Bibliographic record
Abstract
Most Americans did not experience the tremendous upset that World War I caused in Europe. Korzybski had experienced the debacle of the Eastern Front, with its devastation of Poland and parts of Russia. He brought this memory with him when the Russian Army sent him to Canada and the United States in December, 1915, to oversee the acceptance of orders for military supplies. Throughout the chaotic years near the war's end, he kept asking himself, How could this be prevented? --M. Kendig Alfred Korzybski: Collected Writings 1920-1950, p.xxi THE DEVASTATION and social collapse caused by World War I (also called the Great War) led Alfred Korzybski to formulate general semantics, a system for more effective human evaluation. With this system, Korzybski hoped humankind would never again engage in such wanton and needless destruction. That destruction was brought about by nationalism, entangled alliances, narrow ethnic concerns, and desires for political gain--forces that are still with us today. Korzybski noted that human beings, using language and other symbols, have the ability to transmit information across time. As a result, each generation is able to benefit from the experience of previous generations. In order to contribute to this process, which Korzybski called time-binding, and with the hope that learning about the past can help avert large-scale conflicts in the future, I will map out some of the causes of World War I, and propose ten important cautionary general semantics lessons for the leaders of the world's nations. (Although World War I occurred nearly one hundred years ago, its legacy is more present than we may think. The volatile politics of the Middle East and of Balkan Europe stem directly from World War I and its immediate aftereffects. America's current preoccupation with championing democracy throughout the world is also a product of the Great War.) The Start of World War I: An Orgy of Declarations The precipitating event for World War I was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, on June 28, 1914. Ferdinand, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, was killed by the Black Hand--a Serbian nationalist secret society. Austria-Hungary's reaction to the death was to issue an ultimatum to Serbia, which, to the extent that it demanded the assassins be brought to justice, effectively violated Serbian sovereignty. Austria-Hungary expected Serbia to reject the severe terms of the ultimatum, thereby providing an excuse to launch a limited war against Serbia. Serbia had longstanding Slavic ties with Russia, but the Austro-Hungarian government did not think Russia would be drawn into the dispute, other than perhaps issuing a diplomatic protest. As a protection against the nearly-unimaginable possibility that Russia did declare war, Austria-Hungary sought assurances of support from Germany under a mutual alliance. Germany quickly agreed, and even encouraged Austro-Hungarian bellicosity. On July 28, 1914, Austria-Hungary rejected Serbia's reply to the ultimatum, which for the most part was quite placating, and declared war on Serbia. Bound by treaty to Serbia, the Russian army mobilized. Germany viewed the Russian mobilization as an act of war against Austria-Hungary, and declared war on Russia on August 1. France, bound by treaty to Russia, responded by declaring war against Germany, and by extension Austria-Hungary, on August 3. Germany quickly responded by invading neutral Belgium, so as to reach Paris by the shortest route. Britain, allied to France by a loosely worded treaty which implied a moral obligation to mutual defense, declared war on Germany on August 4. Britain was also obligated to defend Belgium by the terms of a seventy-five-year old treaty. Like France, Britain by extension was also at war with Austria-Hungary. As the war began, Britain's colonies and dominions abroad (e.g., Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, and the Union of South Africa) offered assistance. …
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.004 | 0.005 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.007 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".