Word.ws English Dictionary

thinkism

thinkism noun: the principle that any problem or technological obstacle can be solved by spending large amounts of effort in thinking about a solution.

Noun

thinkism (uncountable)

  1. The principle that any problem or technological obstacle can be solved by spending large amounts of effort in thinking about a solution.
    • Kevin Kelly, the Wired editor at large, says he admires Kurzweil but makes a well-argued rebuttal to what he calls "thinkism". This is, Kelly says, where we believe the main thing we lack in solving problems is not being able to think enough. So, if we put enough cycles in we can find the answer to...2008 October 1, Bobbie Johnson, “Kelly to Kurzweil: You're a total Thinkist”, in Alan Rusbridger, editor, The Guardian, London: Guardian News & Media, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 31...
    • Thinkism also works well in other limited domains beyond school. It works well in bureaucratic settings where all the rules are known and you're expected to apply them without question.2025 December 4, Daniel Lemire, “We see something that works, and then we understand it”, in Daniel Lemire's blog, archived from the original on 11 May 2026

Origin of thinkism

From think + -ism.

Questions about thinkism

What does thinkism mean?
Thinkism means the principle that any problem or technological obstacle can be solved by spending large amounts of effort in thinking about a solution.
What part of speech is thinkism?
Thinkism is a noun.

Words near thinkism in the dictionary

  1. thinking-cap
  2. thinking-caps
  3. thinkingly
  4. thinkingness
  5. thinkings
  6. thinkism
  7. thinko
  8. thinko'd
  9. thinkoed
  10. thinkoing
  11. thinkos

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: thinkism (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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