paper tiger · untested
Ask PrometheusA thing whose reach others read as wide while it is narrow, so its walls on them hold only until someone tests them.
Paper tiger (noun) means: A thing whose reach others read as wide while it is narrow, so its walls on them hold only until someone tests them. It emerges from reach, model, others, wide: Others' models set walls on themselves out of a reach that is not there; the power is real exactly as long as no one acts to check it, and the first test ends it all at once. In the EmergenceLexicon it sits at computed level 16, chaining down to the four foundations (space, time, energy, pattern).
ordinarily means: something that looks threatening but has no real strength
Examples
- Mao used 'paper tiger' in 1946 for the United States and its atomic bomb: apparently overwhelming, ineffective against a determined opponent. politics
Emergence
through: Others' models set walls on themselves out of a reach that is not there; the power is real exactly as long as no one acts to check it, and the first test ends it all at once.
- power held entirely in others' models
- walls that last until tested
- an ending that arrives in one step
Chain to foundations
full chain as text (411 steps)
- paper tigerL16
- reachL13
- possibilityL12
- windowL7
- wallL8
- setL9
- enterL3
- actionL4
- modelL9
- othersL2
- wideL4
- narrowL5
- wallL8
- testL10
- reputationL15
- powerL14
- holdL13
- readL7
- seeL6
- informationL6
- entitiesL4
- someoneL7
- timeL0
- reachL13
Neighborhood
Concepts that depend on this one above; what it is built from below.
Relations
| contrasts-with | reputation.social-model | reputation is any model others hold; a paper tiger is reputation for reach it lacks |
| contrasts-with | sleeping-giant.unread | the inverse: reach that others see and the self does not |
| contrasts-with | sandbagging.understated | OTHERS-READ over vs under |