Keep the words precise as the vision grows
Definitions for this proposal and its mythology. Mission: the long-term direction that motivates the venture. Hypothesis: a proposed explanation that needs a clear relationship to evidence. Endpoint: the defined outcome used to assess a particular question. A mission can be expansive while an endpoint remains narrow; changing one does not silently change the others.
Definitions for this proposal and its mythology. This page expands the “Keep the words precise as the vision grows” chapter in the neuroscience collection.
Mission: the long-term direction that motivates the venture. Hypothesis: a proposed explanation that needs a clear relationship to evidence. Endpoint: the defined outcome used to assess a particular question. A mission can be expansive while an endpoint remains narrow; changing one does not silently change the others.
Model: a selected representation used to study some properties of a more complicated system. Organoid: a laboratory model whose identity and demonstrated features must be specified. Assembloid: an assembled model with integration that requires characterization. None of these words should serve as a shortcut to a complete adult brain, a recovered individual, or established personhood.
Recovery: a claim that must name the function, preparation, conditions, and duration involved. Repair: a proposed or demonstrated change evaluated against a relevant outcome. Rejuvenation: a term that requires an account of which age-associated features changed and why that change matters. Revival: the founding ambition whose intended meaning must be defined rather than inferred from a lower-level result.
Lich: a patron role in the mythology, expressing concentrated resources and the desire for continuity. Leech: a participant role used to examine agency, contribution, and exploitation. Lichen: the planetary living web and its imagined consciousness power. Likes: belief, enthusiasm, emotion, and shared recognition represented as a commoditized common ground. These are original metaphors rather than categories of biological worth.
Guild: the proposed distribution of work, expertise, care, critique, and authority across the fantasy classes. Charter: a set of commitments that requires enforceable processes to matter. Consent: a decision tied to a specified real activity and its conditions, not a blanket endorsement of a mission. Stewardship: responsibility for consequences that cannot be settled merely by ownership or payment.
Balance: the practice of examining relationships, constraints, shared gains, and remaining conflicts. Good vibes: conditions for trust, hope, respect, and voluntary participation that leave room for difficult truths. Progress: a defensible improvement in knowledge, capability, agency, care, or ecological responsibility. A claim of progress should identify who benefits, who bears the cost, what remains uncertain, and what the institution will do next.
Latin Lexicon (Glossarium Latinum): Currere / Concurrentia: to run or flow, and to run together in parallel; the Latin root of currency (money, commodities, operational concurrency, and the active running of things). Evocatio deorum: the polytheistic Roman geopolitical ritual of summoning away and adopting another civilization’s gods rather than waging endless theological war. Legati & Foedus: master diplomats and federated treaties, reflecting humanity’s optimal outcome as the most common, mediating species in the universe. Onus probandi: the burden of proof. Do ut des & Cui bono: “I give that you might give” and “to whose benefit?” These are tools for auditing patron bargains. Primum non nocere & Pacta sunt servanda: “first, do no harm” and “agreements must be kept.”
Open this exact section in the Necromancer dossier. The original chapter status is “Definitions for this proposal and its mythology.”
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