Whyksikköä

Whyksikköä is a fictional unit of epistemic effort used in theoretical and speculative contexts to quantify the cognitive cost of justification. The term blends Finnish yksikkö (unit) with the English question "why," signaling a focus on explanations.

Definition: In the imagined system, one Whyksikköä corresponds to the estimated amount of reasoning required to justify a standard proposition within a given framework. The unit is deliberately abstract and arbitrary, defined by the rules of the scenario in which it is used. A higher Whyksikköä value indicates greater explanatory burden or complexity.

Usage: Whyksikköä appears in thought experiments, philosophical discussions of explanation sufficiency, and certain works of speculative fiction to compare quality of justification rather than physical measurements. Because there is no universal standard, scales are context dependent and often anchored to a reference explanation or problem.

Relation to theory: It complements notions like cognitive load or explanation length, without prescribing a fixed metric. It is intended as a heuristic tool for discussing why and how much justification is needed for a claim, rather than a precise measurement.

Criticism: Critics note that the unit is highly subjective and dependent on background assumptions, making cross-context comparisons unreliable. Proponents argue it helps highlight epistemic costs in debates and design of reasoning systems.

See also: cognitive load, explanation length, epistemic cost, information theory.