Semantic Drift
Changes in meaning that cause knowledge to become obsolete or misleading
Semantic drift is the category of drift phenomena where the meaning of terms shifts over time or across communities, causing claims to become obsolete, misleading, or falsely contradictory.
Forms
- Definition Drift — when a term's meaning shifts across time or contexts
- Meaning Loss — when a claim becomes obsolete because its terms have changed
Why It Matters
Semantic drift creates false contradictions: two sources may appear to disagree when they are actually using the same word for different concepts. It also creates false agreement: sources may appear to concur when they mean different things by the same term.
In a Dialectical Graph, semantic drift is tracked by separating definitions from claims. When a term changes meaning, old claims can be marked as obsolete with pointers to the definition changes, preserving historical context without polluting current knowledge.
Related
- Drift Phenomena — the parent category
- Environmental Drift — when the world changes
- System Drift — when the knowledge system degrades