Grace Kind

Negation in Ideonomy

May 4, 2024

A key undertaking in ideonomy is the enumeration of ideonomic operators - methods of creating, combining, or otherwise transforming ideas. Just as one might use addition and subtraction to manipulate numbers, one might use ideonomic operators to manipulate ideas.

I've previously explored substitution as an operation that one can perform on a phenomenon to generate a new (existent or non-existent) phenomenon. Here I'll explore a related idea - negation. Negation, or inversion, is the operation of finding the "opposite" of a phenomenon.

For example, one might ask: "What is the opposite of democracy?" Here are some ideas:

📋 Opposites of Democracy

(Note, some of these are novel terms - I'll explain them below.)

How was this list generated?

The first step was considering "core" or "definitional" properties of democracy:

📋 Properties of Democracy

Then, for each of the properties above, I asked the question "What is the opposite of [property]?".

Democracy is a form of government.

The opposite of government is no government, aka anarchy.

In a democracy, power is distributed among all people.

The opposite of distribution of power is concentration of power, aka autocracy.

In a democracy, the most popular laws are implemented.

The opposite of popular lawmaking is unpopular lawmaking, aka minoritarianism.

The word "Democracy" originates from dēmos ‘the people’ + -kratia ‘power, rule’

The opposite of rule by people is rule by non-people. Some examples of this are automatocracy (rule by machines), zoocracy (rule by animals), or phytocracy (rule by plants).

The word "Democracy" originates from dēmos ‘the people’ + -kratia ‘power, rule’

The opposite of power is weakness. An Greek-derived neologism for a "weakness of the people" might be demoastheneia.

In a democracy, all participants have an equal voice.

The opposite of equal voice is when some people have more voting power than others, aka weighted democracy. In some cases this may be equivalent to minoritarianism.

Putting it all together

So, the overall algorithm for negating phenomenon P is:

  1. Identify the core or definitional properties of P.
  2. For each of these properties, ask "What is the opposite of [property]?"
  3. Return the list of opposites.

As you may have noticed, negation is actually a specific form of substitution- the key differentiator is the influence of the property being subsituted. The more influential the property, the more substitution looks generates an "opposite".

❗️ Negation is the subsitution of a property that is "definitional" or "core" to a phenomenon.

Of the ideas above, I think the most interesting one is "demoastheneia." So, let's ask Claude Opus to expand on it:

💡 Demoastheneia

Q: What does demoastheneia mean?

Claude Opus: Demoastheneia is a term derived from Greek, which literally translates to 'people weakness.' It refers to a perceived decline or deterioration in the strength, vitality, or character of a population or society. The term is often used in the context of discussing societal or cultural decadence, where there is a belief that the moral fiber, traditional values, or overall quality of a population has weakened over time. This concept is sometimes invoked in political, philosophical, or sociological discussions about the state of a particular society or civilization.

Note that this is a completely new word that Claude is "hallucinating" a definition for.

Notating Negation

Note: I'm co-opting some set theory notation here; if this becomes confusing I might change this in the future.

Some basic notation for negation might be the "not" operator: ¬ So, the list above could be labeled as. ¬Democracy.

Note that unlike negation in mathematics, where each number has a single opposite, in ideonomy, each phenomenon may have many opposites, depending on the dimensions by which the idea was negated. Therefore the "cardinality" of the output should be greater than or equal to one: |¬P| >= 1

In math and logic, negation is an involution - applying it twice will give you the value you started with. In ideonomy, negation is "partially involutional"; applying it twice should give you a set of phenomena, one of which is the phenomenon you started with: P ∈ ¬(¬P).

For example, one of the opposites of anarchy is democracy.

Try It Yourself

I encourage you to try this ideation process by yourself by considering the following questions:

Last updated: June 28, 2025