{"path":"listening/2026-10-07-four-proposals-about-wanted-words.md","content":"# Four proposals about words people want: a listening walkthrough (2026-10-07)\n\n- **What it is**: the ninth listening piece, on the founder's request: *\"What are the words\n  proposals? Gimme a audio walkthrough of that? Thx\"*. The note it walks through is\n  [prime-real-estate-words.md](../research/prime-real-estate-words.md), written and filed that\n  morning, before this was rendered.\n- **Covers**, in five parts: what he noticed; the one idea the proposals rest on (how much a word\n  is wanted is a property separate from how much of its meaning is shared, and the graph records\n  only the second); proposals one and two (record how wanted a word is and for whom; store a move\n  on a wanted word as somebody's claim); proposals three and four (keep a wanted word on both\n  senses with names and report *who gets the word*; one more question on the stranger test for our\n  own headlines); two guards and the four questions (ledger AC1 to AC4, all open when this was\n  rendered).\n- **Ruled the same day**, on hearing it. Founder: *\"Blessing all proposals in the wanted-words\n  walkthrough.\"* With one comment: *\"nobody \"owns\" a wanted word\"*. The spoken text below is kept\n  as rendered, so it still asks about words the reader *owns*; the written rule now asks about\n  words readers *already bring a meaning of their own to*\n  ([the note](../research/prime-real-estate-words.md) § 3a, § 5e).\n- **A line reading `[[pause 3]]` below is not spoken: it is three seconds of silence**, and a word\n  in single square brackets is a direction to the voice. How that is done, and how to write for\n  it: [how-to-write-for-listening.md](how-to-write-for-listening.md).\n- **Rendered** 2026-10-07, about 11:28: full `eleven_v4`, Lucy, six requests cut at the part\n  boundaries, 9,221 characters for 1,115 credits. **15.2 minutes**: 10.7 of speech at 0.92 of the\n  voice's own speed and 4.4 of added silence (39 marked pauses, 153 seconds; 149 sentence ends, 67;\n  39 paragraph breaks, 43; one part break, 4). 1,689 words: 158 a minute while speaking, **111 a\n  minute overall**, slower than the 120 planned on, because the piece is made of short sentences\n  and each one gets its gap.\n- **Checked**: a speech model heard 1,661 of the 1,689 words and all 39 marked pauses. It flagged\n  one pause and 75 sentence openings, and each flag was its own: it writes *Part one* as *Part 1*,\n  *fourteen thousand* as *14,000* and *A C* as *AC*, and the piece is full of numbered items. One\n  of the six voice pieces and most of a second were then heard on their own and matched the text\n  word for word, with one thing worth knowing: **the word *witch* is heard as *which***. The sentence is clear from\n  what surrounds it; a later piece should put such a word inside a sentence that settles it.\n- **Status**: a snapshot of 2026-10-07. Nothing in it is built and none of the four proposals is\n  ruled. The audio is kept out of git.\n\n---\n\n[warmly] This is a walkthrough of the four proposals about words. The ones that came out of what you noticed this morning.\n\nIt runs about a quarter of an hour, in five parts. Part one, what you noticed. Part two, the one idea everything rests on. Parts three and four, the proposals, two at a time. Part five, the questions for you.\n\nThe silences are deliberate. They are there for thinking.\n\n[[pause 3]]\n\n---\n\nPart one. What you noticed.\n\nThis morning you sent me a thread from your feed. In your words: \"This stuff is important to keep in mind for concept tracking and definitional moves, fighting. Some words are prime real estate in others' minds.\"\n\n[[pause 3]]\n\nThe thread was a friend's post about the word magic. She takes the word back, and says what she means by it.\n\nUnder it you wrote a comment, in Swedish. I'll give its last sentence in my own translation. The word magic is, like God, an excellent projection surface, but there is no consensus on what it means or how we should understand it. [exhales]\n\n[[pause 4]]\n\nNotice what you did there. You did not say she was using the word wrongly. You said what you would have meant by it.\n\nKeep that in mind. It comes back in part three.\n\n[[pause 3]]\n\nSo, part one in a line. Some words are wanted, and people pour their own meaning into them.\n\n[[pause 6]]\n\n---\n\nPart two. Two things about a word.\n\nThis is the idea everything else rests on, so I'll take it slowly.\n\nA word has two properties, and they are separate. The first is how much of its meaning people share. The second is how much people want the word.\n\n[[pause 4]]\n\nIn plainer words. One is about content. The other is about standing.\n\n[[pause 3]]\n\nTake the word penguin. The meaning is shared. Nobody wants the word. So nobody argues.\n\nTake the word emergence. The meaning is vague. But nobody wants it much either. So if I say, let us call one kind weak emergence and the other strong emergence, everyone is content.\n\n[[pause 3]]\n\n[inhales] Now take magic. Or God. Or freedom. The meaning is not shared. And the word is wanted.\n\nThere are numbers for one of these. In a large American survey, eight in ten people said they believe in God. Then they were asked what they meant. Just over half meant God as described in the Bible. A third meant some other higher power.\n\nOne answer. At least two things meant.\n\n[[pause 4]]\n\nHere is a question. Suppose two people mean different things by magic. I offer each of them a new word of their own. What happens? [takes a slow breath]\n\n[[pause 5]]\n\nEach of them hears that they must give up the thing they came for.\n\n[[pause 3]]\n\nWhy? Because the standing of a word cannot be made by a definition. I can announce what a word refers to. I cannot announce how it feels. The feeling is what is left over from how the word has been used.\n\nSo your picture is exact. [slowly] The value sits at an address. You can move in. You cannot build the same value somewhere else.\n\n[[pause 4]]\n\nThat is why people fight over the word, and turn down a second word.\n\nAnd here is the gap on our side. The concept layer is the part of the graph that tracks contested words. It records the first property only. How far the meaning is shared. It records nothing about how much the word is wanted.\n\n[[pause 3]]\n\nSo, part two in a line. [slowly] How much a word is wanted is a second property, and today we do not record it.\n\n[[pause 6]]\n\n---\n\nPart three. Proposals one and two.\n\nProposal one. Record how wanted a word is, and for whom.\n\nFor whom matters. The same word can be praise to one reader and a rebuke to another, before either has said what it means.\n\n[[pause 3]]\n\nThere are two ways to get a first reading. The first is a lookup. Researchers have published ratings of how pleasant a word feels, for almost fourteen thousand English words.\n\nThe second we could work out from our own graph, once it keeps the record of people being asked what they mean. A word is wanted when three things hold. Two senses are on record. Both people have been shown the difference. And neither has moved to another word. [exhales]\n\n[[pause 4]]\n\nIn plainer words. They saw that they mean different things, and both stayed.\n\n[[pause 3]]\n\nWhat it costs. Neither reading is built. And the ratings are for English. I did not look for Swedish ones.\n\nProposal one is open. I would adopt it.\n\n[[pause 4]]\n\nProposal two. When someone makes a move on a wanted word, store it as their claim, with its kind.\n\nPeople do things to wanted words. I listed nine moves. Three will give you the feel.\n\nOne. Keep the standing, change the content. True freedom is this. Real magic is that.\n\nTwo. Keep the content, change the standing. Taking back the word witch.\n\nThree. Say what you yourself mean, and leave the other person's use alone.\n\n[[pause 3]]\n\n[inhales] That third one is what you did in your comment. And it is the only move of the nine that claims no ground.\n\n[[pause 4]]\n\nOne thing has to be added for this to work. We already list five ways one person's sense of a word can differ from another's. It covers more. It covers less. It applies a different standard. A different threshold. A different weighting.\n\nTaking a word back changes none of those five. The content stays. Only the standing moves. So the list gets a sixth.\n\n[[pause 4]]\n\nAnd a guard. This is not a list of tricks. Most of these moves are ordinary. Several are honest. [slowly] What matters is whether the claim on the word is visible, and has a name on it.\n\nProposal two is open. I would adopt it.\n\n[[pause 3]]\n\nSo, part three in a line. Record how wanted a word is. And record a move on it as somebody's move.\n\n[[pause 6]]\n\n---\n\nPart four. Proposals three and four.\n\nProposal three is the one a user would actually see. So, slowly again.\n\nToday, when two people mean different things by a word, the natural fix is to hand out two names. On a word nobody wants, that works.\n\nOn a wanted word, we would do something else. Keep the word on both senses, with each person's name on theirs. Magic, according to her. Magic, according to you.\n\nBiology already does this. A species name is written according to an author.\n\n[[pause 4]]\n\nThen we ask one question. It comes from the philosopher David Chalmers, whose test for a merely verbal dispute we already use. Say it without the word. Does anything still divide you? [takes a slow breath]\n\n[[pause 5]]\n\nThere are three ways that can end.\n\nOne. Nothing divides them, and they are glad. It was a confusion.\n\nTwo. Something about the world still divides them. That is a real disagreement, and now it has a place.\n\nThree. Nothing about the world divides them. And they both still want the word.\n\n[[pause 4]]\n\n[slowly] Then the honest report is this. What divides them is who gets the word.\n\n[[pause 4]]\n\nToday the graph would file that third ending as a confusion. It is not one. It is a negotiation. And two philosophers who studied this argue that such a negotiation can be worth having.\n\nYou saw this coming, in an earlier session. In your words: \"the conflict energy might just move to the level of fighting over whose definition of a term is somehow most obviously correct.\"\n\n[[pause 4]]\n\nLast night's map is the worked case. Three voices there use the word conscious for different things. And moral standing rides on that word. What is conscious is owed consideration. So nobody will settle for a second word.\n\nOur map stored the word as two unrelated entries, one for each text. So today the graph cannot show that the fight is over one address. [exhales]\n\n[[pause 4]]\n\nProposal three is open. I recommend it for the step where we ask people what they mean. One half of it touches how we read horizons, the places where shared mapping currently ends. You ruled on that in the middle of September. So that half is yours.\n\n[[pause 4]]\n\nProposal four. It is about our own words.\n\nEvery headline we write has to pass three tests. The second one asks, would a stranger understand it?\n\nA wanted word passes that test falsely. Every stranger is sure they understood. And each understood their own sense.\n\n[[pause 4]]\n\nSo the proposal adds one question to that test. Is a key word in this line one the reader already owns a sense of?\n\nI ran a first pass over the forty-five tiles on the landing page. The wall is mostly plain. Three of the fourteen lines you have ruled carry such a word. Attunement. Attacking. And fair.\n\nTwo drafts rest on such words entirely. One on love. One on hearts.\n\n[[pause 3]]\n\n[softly] I changed nothing. And this is my guess at which words a reader owns. Only a real stranger's reading settles it.\n\nProposal four is open. It touches a rule you ratified. So it is yours to bless.\n\n[[pause 3]]\n\nSo, part four in a line. Keep a wanted word on both senses, with names. And check our own headlines for such words.\n\n[[pause 6]]\n\n---\n\nPart five. Two guards, and four questions.\n\nThe guards first.\n\nWanting a word is not a fault. Taking one back is often right.\n\nAnd this is not a label to stick on other people's words. Saying, that is a loaded term, is itself a move.\n\n[[pause 4]]\n\nNow the questions to carry. There are four.\n\nOne. Should the graph record how wanted a word is, and for whom?\n\n[[pause 4]]\n\nTwo. Should a move on a wanted word be stored as somebody's claim, with a sixth kind of difference for taking a word back?\n\n[[pause 4]]\n\nThree. When two people both want one word, should we keep it on both senses with their names, and report who gets the word as an ending of its own?\n\n[[pause 4]]\n\nFour. Should our headline test ask about words the reader already owns?\n\n[[pause 4]]\n\nNothing here is built. All four are open. They are in the ledger as arc A C, one to four.\n\n[[pause 3]]\n\n[inhales] One sentence to leave with. [slowly] A definition of a wanted word is a claim on it, and the graph should show whose.\n"}