Ousiometrics: The Essence of Meaning

Lecture slides from Principles of Complex Systems. https://pdodds.w3.uvm.edu/pocs/ Ousiometrics is the measurement of essential meaning. We trace the history of measuring essential meaning and show how the most compact three dimensional framework is power-danger-structure and not valence-arousal-dominance. We show that word usage in real corprora reveals a bias towards low danger words, a revision of the Pollyanna Principle. We build an ousiometer. We make connections to a number of disparate phenomena.