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Semantic Axis is an open-source tool for tracking how language moves across meaning-space over time. Users can define semantic poles, compare groups, and see both directional movement and the volume of text being measured.
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Remember when everyone was talking about Bibi Netanyahu being dead? Before we even ask if its a psyop or organic (or both!) we could try to understand how that conversation affects the broader discourse. How does having this story on the scene affect other stories? Who would have an incentive to amplify it and who to diminish it?
Another example: do climate doom and AI doom discourse amplify or diminish each other? If you are an activist for one group, but don’t know how these interact, you cannot make intelligent choices. Are they zero-sum? Or uncorrelated? Or some other relationship?
A third: the discourse on homosexuality has radically changed in the last 20 years. What other cultural trends happened right before, during and after? How do they relate? Can we set up predictions of other future taboos being broken? Is it possible to engineer such a thing?
Right now, the tools to measure the data that would answer these questions are only in the hands of powerful entities like nation states and big tech. Semantic Axis is a public tool that will allow anyone to do this. By giving the world the capacity to easily measure semantic spaces, we can create a new knowledge market where we all become more aware and wise about our collective language.
This project began with an original idea by Defender of Basic. I loved the idea and saw that it could be expanded.
The functional power of this tool is in its distribution. By crowdsourcing the research done with a tool like this, our collective intelligence and awareness of our own use of language grows.
My part here is: concept development, product design, writing specs, thinking through the dashboard logic, creating early mockups, and project-managing the build with Leo, the engineer implementing it
https://github.com/leo-guinan/semax-app
That’s Leo’s page where there are a few Semantic-Axis things if you snoop around.
Work in progress.
The project is intended to be open-source. Some materials are public or can become public; others may remain internal while the tool is still being built.
I don’t see memetics and education as two distinct topics. Here are some musings I’ve written. They aren’t directly related to Semantic Axis.
https://shadowrebbe.substack.com/p/touch-the-truth
https://shadowrebbe.substack.com/p/its-impossible-to-teach-people-to