Glossary
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Infrared Radiation | Infrared radiation consists of light whose wavelength is longer than the red color in the visible part of the spectrum, but shorter than microwave radiation. Climate Change Denial |
| Inoculation Theory | A psychological framework that explains how to make beliefs resistant to persuasion, much like a medical vaccine builds immunity to a disease. By exposing individuals to weakened counterarguments along with refutations, it triggers their cognitive defenses and prepares them to resist stronger persuasive attacks. Antiscience |
| Intelligent Design | The belief that at least some aspects of nature show evidence of intelligent, often supernatural, design. Evolution |
| Interpretability | Interpretability is the degree to which humans can understand why an AI system produced a given output. Artificial Intelligence |
| Lateral Reading | The practice of leaving a website or publication to search elsewhere and see how other reputable news outlets or Fact-Checking Sites are reporting the same story. Science |
| Laws | Scientific laws describe what happens in nature under specific conditions, often using mathematical formulas, while scientific theories explain why or how these phenomena occur. Science |
| Live Vaccine | A vaccine in which live virus is weakened (attenuated) through chemical or physical processes in order to produce an immune response without causing the severe effects of the disease. Live vaccines currently licensed in the United States include measles, mumps, rubella, varicella, rotavirus, yellow fever, smallpox, and some formulations of influenza, shingles, and typhoid vaccines. Also known as an attenuated vaccine. Vaccines |
| LLM | A large language model (LLM) is an AI model trained on massive amounts of text so it can predict the most appropriate next token (output). LLMs can be prompted, fine-tuned, or used as tool-calling agents, and they power many of the most popular AI tools you'll encounter, like chatbots and AI assistants. Artificial Intelligence |
| Logical Fallacies | The use of faulty reasoning (e.g., ad hominem attacks on scientists, appealing to emotion) to dismiss scientific findings. Antiscience |
| Machine learning (ML) | Machine learning is a subfield of artificial intelligence. Instead of computer scientists having to explicitly program an app to do something, they develop algorithms that let it analyze massive datasets, learn from that data, and then make decisions based on it. Artificial Intelligence |