On the semantics of uniqueness

I've mused occasionally for a while about the semantics of the concept of “uniqueness”. I've seen it asserted that uniqueness is essentially a boolean quality: something is either unique or it isn't. There's no comparative or superlative form of unique: uniquer, uniquest (although having written that, those sound pretty cool!). And the first two definitions from Merriam-Webster seem to agree with this: “being the only one : sole; being without a like or equal : unlike anything or anyone else : unequaled”.

But when I find myself pondering the concept, it feels like there should be degrees of uniqueness. For one thing, if we're talking about real objects, then every thing larger than a single molecule is technically unique at some scale. But that renders the concept rather useless as a word. If have a set of five “identical” rubber ball, four white balls and one blue one (⚪⚪⚪⚪🔵), it makes sense to describe the blue one as unique compared to the set of all of them, even if they technically are not all perfectly identical (and thus are all technically “unique”). So there's some tolerance built-in, within which we consider things to be identical for the sake convenience. That's fine – we live in the real world, not an ideal one.

Now consider a set of five balls, all of different colors. ⚪🔵🟢🟠🟣 It makes sense to describe each one (within the set) as being unique: they're all different from each other member of the set in terms of color, which is a concept we generally attach importance to. (Though I just realized I haven't considered color-blind people in this example; I should remember that for the future.)

But what if we add an elephant to that set? ⚪🔵🟢🟠🟣🐘

Every item in the set is still technically unique – but it certainly feels as if the elephant is somehow more unique than the other items. It's more different from all of them than any of them are from each other. Remove any one item from the set and the diversity (in pretty much any metric) will be at a global minimum when that item is the elephant. Calling any of the balls unique – while technically true – seems somewhat understated in the face of the literal elephant in the room set.

I was prepared to argue this point more, until as I was looking unique up in the online Merriam-Webster dictionary I noticed a third definition, and a usage guide. The third definition reads “very special or notable : unusual”, and the usage guide notes that:

Unique is often cited as a word that should never be modified by terms like somewhat or very. The thinking is that unique properly only describes what is unequaled or otherwise distinct from all others. Just as something cannot be more "only" than another, it cannot be more unique than another. This logic fails, however, when we consider that unique can also mean "unusual" or "rare," as in "a unique opportunity" or "a unique feature." In these cases, phrases like "very unique" are standard.

 “Very”, I would argue, is just an intensifier adverb like “more” is, so I think it's ultimately fine to consider something more or less unique; it's expressing something about the ratio of how similar it is to other things in whatever set we're including it in vs. how similar those other set members are to each other. (You could probably come up with a mathematical definition for this in terms of set theory, but I'm not sure I know enough about it to do so.) But that's just my take on it, and it is, ultimately, semantics. Feel free to chime in in the comments! A hui hou!

Creating props for the game table: crafting an alien laser weapon from scratch

We're fast approaching the end of the spring semester, and I swear I've been doing things besides teaching and woodworking this year…but I have another project to show off. This one's a bit different, since it came about from an RPG campaign I'm playing in. A friend of mine has been running a years-long series of campaigns in the same homebrew setting using a number of different game systems where the events of one campaign become the background and history for the next, as the world changes and adjusts based on the players' actions. Perhaps I'll talk about it more at some point, but in the current campaign (using the Draw Steel system) we found ourselves fighting off a murderous hit squad of a mysterious alien race from the heavens, who fought with weapons of yellow light.

One of those weapons which my character recovered after we survived the attack was described as a laser chakram which could be thrown like a boomerang and also used to fight hand-to-hand (perfect for my sneaky dagger-wielding Shadow). As I was driving home after the session, I suddenly found an idea of what it might look like popping into my head…and then found I couldn't get it out of my head. It took me most of a weekend working obsessively to fashion it out of wood and paint, but I think the result is well worth it.

A chakram would normally be a single circular piece of metal, but in my head I saw an idea of a two-part weapon which could be split into semicircles for hand-to-hand fighting, then combined into one for throwing. I haven't done this yet, but I'd like to eventually countersink some magnets in the two bases so that they can snap together and simulate my vision for it. I realize it's hard to tell the scale in these pictures, but I can comfortably fit a hand into each half to hold on to it.

This is actually the first woodworking project I did without a pattern to follow (before the ones I mentioned in an earlier post), and it's remarkable how straight the path from my head to finished product was. I had to buy a router to trim away wood to make the laser “blades” stick out from the thicker board, and it turned out to work pretty much exactly like I'd expected it to (I'd been planning on getting one anyway, this was just a good reason to speed it up). Making the round cuts required a jigsaw, one of my favorite power tools but also one I hadn't had much occasion to use before. I realized after I'd made the cuts that I had a better jigsaw blade for fine cutting than the default one which came with the saw, so they could be slightly better, but as long as you don't look too closely it's fine.

Here's a shot of them on the campaign map. And yes, the laser portions do glow in the dark – this is me we're talking about, after all (you can just see a hint of it in this photo). It took several attempts over a few days, but I eventually figured out a way to mix my yellow glow-in-the-dark pigment with a regular yellow pigment in such a way as to look good in both light and darkness. I also took the chance to use some of the metallic paints sitting around in my paint collection, since I don't usually have much use for them in my paintings. The semi-random circuitry-inspired detailing was a late addition as they were coming together to break up the visual monotony of the design, and I'm really happy with how it turned out.

This was a very interesting project for me with how I didn't really plan it, it just sort of…happened. I did feel a bit like one of Dwarf Fortress's dwarfs forging an artifact in the grip of a Strange Mood, hauling materials to a workshop and laboring on a great project until it's finished (fitting, in a way, for my character who is also a dwarf). I haven't been similarly inspired again yet, but it did sort of open my eyes to what I could accomplish with what I have. Will there be more like this in the future? We'll find out, I guess! A hui hou!

Edit (4/29/26): It took some work, but I managed to get some photos of the blades glowing in low light:

It's very hard to get the same effect in a photo compared to seeing it, but hopefully this gives a feel for what it's like.