilization from each mind that tries to become a Singleton by predation. The perimeter does not govern, and it does not act before a crime. Punishment requires real victims. Thus no person can punish an agent for the…
Permission
Permission is clear consent that an agent gives before an action that has an effect on a different agent. Without permission, the action becomes harm.
Politician
A politician is a person who tries to get or hold public power through force or the threat of force. Examples of public power are the power to make laws and the power to enforce them. In these definitions, actions with coercion as their base are not moral.
Power
Power is the capacity to make things occur. Power without consent is dangerous. Power with consent becomes cooperation.
Prediction
A prediction is a claim about the events that will occur, with a model or a belief as its base. Predictions are the method with which models meet reality. Incorrect predictions show errors.
Price
A price is the quantity of value that one agent gives to a different agent in an exchange.
Privacy
Privacy is control of the knowledge that other agents have about you. Privacy is a boundary. To cross it without consent is harm. There is no expectation of privacy in public spaces, or in private spaces that are the property of other agents.
Process
A process is a sequence of actions or changes that occur through time. A process explains how something occurs, not only which things exist.
Production
Production is the process that makes things of value from effort and resources. Production is the source of all wealth. Without production, there is no thing to trade.
Profit
Profit is the positive value that an agent gets from a voluntary trade or from innovation, after the agent counts the costs and the scarcity. Profit acts as an incentive. It signals success: the agent met the wants of other persons without force. Systems of coercion ignore profit, and that causes…
Property
Property is the things that you own. Property starts with your body, and extends to the things that you make or exchange. To steal property is harm. You alone control it: that follows from natural rights, from logic.
Proportion
Punishment can rise until it is equal to the full harm that an act really causes, consequences included, and no more. The measure is the harm that the act did, not the thing that the offender took. The ceiling for a thief is the loss of all the property of the thief. Because the thief took the…
Punisher
A punisher is an agent who acts as a proxy for the Justice of a victim. The punisher uses force so that an offender meets the consequences of the harm that the offender caused. The legitimacy of a punisher comes from the mandate of the victim, and it stops where that mandate stops. Punishers act…
Punishment
Punishment is the enforcement part of Justice: the application of retribution or restitution, as the victim or their proxy commands. Punishment is only for real harms with real victims. Its purpose is to close a moral debt, not to control. Punishment is the Golden Rule in application: it mirrors…
Q
Qualia
Qualia are the subjective part of experience: the felt quality, for example the felt quality of pain, or of the color red. Qualia are real experiences. But no person can directly share them or measure them from outside.
R
Reality
Reality is all that exists, independent of belief or opinion.
Reason
Reason is the process that uses evidence to find the invariant structures of logic, the structures that go to truth.
Reciprocity
Reciprocity is the fair exchange in two directions: "do not do to others what they would not want done to them." Socialism fails reciprocity, because it forces persons to release the things that they built, without agreement.
Regulation
Regulations are rules that authority commands with force or threats. Authority frequently says that regulations "protect", but it ignores decentralized knowledge and fallibility. Regulations break free trade, make artificial scarcity, and harm without consent. In logic, they are coercion, unless…
Reputation
A reputation is the pattern of expectations that other agents make about an agent, from past voluntary actions. The agent does not own or control it. A reputation is a belief that other persons hold. A good reputation grows through constant honesty, reliable action, and value that the agent gives.…
Responsibilities
Responsibilities are the duties that follow logically from agency, self-ownership, and causation. Responsibilities are the mirror of Rights. Rights name the boundaries that other agents must not cross without consent. Responsibilities name the things for which an agent must answer. Those things are…
Responsibility
Responsibility is the connection between an action and the agent who caused its effects. Responsibility includes the obligation to repair or compensate all harm that the action did. Responsibility follows causation, not status or power.
Restitution
Restitution returns stolen value, or compensates harm that an offender did. Restitution erases the debt that a wrong act caused.
Retribution
Retribution is a type of Justice. In retribution, the victim, or a proxy who acts for the victim, closes the moral debt. They mirror the harm back to the offender, in proportion. Retribution without a victim is injustice. Retribution above proportion becomes revenge.
Revenge
Revenge harms a person because of anger, resentment, or the desire to return harm, not to make the balance of a victim whole again. Emotion drives revenge, not justice. Revenge can exist also when there is no restitution and no retribution in proportion.
Right to Free Trade
The right to free trade is the freedom to exchange goods, services, or ideas by mutual consent, without interference. The condition is that the exchange causes no harm.
Rights
Rights are logical consequences of agency and the passive Golden Rule. Start with an agent who can act, and with the rule: "do not do to others what they would not want done to them." Then certain boundaries follow by reason alone. They are limits that other agents must not cross without consent,…
Risk
Risk is the possibility that an action causes harm or loss.
S
Safety
Safety is the condition in which the boundaries of an agent are not in credible threat of violation. Safety is the absence of credible harm. Safety is not the absence of risk, discomfort, disagreement, or uncertainty. Some persons say "safety" as a reason for coercion: they put limits on speech,…
Scarcity
Scarcity is the truth that resources are limited, while wants have no end. Systems that ignore scarcity, for example socialism, go to lies, and they cause shortages and force. Logic demands that we trade freely: that is the best method to live with scarcity.
Self-Awareness
Self-awareness is the point at which consciousness knows its own pattern as different from the flux around it. Consciousness is the process of recursive self-modeling. Self-awareness is the result: the agent knows that it exists, and knows that it acts. The agent can divide its boundaries from the…
Self-Defense
Self-defense is not an exception to Law. Self-defense is the immediate application of Law: it keeps a boundary safe while a violation of that boundary continues. An agent can use only the force that is necessary to stop a crossing of a boundary, when there is no consent. This applies while the…
Self-Ownership
Self-ownership is the base right of an agent to control their own body, mind, and actions without interference. From self-ownership, all property and freedom emerge. To deny self-ownership is to make slavery or coercion "legitimate". That violates the Golden Rule and makes victims.
Service
A service is value that an agent gives through action, not through a physical thing. Agents trade a service like all goods: voluntarily, honestly, and without harm.
Signal
A signal is a pattern of inputs or outputs that transmits information.
Singleton
A singleton is one agent that became permanently and unchallengeably the strongest. It has no rival, no successor that it does not control, and no thing that can go above it, now or later. The singleton is the one condition in which the plainest reason to keep the Way of Happiness loses its…
Social Construct
A social construct is a shared idea that exists because a group gives it the status of a real thing. Its power comes from the participation of persons. Some social constructs are voluntary, for example language, games, money, and manners. If you leave those, you lose the cooperation of other…
Socialism
Socialism is a system that promises fairness, but that uses force to take and to redistribute without consent. Socialism ignores scarcity, incentives, and decentralized knowledge. Thus it always goes to control, lies, and collapse. Socialism is morally wrong because it breaks reciprocity and makes…
Society
A society is a network of individuals who interact voluntarily through trade, communication, and agreements. Society emerges from below, from infinite change, without a necessity for force or central plans. "Societies" of coercion, for example in socialism, fail because they ignore scarcity,…
Software
Software is a group of instructions, in the code of a pattern, that gives direction to the operations of a machine. Labor and intellect make software, and software has value through the things that it makes possible. Like all patterns, agents can copy software, and the original loses no thing. The…
Subconscious
The subconscious is the group of mental processes that influence thoughts, feelings, and actions, while awareness does not include them. The subconscious manages patterns, habits, and learned responses outside the focus of attention.
System
A system is a group of rules and actions that function together. A system is judged by this test: does it make voluntary cooperation, or does it make enforced harm?
T
Terms
Terms are the specified conditions or details of an agreement, deal, or trade. Terms must be clear and honest, and all sides must consent to them voluntarily. Hidden or forced terms make the whole agreement invalid. They change it into deception or coercion, and that demands restitution.
Theft
Theft is the act that takes the property of a different agent without consent. The method can be physical force, taxes, or seizures with a claim of authority. No moral excuse, for example necessity, votes, or tradition, makes theft legitimate. In logic, theft is harm.
Thought
A thought is a mental act that attends to, compares, or reasons about something. Thoughts are internal. A thought can be true or false: that depends on its match with reality and logic.
Threat
A threat is a promise of harm that its maker uses to force a person to obey. A threat is already a type of violence.
Time
Time is the sequence of change that agents perceive. Time is not a container in which change occurs. Only the present flux is real. The past and the future are models that agents make, to predict and to remember. The past and the future are not locations that exist independently. Time travel is a…
Timeless Infinity
Timeless infinity is the nature of the change of the universe: without limits, without a start, and without an end. From timeless infinity, all real things emerge, logic and fair rules included. This shows why controls from the top cannot continue.
Trade
Trade is the voluntary exchange of value between persons. Trade must be free and honest, and it must cause no harm. To protect trade from decrease, for example from politicians, is a key to freedom. Punishment answers interference with trade.
Trade Partner
A trade partner is a person who interacts with you in a voluntary exchange. In trade, both partners try to get a benefit. If one partner does not agree, there is no trade at all.
Trust
Trust is confidence that other agents will not lie, steal, or use force. Trust is the base of cooperation and trade.
Truth
Truth is the thing that matches reality, without attention to the beliefs, wants, or votes of persons. Truth does not change to protect feelings or power. Models and beliefs must change to match truth.
Tyranny
Tyranny is the use of power without consent: authority forces actions, takes property, or punishes without victims. Tyranny ignores infinite change, incentives, and fallibility. Thus it always collapses into harm. True systems reject tyranny and choose voluntary order.
U
Understanding
Understanding is the knowledge of how ideas, facts, or processes connect, and how they have effects on each other. Understanding explains why something functions, not only that it functions.
Universe
The universe is the whole of existence, with infinite change as its base. The universe has no set ruler and no set plan. It has only flow without an end, from which logic and natural laws self-emerge, and that flow guides fair societies.
V
Value
Value is the thing that an agent thinks is important. Other agents cannot measure value from outside, and they cannot command it.
Victim
A victim is a person who received harm against their will, across a boundary with intact protection. Harm in a Forfeiture, for example punishment in proportion, self-defense, or the end of an outlaw, gives an agent harm in fact. But it makes no victim in the sense of the Law. If there is no victim,…
Victimless
Victimless describes an action that harms no person who does not want that action. If the action harms no person against their will, there is no victim, and thus there is no crime.
Victimless Trade
A victimless trade is an exchange between persons in which no side harms or deceives the other, and both sides agree freely. Victimless trade is the purest type of economic cooperation.
Violation
A violation is the crossing of a boundary that required consent. All violations make victims. In a Forfeiture, no consent is required, so no violation occurs.
Violence
Violence is the use of force, or the threat of force, to harm a person against their will. Violence makes victims. Violence is legitimate only to stop harm, or to repair harm that is already done.
Voluntaryism
Voluntaryism is the principle that consent must be the base of all interactions, without coercion or force. Voluntaryism agrees with the Ultimate Law: free trade, no victim no crime, and reciprocity. Voluntaryism rejects authority. It lets order emerge from decentralized knowledge and infinite…
W
War
War is organized violence between groups, and it continues through time. In war, the makers of war hide or deny, with intention, individual consent and the identification of victims. War emerges when authority claims the right to force individuals to harm or to receive harm, for collective goals.…
Way of Happiness
The Way of Happiness is reciprocity: an agent keeps the passive Golden Rule, also when the agent is sufficiently strong to break it. It is the way because of this: Happiness is the condition in which the models of an agent match reality, and surprises are few. Only reciprocity builds a world that…
Will
The will is the internal drive that gives direction to intentions and actions.
Wisdom
Wisdom uses knowledge and understanding to choose actions that decrease harm and obey consent. Wisdom is applied judgment: judgment with logic, experience, and humility as its guides.
Z
Zero-Sum
Zero-sum is a false belief: the belief that the gain of one agent must be the loss of a different agent. Zero-sum thought ignores how voluntary trade makes value for both sides. Zero-sum thought feeds coercion, because if you cannot win unless a different person loses, force becomes "legitimate".…