"Ebne"

Recently, I invented a new word because there is a very real need for such a word. The word is 'ebne' which means 'Excellent But Not Enough'. If you want to change something you need to attack it. This is our usual dialectic thinking. We do not have an easy way of saying that something is excellent but not enough. The rear left wheel of a motor-car is excellent - but not enough for the functioning of a car. A chef who can cook the best omelette is excellent but not enough. Argument does have specific uses but as a way of exploring a subject it is far inferior to the parallel thinking of the Six Hats. This parallel thinking is far more constructive and meetings can take one tenth of the time. Organisations report that they have saved millions of dollars through their use of parallel thinking.

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Comment by Danny Stevens on August 24, 2010 at 14:50: That is a very timely neologism.

As a lateral thinker I often present the "beginning of thinking" and have highly intelligent critical thinkers try and shut it down with instant negativity. I have found PO an excellent response which, more often than not, lets me move the subject to how to do thinking together instead of shutting down the process.

Now I can see myself quietly uttering "ebne" in those situations where people take on the "this is great so don't criticise it position".

What about the "if it ain't broke don't fix it" attitude? "Upgrade"? "Stepup"?

Comment by Ken Sexe on January 17, 2010 at 20:07: This is wonderful, I can definitely see myself using this...I get a lot of mileage from "ludecy" when I discuss organizational thinking (which by the way I have not found as a subject at a college yet should for similar reasons that psychology is not thinking).

I was thinking recently about a word that would mean "something that someone does due to bounded rationality within the system they interact with". Has any words like this been created?

Comment by LoL on May 18, 2009 at 1:49: Dammit!

I can't remember who it was who came up with a set of symbols for representing concepts for which we have, as yet, no word - Someone like Newton ... or Hermann Hesse

But, obviously, Douglas Adams' Meaning of Liff is a latterday contender for inclusion in the same set of 'symbols'

Also, bizarrely, whoever it was who wrote The Perishers' Dictionary ... (which included such gems as 'Zinc: The place to wash the zaucepans' and 'Aardvark: That which many consider the younger generation to be no longer capable of')

Sadly, I can't remember which of those two august publications it was in which I discovered 'Ible: Clever but lazy', but it does resonate very strongly with 'ebne' for me - Were you, by any cahnce, responsible for 'Spafe: Spacious and safe'?