A brief glossary of meta-ness

Meta:

• def: self-referential; referring to itself; of, about, or with respect to itself
• examples:
  • If you’re being honest about whether you can be honest in a particular situation, that’s meta-honesty.
  • If you’re having a conversation that’s about some conversation at hand, that’s meta-conversation. Maybe you’re talking with a friend about a football game, and they start getting very emotional; if you bring up the fact that they’re having the conversation in a very emotional way, you’d be having a meta-conversation.
  • If you’re writing a guide about how people can more effectively write guides about things, that’d be a meta-guide.
• more intuition:
  • Meta-ness can stack! You could talk about meta-meta-honesty (being honest about whether you’re being meta-honest), or meta-meta-conversation (having a conversation about some meta-conversation), or meta-meta-meta-meta-meta-converstaion (I’m not exactly sure what that would look like, but it’s theoretically possible).
  • You can also use “meta” as an adjective. You could describe a business that helps businesses which help businesses help businesses as being “very meta.”
  • Some people talk about meta as being “higher” or “above” or “outside” — this is sometimes true, but can sometimes be misleading.

Mesa:

• def: the opposite of meta; the thing being referred to by itself. This paper talks more about it, despite being a little bit goofy.
• examples:
  • If you’re having a conversation about a conversation about a conversation that was about apples, the second one (the conversation about a conversation that was about apples) would be mesa with respect to the first one (the conversation about a conversation about a conversation that was about apples); the third one (the conversation about apples) would be mesa with respect to the meta-conversation and the meta-meta-conversation.

Object:

• def: something that’s not meta with respect to anything; the most mesa thing.
• examples:
  • If you’re having a conversation about a conversation about a conversation that was about apples, the last one — the conversation about apples — is the object, to which the meta-conversation and meta-meta-conversation are meta. It’s mesa to everything else.

Meta-level:

• def: the extent to which something is meta. The first meta-level is always the level after the object-level; the second meta-level is always the level after the first one; etc.
• examples:
  • If you’re having a conversation about a conversation about a conversation that was about apples, the object-level is the conversation about apples, the first meta-level is the conversation about the conversation about the apples, the second meta-level is the conversation about the first meta-level, etc.
• more intuition:
  • People often talk about levels being “below” or “above” other levels — although sometimes not literally true, it helps to give an intuition. E.g. saying “that meta-level is so much lower than the one we’re on” would mean “that meta-level is many levels mesa with respect to the one we’re on.”

Words to-be-created:

• something that describes the level of meta (“the 15th meta-level of x” is a bit wordy, compared to e.g. “15-meta x” or something)
• something that describes in-between states — what about going 0.5 levels of meta?
• something that describes the whole structure — a “ladder” or “staircase” of meta-levels?