for - key insight - key question - why did US foreign policy against China switch only in 2014? - Yanis Varoufakis

for - Yanis Varoufakis - talk - in China - Geopolitics and the US dollar - adjacency - geopolitics - China and US - why did the US start a Cold War with China around 2014? - US switched from surplus to deficit country - Henry Kissinger's role - US needs to be hegemonic - to manage the deficit - and keep everyone exporting goods to the US

Summary - (see below)

adjacency - between - Yanis Varoufakis - China US cold war - the importance of the years 2014 - 2015 - Henry Kissinger - surplus economy to deficit economy - techno feudalism - cloud capital - cloudist - adjacency relationship - Yanis Varoufakis gives an insightful talk to Chinese officials about - the reason behind the US cold war with China, - how it is independent of which political party is in power, - eliminates many other reasons put forth - how's this single reason drives so much of geopolitics and US hegemony - why its continuation will destroy any chance of the global collaboration not required to prevent climate change disaster for our entire civilization - a strategy to change direction towards re-establishing healthy relationships between nation states that includes activating the social democrats within the United States - The key observation that explains the cold war with China, - An observation from a Henry Kissinger colleague replying to a solicitation for answers to a question Kissinger posed for his team - Kissinger realized that during his role in the US government, the US would soon switch from a country with a net surplus to ones with a net deficit, and this had existential consequences - No country has ever have a long term deficit and survived - Kissinger was fishing for solutions from his team - One team member suggested tripling the deficit but becoming the main currency for global trade - This is the plan that was adopted - The US went from a surplus country to a deficit around 2014-2015 - It forced the US to be hegemonic and control the entire global currency for trade - China threatens this with a new digital superhighway

for - book - The Destiny of Civilization - from - Substack article - A global history of societal regulation - Why commons-based institutions now need to regulate the market and state, ‘cosmo-locally’ - Michel Bauwens

from - Substack article - A global history of societal regulation - Why commons-based institutions now need to regulate the market and state, ‘cosmo-locally’ - Michel Bauwens - https://hyp.is/ID3F7KiwEe-26QsBOrdtlQ/4thgenerationcivilization.substack.com/p/a-global-history-of-societal-regulation

for - depolarizing politics - Democrats - why they lost to Trump - 2024 US elections - Why Trump won - Ananpour & Co. - interview - Michael Sandel - Why Trump won - Why the Democrats lost

about the professionalisation of medicalisation and science (like Bignon) lower class healers

when other drugs were prohibited so they had to turn to this

bought by foreigners and immagrants

mexico-US connection. but it also seemed like they didn't really like drugs before?

for - evolutionary biology - human culture - why it is dominant - openendedness

summary - the claim of this paper is that culture is not something unique to humans, but what is is - our open-ended understanding of the world that allows us to fractally nest many different subtasks.

for - the word "sacred" - why I prefer this to "spiritual" - John Churchill

This is why invite people to set up a 501c3 with FSC bylaws - it is adulting

https://www.derstandard.at/story/3000000240651/klima-overshoot-gibt-es-ein-zurueck-nach-15-grad-celsius

Nature-Editorial: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-03266-9

Tapping to the MMT theory, if a 501c3 is not taxed, then why does it need dollars??? We are close to some understanding some fundamental incoherencies

for - from - recommendation - from - Michel Bauwens - on Fair Share Commons chat thread, 2024 Oct 17 - context Karl Marx liberation of the individual - to - substack article - Why Human (Contributive) Labor remains the creative principle of human society - Michel Bauwens article details - title: From Modes of Production to the Resurrection of the Body: A Labor Theory of Revolutionary Subjectivity & Religious Ideas" (2016) - author: Benjamin Suriano

to - Substack article - Why Human (Contributive) Labor remains the creative principle of human society - Michel Bauwens - https://hyp.is/go?url=https%3A%2F%2F4thgenerationcivilization.substack.com%2Fp%2Fwhy-human-contributive-labor-remains&group=world

I've never like the phrase fleeting notes, though it does serve a purpose. It's really a conflation (or portmanteau) of two separate ideas: fleeting ideas and writing them down/capturing them quickly so that they're no longer fleeting. Sort of a noun/verb in form.

For Miles, getting the ideas down is paramount and they can later be sub-divided or re-arranged.

One of the major affordances of using a zettelkasten or card index for writing is that it forces the writer to break things down into their constituent parts, thereby making the entire process of writing far easier and less complex. One can separately focus their attention on the smaller steps of collecting, selecting, and arranging the material before beginning to actually write.

for - question - Study on 2024 Trump win on polycrisis - Cascade Institute - why is there such a small analysis on the environment and especially planetary tipping points whilst climate clock is ticking?

36:10 If a government can create money, why is it in DEBT?

9:31 Jared Bernstein fails to answer this question coherently. "I dont get it" !!

9:16 Why are we borrowing in a currency that we print ourselves?

Asking my own zettelkasten this question: (responses in no particular order as individual affordances are sure to vary in usefulness by user; some framed as problems while others are framed as affordances, the difference should hopefully be clear to most):

• information overload
• mitigating time loss and context collapse in regularly interrupted work
  • Acts as a ratchet and pawl for thinking work
• tool for thought, and a particularly inexpensive one
• a catalytic surface for thought - see creativity
• removal of cognitive bias by allowing direct juxtaposition of ideas
• "a plan for life and not just a book"
• creativity acceleration
• artificial memory storage/improved memory
  • spaced repetition tool
• improved search by indexing ideas over time
• Clarity/specificity: it's a reminder to be specific about what you're thinking
• a system for marshalling resources (collecting)
• new context creation through context shifting and/or erasure
• "slow burn" productivity
• focusing attention
• fun
• serendipity generation
• attempting to look cool by doing what the cool kids are doing (this usually results in failure modes however)
  • related: fear of missing out (FOMO)

Julius Reizen in reviewing over Umberto Eco's index card system in How to Write a Thesis, defines his own "insurance card" as one which contains "hard-to-classify thoughts, questions, and areas for further inquiry". These he would keep together so that they don't otherwise get lost in the variety of other locations one might keep them

These might be akin to Ahrens' "fleeting notes" but are ones which may not easily or even immediately be converted in to "permanent notes" for one's zettelkasten. However, given their mission critical importance, they may be some of the most important cards in one's repository.

link this to - idea of centralizing one's note taking practice to a single location

Is this idea in Eco's book and Reizen is the one that gives it a name since some of the other categories have names? (examples: bibliographic index cards, reading index cards (aka literature notes), cards for themes, author index cards, quote index cards, idea index cards, connection cards). Were these "officially" named and categorized by Eco?

May be worthwhile to create a grid of these naming systems and uses amongst some of the broader note taking methods. Where are they similar, where do they differ?

Multi-search tools that have full access to multiple trusted data stores (ostensibly personal ones across notebooks, hard drives, social media services, etc.) could potentially solve the problem of needing to remember where you noted something.

Currently, in the social media space especially, this is not a realized service.

for - from - AnMaonaigh - annotation - Christian Monastic Communities - from article - Why Human (Contributive) Labor remains the creative principle of human society - Michel Bauwens - Substack - https://hyp.is/iITCrH2hEe-nIc9iOR4VeQ/4thgenerationcivilization.substack.com/p/why-human-contributive-labor-remains

for - Hanseatic cities - from - annotation - Why Human (Contributive) Labor remains the creative principle of human society - Michel Bauwens - Substack article

from - annotation - WHy Human (Contributive) Labor remains the creative principle of human society - Michel Bauwens - Substack article - https://hyp.is/Pcejdn2fEe-ppu9TjwiF_g/4thgenerationcivilization.substack.com/p/why-human-contributive-labor-remains

from - annotation of - Why Human (Contributive) Labor remains the creative principle of human society - Michel Bauwens - Substack article - https://hyp.is/v5Qe2H2gEe-v1O_KRz3jSQ/4thgenerationcivilization.substack.com/p/why-human-contributive-labor-remains

for - just earth system boundary - why it's needed

why was the street wasn't satisfied and what does autonomous mean?

via Season 2 Episode 8: “Performance Review” - The Office<br /> https://genius.com/The-office-usa-season-2-episode-8-performance-review-annotated

Here we see in Michael Scott's incompetence the potential value of writing down our ideas as we go. Had he written down his ideas, his upcoming meeting with his boss would have gone better.

Isn't it telling that he hits on the idea of leveraging a commonly used communal zettelkasten structure (the suggestion box) to dig himself out?

https://new.reddit.com/r/typewriters/comments/1estgvf/how_did_everyone_find_their_interest_in/

Lots of individual stories about why typewriters.

for - building new sustainable cities

summary - Building new "sustainable cities from nothing often does not consider the embodied energy required to do so. When that is considered, it is usually not viable - A context where it is viable is where there is extreme poverty and inequality

to - Why do old places matter? - sustainability - https://hyp.is/vlBLGlQFEe-EpqflmmlqnQ/savingplaces.org/stories/why-do-old-places-matter-sustainability

for - climate change psychology - video - youtube - Al Jazeera - All Hall the Planet - Why our brains are wired to ignore the climate crisis - Per Espen Stokes - interview

summary - A good introduction to climate change psychology - Per Espen Stokes is interviewed and he discusses his 5 Ds

for - neuroscience - why brains forget - active forgetting

neuroscience -active forgetting - leaves behind a small set of salient ideas

for - neuroscience - perspectival knowing - why it's important to know other perspectives - perspectival knowing - Abraham Lincoln quote - I don't know that man - I better get to know his perspective

for - climate crisis - key insight - why UN cannot address the climate crisis

climate crisis - key insight - why UN cannot address the climate crisis - The UN responds to sovereign states, not to humanity nor to the planet

for - transition - renewable energy - won't work - because - the price is wrong! - Brett Christopher - green energy - the price is wrong - transition - alternative to capitalism - book - The Price is Wrong: Why Capitalism won't Save the Planet - Brett Christopher

summary - This book provides rationale for why capitalism won't scale renewable energy, but a public sector government approach might - What about the alternative of community-owned or cooperative-owned energy infrastructure? A pipe dream? - Is renewable energy just not profitable and therefore has to be subsidized? - Perhaps it could be seen as a stopgap to buy us time until fusion, deep geothermal or other viable, scalable options become widespread?

from - Planet Critical podcast - 6th Mass Extinction - interview with paleontologist Peter Brennan - https://hyp.is/3ss3Vj9vEe-iDX-3vRVlFw/docdrop.org/video/cP8FXbPrEiI/

for - book - The Price is Wrong: Why Capitalism won't Save the Planet - Brett Christopher

to - book - The Price is Wrong: Why Capitalism won't Save the Planet - Brett Christopher - https://hyp.is/h01Tyj9uEe-rEhuQgFWRuQ/www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/3069-the-price-is-wrong

for - question - health - insulin resistance - why aren't mitochondria within cells not responding to insulin?

question - health - insulin resistance - why aren't mitochondria within cells not responding to insulin? - The fat cells are being stored in the liver, resulting in - fatty liver disease - The liver stores the fat cells floating in blood (triglycerides) then recirculates it back to the cells. - The cells and liver are caught up in a vicious cycle of "hot potatos" with the fat cells.<br /> - (See Stanford explainer video above)

The benefits of using a typewriter to write novels and poetry. by [[Classic Typewriter]]

Let's turn your question around: What exactly are you hoping to get out of it for yourself? Do you have specific goals for your own use?

You may like the idea of having and using a hammer, but if you don't have a project that requires a hammer, then owning and trying to hammer on random things in an unfocused way is probably not the right tool for your needs.

reply to u/arealnamestakenreal at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/1dko10r/success_histories_4_years_into_zettelkasten_and/

Refer to line 6 ( It looks like...….attacking his neck)

Identify the figure of speech used in this line.

for - answer - Planet Critical podcast - Terrence Deacon - We're in existential crisis - but difficult to convey to most people - why? - human symbolic abilities - mass collaboration

answer - Planet Critical podcast - Terrence Deacon - We're in existential crisis - but difficult to convey to most people - why? - Our symbolic abilities have given us tremendous capacities - Over the past two thousand years, - our ability to communicate - has allowed us to create amazing technologies - Example: James Web telescope - millions of hours of human thought - thousands of people collaborating - now we an look back billions of years - We are no longer isolated minds - Our symbolic capacity allows us to - share thoughts, - collectively plan futures - unlike any other species

for - question - Planet Critical podcast - We're in existential crisis - but difficult to convey to most people - why?

for - answer - why is the world in crisis?

answer - why is the world in crisis? - We're disconnected from the physical world at the same time as - being intricately and desperately connected - We take resources away and - produce a lot of waste very rapidly - due to our capacities through science and technology

for - question - why is the world in crisis? - Planet Critical

for - quote - chain reaction - why good projects fail - (see below)

• Although many projects and ideas share Elinor Ostrom's personal, cooperative and Earth-helping significance,
  • they lack the chain reaction that keeps them going.
• On the contrary, this flame is extinguished by
  • the direct action (fakes), or
  • indirect action (ignoring or taking our attention elsewhere)
• of the mainstream media that in a certain sense has lost that "code of ethics" of journalism that upheld values; such as
  • truthfulness,
  • independence,
  • objectivity,
  • fairness,
  • accuracy,
  • respect for others,
  • public accountability...

for - key insight - why US geopolitics installed dictatorships - progress trap- US foreign policy that shaped modernity

key insight - why US geopolitics installed dictatorships - This was the US's rationale to justify the geopolitical mess it created this century: - If you allow democracy in the age of Communism - people might vote for communism, then - kill all the rich people, then - take their stuff, then - redistribute it - You can get a majority support for that in an impoverished country and that was perceived as a threat - So the United States was suppressing Democratic movements around the world - because if an authoritarian if a communist can win an election fairly one time, - that's the end of free and fair elections - So for decades, the US foreign policy agenda was to install dictators to suppress the threat that democracy could produce communism. - But after "communism was defeated" - all these installed dictators around the world that are the direct result of the pathological US foreign policy posed a new, unexpected quagmire - The decades of US foreign policy had created an enormous progress trap that we are all living through now - The US now had to normalize relations with the new world of dictators it had helped created out of its own fears<br /> - A new US foreign policy rule emerged to deal with this fiasco - Stay in your own country - If you want to kill, imprison, brutalize or subjegate your own people, it is fine with the US government as long as it is done within your own state borders - As long as a nation state abuses their own people, the US will continue to: - buy your oil - trade with you - show up at the UN - even have an occasional State event for you - However, Russia broke that rule

for - US 2024 election - why Trump flipped to support Ukraine aid bill

for - physiology rescues evolutionary biology - Denis Noble

from - youtube - IAI interview - Why Dawkins is Wrong - Denis Noble

for - paper - Physiology restores purpose to evolutionary biology - Denis Noble - Raymond Noble - year - 2023

from - youtube - IAI interview - Why Dawkins is wrong - Denis Noble - https://hyp.is/eqKOYhVVEe-XVKuwMtOTTg/docdrop.org/video/dCLRKP9NW8I/

for - post comment - Linked I - Daniel Schmachtenberger - why good people comply with evil - direct citizen action - networked commons

summary - A great short video that is a teaser to a longer podcast conversation on the topic of confirmation bias, and recognizing it to empower citizens during this time of rapid whole system change.

^

Here Kaiser touches on the broader themes inherent in the concepts of atomic notes, which might be used to build up new and interesting structures. He doesn't specify the "size of a note" nor does he say that one will "know it when they see it", but he's suggesting something very close to it.

Rather than define the appropriate size, a feat which is difficult to do at best, he's providing a very narrow set of benefits for encouraging one to cut things down to size as they index them: small pieces are easier to use to build new things.

This is the reasoning for why we'll want an indexed system. The vast wealth of information may be overwhelming, but with the ability to organize and control it (by writing it down and indexing it) we can turn it into something useful.

"There is a large literature relating to twins in their purely surgical and physiological aspect. The reader interested in this should consult Die Lehre von den Zwillingen, von L. Kleinwächter, Prag. 1871. It is full of references, but it is also unhappily disfigured by a number of numerical misprints, especially in page 26. I have not found any book that treats of twins from my present point of view."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_Müller-Brockmann

Josef Müller-Brockmann father of the International Typographic Style and

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Rand

Paul Rand, who made big scary computers warm and fuzzy

https://www.ibm.com/design/language/ibm-logos/rebus/

https://www.artsy.net/artwork/paul-rand-ibm-think-magazine-eye-bee-m-rebus-cover-1

https://www.moma.org/artists/3569#works

https://helenarmstrong.info

She was "emerging" in 2006 when this was written, nearly 20 years ago. She's still a working professor with interesting projects.

McCullough, David. “David McCullough Interview with NEH Chairman Bruce Cole.” Humanities 23, no. 4 (August 2002). https://www.neh.gov/about/awards/jefferson-lecture/david-mccullough-biography.

Compare with: https://hypothes.is/a/yEFMHoCkEeyl34fItJe__w (Luhmann on thinking/writing in Sonke Ahrens)

for - question - what do we do next? - investigate - why "what do we do next?" is salient

[[Dan Allosso]] in How to Read, part 2

Certainly! Let's break down the provided code snippets:

1. What is it and why is it used?

In Mongoose, a schema is a blueprint for defining the structure of documents within a collection. When you define a schema, you can also attach methods to it. These methods become instance methods, meaning they are available on the individual documents (instances) created from that schema.

Instance methods are useful for encapsulating functionality related to a specific document or model instance. They allow you to define custom behavior that can be executed on a specific document. In the given example, the findSimilarTypes method is added to instances of the Animal model, making it easy to find other animals of the same type.

2. Syntax:

Using methods object directly in the schema options:

javascript const animalSchema = new Schema( { name: String, type: String }, { methods: { findSimilarTypes(cb) { return mongoose.model('Animal').find({ type: this.type }, cb); } } } );

Using methods object directly in the schema:

javascript animalSchema.methods.findSimilarTypes = function(cb) { return mongoose.model('Animal').find({ type: this.type }, cb); };

Using Schema.method() helper:

javascript animalSchema.method('findSimilarTypes', function(cb) { return mongoose.model('Animal').find({ type: this.type }, cb); });

3. Explanation in Simple Words with Examples:

Why it's Used:

Imagine you have a collection of animals in your database, and you want to find other animals of the same type. Instead of writing the same logic repeatedly, you can define a method that can be called on each animal instance to find similar types. This helps in keeping your code DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself) and makes it easier to maintain.

Example:

```javascript const mongoose = require('mongoose'); const { Schema } = mongoose;

// Define a schema with a custom instance method const animalSchema = new Schema({ name: String, type: String });

// Add a custom instance method to find similar types animalSchema.methods.findSimilarTypes = function(cb) { return mongoose.model('Animal').find({ type: this.type }, cb); };

// Create the Animal model using the schema const Animal = mongoose.model('Animal', animalSchema);

// Create an instance of Animal const dog = new Animal({ type: 'dog', name: 'Buddy' });

// Use the custom method to find similar types dog.findSimilarTypes((err, similarAnimals) => { console.log(similarAnimals); }); ```

In this example, findSimilarTypes is a custom instance method added to the Animal schema. When you create an instance of the Animal model (e.g., a dog), you can then call findSimilarTypes on that instance to find other animals with the same type. The method uses the this.type property, which refers to the type of the current animal instance. This allows you to easily reuse the logic for finding similar types across different instances of the Animal model.

A source of confusion for beginners is why binary messages exist in the first place when they could be implemented instead as keyword messages taking one argument as #lcm: and #gcd:; you could in fact, imagine an alternative syntax with only unary and keyword messages, but it would be cumbersome to read and write. Binary messages improve legibility without introducing too much complexity for the implementors.

The Laplacian operator is a linear operator that measures how much a function varies over a simplicial complex. The eigencochains of the Laplacian operator are functions that have a special relationship with the Laplacian operator.

Really? It's working for me in ungoogled-chromium

• for: progress trap - free market, example - government policy - why it's needed

One of the primary problems with note taking in most of the mid-twentieth century (and potentially well before, particularly as framed in most educational settings) was that students would take notes, potentially review them once or twice for a test, but then not have easy access to them for later review or reuse.

People collected piles of notes without any ability to reuse or review them. Perhaps we should reframe the collector's fallacy as this: collection without reuse has dramatically decreasing returns. Certainly there may be some small initial benefit in writing it down as a means of sense making, but not reviewing it past a short period of two weeks or even several months and not being able to reuse it in the long term is a travesty, especially in a world of information overload.

Please explain to me how it is not evident to programmers that this is how we program.. we cannot hold more than seven items at a time. We cannot fracture. As Miller mentioned, 2 3 digit numbers are outside t capacity, but if you multiply them by paper w, if we free your memory, we can let the brain focus on the v

If you assign the memory function to a diagram, you can let your brain concentrate on the manipulation function.

Once we codify, we no longer have to keep the information in memory, for example : This hurts my brain

There are five roads in Brown County. One runs from Abbeville to Brownsville by way of Clinton. One runs from Clinton to Derbyshire by way of Fremont. One runs from Fremont to Brownsville by way of Abbieville. That's all the roads in Brown County, and all the roads in and out of those towns.

Which towns have roads connecting them directly to three other towns? Which towns have roads connecting them directly to only two other towns? How many towns must you pass through to get from Brownsville to Derbyshire?

But if we diagram it to a map, all of this makes sense.

"The learning of numbers and language must be subordinated ... Visual understanding is the essential and only valid means of teaching how to judge things correctly." ~ Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi

Pestalozzi was the guy who designed the educational system in which Einstein, the most extraordinary visualization of his time, was born q

Sometimes one reads for raw information and background details that one can excerpt or use--things which an author may use to support their own arguments, but which the reader doesn't care about at all.

reply to u/SouthernEremite at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/16r8k0b/i_dont_know_why_i_cant_do_evergreen_and_atomic/

If you're not using your notes to create or write material and only using them as a form of sensemaking, then perhaps you don't need to put as much work or effort into the permanent notes portion of the work? Ask yourself: "Why are you taking notes? What purpose do they serve?" Is the form and level you're making them in serving those purposes? If not, work toward practicing to make those two align so that your notes are serving an actual purpose for you. Anything beyond this is make-work and you could spend your time more profitably somewhere else.

Why did the chicken cross the road?

To get to his zettelkasten on the other side!

But when he got there, he realized he had forgotten the slip of paper with his perfect evergreen note. So the chicken crossed the road once again to retrieve it. But almost as if it were a jokerzettel, on the way back, a gust of wind blew the slip right out of the chicken's beak!

The chicken tried to catch the runaway slip, but it kept evading him. He chased that slip all over the farm--through the pig sty, over fences, around the grain silo.

Finally, exhausted but triumphant, the chicken caught the slip and carefully filed it away.

Moral of the story: Don't count your slips before they're indexed!

Q: Why did the zettelkasten cross the road?

A: It didn't because Barbara Tuchman, Nicholas Luhmann, Jacques Goutor, Johannes Erich Heyde, and Keith Thomas all recommend only writing on one side.

Making things messy from the start as advice for getting started.

I've seen this before in other settings, particularly in starting new notebooks. Some have suggested scrawling on the first page to get over the idea of perfection in a virgin notebook. I also think I've seen Ton Ziijlstra mention that his dad would ding every new car to get over the new feeling and fear of damaging it. Get the damage out of the way so you can just move on.

The fact that a notebook is damaged, messy, or used for the smallest things may be one of the benefits of a wastebook. It averts the internal need some may find for perfection in their nice notebooks or work materials.

ouch!

reply to u/SunghoYahng at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/15sqiq2/zettelkasten_for_normies_what_normies_really_need/

u/SunghoYahng, some of your article sounds like a pared down digital version of a commonplace book which allows for links, so it fits into the older zettelkasten tradition, just not into the more Luhmann-artig version on which this subreddit is generally more focused. Perhaps yours is closer to a digital version of the analog commonplace using index cards that Billy Oppenheimer describes having learned from Ryan Holiday and Robert Greene?

Often people focus too much on Luhmann's prodigious output and then immediately imply or say you should adopt his very specific system without describing what his system did or why it worked so well for him and his particular needs. Very few focus on what it is that they want to accomplish and how they might use his system or the thousands of variations on it throughout history to come to those goals as quickly and easily as they can.

You commit a version of this sin in your opening lines:

The content about Zettelkasten is mostly too long and practically useless. The purpose of this text is to write only what normies really need to know.

Who are these so-called "normies" and what specifically are they trying to accomplish? You don't define either of them, and possibly worse do it in a negative framing. The system you're describing might be a great one, but for whom? What do you expect them to use it for? What will they get out of it?

Many people talk about the "magic" of a zettelkasten and then wave their hands at some version of a workflow of what they think it is or what they think it should be. Perhaps what we all really need is a list of potential affordances that different methods allow and how one might leverage those affordances. How might they be mixed and matched? Then users can decide what outcomes they wish to have (writing, thinking, aggregation, bookmarking, collecting, creativity, artificial memory, serendipity, productivity, wiki, spaced repetition, learning, time wasting, etc., etc.) and which affordances are necessary within their workflow/system to effectuate those specific goals? Finally they can pick and choose a specific version of a methodology/workflow and either an analog substrate (index cards, notebooks, memory palace, etc.) or digital tool/application (Obsidian, Roam Research, The Archive, etc.) to save it all in. Of course once you've chosen that analog or digital tool, does it actually have the affordances you want or need in actual practice? Are they easy to use? Practical? Do they save you time? Are they simple or over-engineered? What happens when they scale to a year of regular use or even a lifetime?

As a simple example, many writers would love a seriously good outliner functionality in their system to pull out the materials they want to work with and then appropriately order them for a potential final written output. In practice, index cards on a big table are fantastic for this process while most (all?) current digital tools are miserable at it. And of course once you've gotten the outline you like in an analog space you have to type it all out to print/publish in a final form, something which the digital affordance of cut and paste would make much simpler. Who wouldn't love a tool that could give you all of these affordances, presuming you needed them?

​

While we're on outlining, very few talk about the ease-of-use that some professional outliners like Dave Winer's Drummer or Little Outliner have versus some of the more text-editing focused tools like Obsidian which are generally poor as outliners (if you could even call them that) in comparison.

If you're interested in folgezettel and outlining, you might appreciate some subtleties in Bob's piece: https://writing.bobdoto.computer/folgezettel-is-not-an-outline-luhmanns-playful-appreciation-of-disfunction/

cross reference https://hypothes.is/a/OhcWSjxyEe6V8DP9P6WNQQ

p xxvi

Hutchins closes his preface to his grand project with Mortimer J. Adler by giving pride of place to Adler's Syntopicon.

Adler's Syntopicon isn't just an index compiled into two books which were volumes 2 and 3 of The Great Books of the Western World, it's physically a topically indexed card index of data (a grand zettelkasten surveying Western culture if you will). It's value to readers and users is immeasurable and it stands as a fascinating example of what a well-constructed card index might allow one to do even when they don't have their own yet.

Adler spoke of practicing syntopical reading, but anyone who compiles their own card index (in either analog or digital form) will realize the ultimate value in creating their own syntopical writing or what Robert Hutchins calls participating in "The Great Conversation" across twenty-five centuries of documented human communication.

See also: https://hypothes.is/a/WF4THtUNEe2dZTdlQCbmXw

The way Hutchins presents the idea of "Adler's achievement" here seems to indicate that Hutchins didn't have a direct hand in compiling or working on it directly.

• Title SOS d'un terrien en detresse
• This is a famous French song that is covered by Dimash Kudaibergen
• The original was written by Daniel Bolavoine, who tragically died in a helicopter crash as he was going to Africa to help with a development project
• Balavoine made it famous on his rock opera performance on the French "Starmania" show. There is another orchestral recording Balavoine did afterwards:
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fms-RDCURSU
  • https://youtu.be/9kZuDhuTkxE
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kZuDhuTkxE
• This video is Dimash performing the famous song for the French people. Dimash sings it with pristien vocal expression, even beyond the original
• The history of how Dimash adapted this song is shown in this youtube video, which shows his famous Chinese reality show performance
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tf_UIAOWfAU
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYPAjmWP140
  • https://youtu.be/AUARjexCTlQ
  • https://youtu.be/0vn_kI4-otQ
  • 26 min. of this concert: https://youtu.be/zmEaxCg6_8k
• The opening lyric of the song
  • why do I live, why do I die? is a perfect BEing Journey to discuss mortality salience

I would argue that it is more subtle than this. It allows you to forget, but the aim is to allow you to learn, remember, and slowly build.

The eternal student question, "Why do we need to learn this?" should always have a fantastic answer from their teachers.

"[What] I like about the [zettlekasten] system is that it's a constant reminder to to make up your mind and to specify what you what you're thinking."<br /> —Sönke Ahrens, [Tinderbox Meetup - May 7, 2023 00:30:36]

The framing of "permanent notes" or "evergreen notes" has probably hurt a large portion of the personal knowledge management space. Too many people are approaching these as some sort of gold standard without understanding their goal or purpose. Why are you writing such permanent/evergreen notes? Unless you have an active goal to reuse a particular note for a specific purpose, you're probably wasting your time. The work you put into the permanent note is to solidify an idea which you firmly intend to reuse again in one or more contexts. The whole point of "evergreen" as an idea is that it can actively be reused multiple times in multiple places. If you've spent time refining it to the nth degree and writing it well, then you had better be doing so to reuse it.

Of course many writers will end up (or should end up) properly contextualizing individual ideas and example directly into their finished writing. As a result, one's notes can certainly be rough and ready and don't need to be highly polished because the raw idea will be encapsulated somewhere else and then refined and rewritten directly into that context.

Certainly there's some benefit for refining and shaping ideas down to individual atomic cores so that they might be used and reused in combination with other ideas, but I get the impression that some think that their notes need to be highly polished gems. Even worse, they feel that every note should be this way. This is a dreadful perspective.

For context I may make 40 - 60 highlights and annotations on an average day of reading. Of these, I'll review most and refine or combine a few into better rougher shape. Of this group maybe 3 - 6 will be interesting enough to turn into permanent/evergreen notes of some sort that might be reused. And even at this probably only one is interesting enough to be placed permanently into my zettelkasten. This one will likely be an aggregation of many smaller ideas combined with other pre-existing ideas in my collection; my goal is to have the most interesting and unique of my own ideas in my permanent collection. The other 2 or 3 may still be useful later when I get to the creation/writing stage when I'll primarily focus on my own ideas, but I'll use those other rougher notes and the writing in them to help frame and recontextualize the bigger ideas so that the reader will be in a better place to understand my idea, where it comes from, and why it might be something they should find interesting.

Thus some of my notes made while learning can be reused in my own ultimate work to help others learn and understand my more permanent/evergreen notes.

If you think that every note you're making should be highly polished, refined, and heavily linked, then you're definitely doing this wrong. Hopefully a few days of attempting this will disabuse you of the notion and you'll slow down to figure out what's really worth keeping and maintaining. You can always refer back to rough notes if you need to later, but polishing turds is often thankless work. Sadly too many misread or misunderstand articles and books on the general theory of note taking and overshoot the mark thinking that the theory needs to be applied to every note. It does not.

If you find that you're tiring of making notes and not getting anything out of the process, it's almost an assured sign that you're doing something wrong. Are you collecting thousands of ideas (bookmarking behavior) and not doing anything with them? Are you refining and linking low level ideas of easy understanding and little value? Take a step back and focus on the important and the new. What are you trying to do? What are you trying to create?

Why are folks so obsessed with notes per day? Perhaps a proxy for toxic capitalism and productivity issues? Is the number of notes the best measure or the things they allow one to do after having made them? What is the best measure? Especially when there are those who use them for other purposes like lecturing, general growth, knowledge acquisition, or even happiness?

Vicky Zhao indirectly frames the answer for "why have a zettelkasten?", especially for learning, as overcoming the "illusion of competence" which is closely related to the mere-exposure effect and the Dunning–Kruger effect.

How To Take Smart Notes (3 methods no one's talking about)<br /> by Vicky Zhao

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5O46Rqh5zHE

The value of a zettelkasten is as a tool to actively force combinatorial creativity—the goal is to create accidents or collisions of ideas which might have a high chance of being discovered and selected for.

(free of this context, but I need somewhere just to place this potential title/phrase...)

Purpose Driven Zettelkasten

reply to jameslongley at https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/2532/personal-knowledge-management-is-bullshit

I find that these sorts of articles against the variety of practices have one thing in common: the writer fails to state a solid and realistic reason for why they got into it in the first place. They either have no reason "why" or, perhaps, just as often have all-the-reasons "why", which may be worse. Much of this is bound up in the sort of signaling and consumption which @Sascha outlines in point C (above).

Perhaps of interest, there are a large number of Hypothes.is annotations on that original article written by a variety of sense-makers with whom I am familiar. See: https://via.hypothes.is/https://www.otherlife.co/pkm/ Of note, many come from various note making traditions including: commonplace books, bloggers, writers, wiki creators, zettelkasten, digital gardening, writers, thinkers, etc., so they give a broader and relatively diverse perspective. If I were pressed to say what most of them have in common philosophically, I'd say it was ownership of their thought.

Perhaps it's just a point of anecdotal evidence, but I've been noticing that who write about or use the phrase "personal knowledge management" are ones who come at the space without an actual practice or point of view on what they're doing and why—they are either (trying to be) influencers or influencees.

Fortunately it is entirely possible to "fake it until you make it" here, but it helps to have an idea of what you're trying to make.