Epsilon Lexicon

Epsilon Theory Glossary

BITFD — Burn. It. The. F#$k. Down. Our ET call for systemic change of society led from the bottom up.

Cartoon — The selective (re)presentation of a selective presentation of information.
- Virtue Signaling...Or Why Clinton is in Trouble
- The Icarus Moment

Common Knowledge

Common Knowledge — Information that everyone knows that everyone knows.
- Sheep Logic
- Harvey Weinstein and the Common Knowledge Game

Coyote — Smart people who miss the forest for the trees. They excel at the local game, but fail the larger social game.
- Too Clever by Half

Fiat News — The presentation of opinion as fact.
- Fiat Money, Fiat News
- The Fiat News Index

Industrially Necessary

Industrially Necessary — The presentation of a necessary aspect of mass society as a desirable aspect of mass society.
- The Industrially Necessary Egg
- The Industrially Necessary Dr. Tedros

Meme — The building blocks of narrative; ideas with a virus-like lifecycle.
- This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things
- Controlling Your Cartoon: Nike and the Art of the Meme

Missionary — A famous person who creates common knowledge by stating something that everyone believes everyone else heard.
- A Game of Sentiment
- When Does the Story Break

Narrative —The overarching ideas and stories that shape how we understand new information.
- The Manifesto
Narrative Machine — The use of natural language processing (NLP) technologies to measure and visualize narratives.
- Inception
- The Narrative Machine

Nudge/Nudging — From the Thaler/Sunstein book, a framing of a social issue by governments or corporations that leads to a desired political or economic response.

Raccoon – The scammers, con artists, hucksters, thieves and criminals who infest financial services.
- Too Clever by Half

Rhinoceros — From the Ionesco play, someone who is transformed into an unthinking brute, typically along political party lines.
- The Welding Shut of the American Mind
- The Long Now Pt 2: Make, Protect, Teach

The Long Now — The pulling forward of the future through debt and narrative to create a world where only the present matters.
- The Long Now Home Page

Widening Gyre — From the Yeats poem, a world where political polarization and economic disparities advance uncontrollably.
- Things Fall Apart Pt. 1