"Wordness"

There is a polish word “słowność”. It literally means “wordness”, comes the word “słowo”, meaning word. There is no direct English equivalent, the closest being “dependability”. What is the relation between dependability and wordness then? It describes “reliably keeping one’s word”.

It’s different from dependability. Dependability means that other’s can depend on you, not only or exactly your word. For instance, a dependable friend or colleague is one that will be reliably and willingly be available help you and be effective about it. One can be dependable without ever giving one’s word about anything, whilst someone can be słowny by simply rarely making promises, making the two concepts orthogonal.

Similarly, wordness is not honesty or and sincerity. These describe not lying but do not emphasise “giving one’s word”. Honesty seems to establish a relationship between statements and some reasonable state of knowledge of the utterer, rather than a relationship between a promise and its fulfilment, as would be in the case of wordness.

The word “wordness” establishes a relationship between the promise given and the likelihood of it being fulfilled.

I believe that the fundamental unit of human collaboration are promises. In fact, I believe it is what makes us human. The fact that we can form explicit contracts where we not only describe future possible worlds but we instantiate them and all their modalities. No other animal forms contracts the clearly defines duties, rights or possible worlds. It is the fundamental unit that allows collaboration at scale. More importantly, unlike two animals who enter symbiosis, this is not established through repetition and building up of patterns slowly, like most cooperative strategies. This is literally established by agreeing on a set of future possible worlds and then instantiating them.

Something as trivial as saying “I will pick up bread on my way from work” and everyone can be sure that bread will be brought home in the evening has tremendous effects on coordination. It means that my family can buy cheese for dinner and set their alarm clocks slightly later as the morning trip to the baker will be made superfluous.

This is a trivial example in a familiar setting. However, the “I will pay rent for living on this property” requires exactly zero knowledge of the landlord’s intentions or preferences regarding spending. They could be saving up for a dental procedure or an engagement ring, and they are depending on that promise for their plans, without ever having had to share the plans.

By doing things you instantiate possible worlds. And by being słowny you can give your word on a possible world that you will instantiate, meaning others can already plan with that world in mind. In this way, słowność bridges the abstract and the real, allowing humans to collectively build futures. It is the foundation for scalable cooperation, a uniquely human trait that transforms trust into action.