6,447 Matching Annotations
  1. Sep 2023
    1. Although not all of the books listed are "great" in any of the commonly accepted meanings of the term, all of them will reward you for the effort you make to read them.

      This book was published originally in 1940 and apparently the Great Books of the Western World was hatched in 1943, so this book isn't necessarily a stepping stone to pitching/selling those, though obviously it informs the ideas which led up to its creation.

      Note that it is roughly contemporaneous to his article a year later:

      Adler, Mortimer J. “How to Mark a Book.” Saturday Review of Literature, July 6, 1941.<br /> https://stevenson.ucsc.edu/academics/stevenson-college-core-courses/how-to-mark-a-book-1.pdf

  2. Aug 2023
    1. Some may not realize it yet, but the shift in technology represented by ChatGPT is just another small evolution in the chain of predictive text with the realms of information theory and corpus linguistics.

      Claude Shannon's work along with Warren Weaver's introduction in The Mathematical Theory of Communication (1948), shows some of the predictive structure of written communication. This is potentially better underlined for the non-mathematician in John R. Pierce's book An Introduction to Information Theory: Symbols, Signals and Noise (1961) in which discusses how one can do a basic analysis of written English to discover that "e" is the most prolific letter or to predict which letters are more likely to come after other letters. The mathematical structures have interesting consequences like the fact that crossword puzzles are only possible because of the repetitive nature of the English language or that one can use the editor's notation "TK" (usually meaning facts or date To Come) in writing their papers to make it easy to find missing information prior to publication because the statistical existence of the letter combination T followed by K is exceptionally rare and the only appearances of it in long documents are almost assuredly areas which need to be double checked for data or accuracy.

      Cell phone manufacturers took advantage of the lower levels of this mathematical predictability to create T9 predictive text in early mobile phone technology. This functionality is still used in current cell phones to help speed up our texting abilities. The difference between then and now is that almost everyone takes the predictive magic for granted.

      As anyone with "fat fingers" can attest, your phone doesn't always type out exactly what you mean which can result in autocorrect mistakes (see: DYAC (Damn You AutoCorrect)) of varying levels of frustration or hilarity. This means that when texting, one needs to carefully double check their work before sending their text or social media posts or risk sending their messages to Grand Master Flash instead of Grandma.

      The evolution in technology effected by larger amounts of storage, faster processing speeds, and more text to study means that we've gone beyond the level of predicting a single word or two ahead of what you intend to text, but now we're predicting whole sentences and even paragraphs which make sense within a context. ChatGPT means that one can generate whole sections of text which will likely make some sense.

      Sadly, as we know from our T9 experience, this massive jump in predictability doesn't mean that ChatGPT or other predictive artificial intelligence tools are "magically" correct! In fact, quite often they're wrong or will predict nonsense, a phenomenon known as AI hallucination. Just as with T9, we need to take even more time and effort to not only spell check the outputs from the machine, but now we may need to check for the appropriateness of style as well as factual substance!

      The bigger near-term problem is one of human understanding and human communication. While the machine may appear to magically communicate (often on our behalf if we're publishing it's words under our names), is it relaying actual meaning? Is the other person reading these words understanding what was meant to have been communicated? Do the words create knowledge? Insight?

      We need to recall that Claude Shannon specifically carved semantics and meaning out of the picture in the second paragraph of his seminal paper:

      Frequently the messages have meaning; that is they refer to or are correlated according to some system with certain physical or conceptual entities. These semantic aspects of communication are irrelevant to the engineering problem.

      So far ChatGPT seems to be accomplishing magic by solving a small part of an engineering problem by being able to explore the adjacent possible. It is far from solving the human semantic problem much less the un-adjacent possibilities (potentially representing wisdom or insight), and we need to take care to be aware of that portion of the unsolved problem. Generative AIs are also just choosing weighted probabilities and spitting out something which is prone to seem possible, but they're not optimizing for which of many potential probabilities is the "best" or the "correct" one. For that, we still need our humanity and faculties for decision making.


      Shannon, Claude E. A Mathematical Theory of Communication. Bell System Technical Journal, 1948.

      Shannon, Claude E., and Warren Weaver. The Mathematical Theory of Communication. University of Illinois Press, 1949.

      Pierce, John Robinson. An Introduction to Information Theory: Symbols, Signals and Noise. Second, Revised. Dover Books on Mathematics. 1961. Reprint, Mineola, N.Y: Dover Publications, Inc., 1980. https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Information-Theory-Symbols-Mathematics/dp/0486240614.

      Shannon, Claude Elwood. “The Bandwagon.” IEEE Transactions on Information Theory 2, no. 1 (March 1956): 3. https://doi.org/10.1109/TIT.1956.1056774.


      We may also need to explore The Bandwagon, an early effect which Shannon noticed and commented upon. Everyone seems to be piling on the AI bandwagon right now...

    1. Purple is a small suite of quickly hacked tools inspired by Doug Engelbart's attempt to bootstrap the addressing features of his Augment system onto HTML pages. Its purpose is simple: produce HTML documents that can be addressed at the paragraph level. It does this by automatically creating name anchors with static and hierarchical addresses at the beginning of each text node, and by displaying these addresses as links at the end of each text node.    1A  (02)

      Purple is a suite of tools from 2001 that allow one to create numbered addresses/anchors at the paragraph level of a digital document.


      Link: Dave Winer's site still has support for purple numbers.

    1. For context, I don't use a traditional Zettelkasten system. It's more of a commonplace book/notecard system similar to Ryan HolidayI recently transitioned to a digital system and have been using Logseq, which I enjoy. It's made organizing my notes and ideas much easier, but I've noticed that I spend a lot of time on organizing my notesSince most of my reading is on Kindle, my process involves reading and highlighting as I read, then exporting those highlights to Markdown and making a page in Logseq. Then I tag every individual highlightThis usually isn't too bad if a book/research article has 20-30 highlights, but, for example, I recently had a book with over 150 highlights, and I spent about half an hour tagging each oneI started wondering if it's overkill to tag each highlight since it can be so time consuming. The advantage is that if I'm looking for passages about a certain idea/topic, I can find it specifically rather than having to go through the whole bookI was also thinking I could just have a set of tags for each book/article that capture what contexts I'd want to find the information in. This would save time, but I'd spend a little more time digging through each document looking for specificsCurious to hear your thoughts, appreciate any suggestions

      reply to m_t_rv_s__n/ at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/164n6qg/is_this_overkill/

      First, your system is historically far more traditional than Luhmann's more specific practice. See: https://boffosocko.com/2022/10/22/the-two-definitions-of-zettelkasten/

      If you're taking all the notes/highlights from a particular book and keeping them in a single file, then it may be far quicker and more productive to do some high level tagging on the entire book/file itself and then relying on and using basic text search to find particular passages you might use at a later date.

      Spending time reviewing over all of your notes and tagging/indexing them individually may be beneficial for some basic review work. But this should be balanced out with your long term needs. If your area is "sociology", for example, and you tag every single idea related to the topic of sociology with #sociology, then it will cease to have any value you to you when you search for it and find thousands of disconnected notes you will need to sift through. Compare this with Luhmann's ZK which only had a few index entries under "sociology". A better long term productive practice, and one which Luhmann used, is indexing one or two key words when he started in a new area and then "tagging" each new idea in that branch or train of though with links to other neighboring ideas. If you forget a particular note, you can search your index for a keyword and know you'll find that idea you need somewhere nearby. Scanning through the neighborhood of notes you find will provide a useful reminder of what you'd been working on and allow you to continue your work in that space or link new things as appropriate.

      If it helps to reframe the long term scaling problem of over-tagging, think of a link from one idea to another as the most specific tag you can put on an idea. To put this important idea into context, if you do a Google search for "tagging" you'll find 240,000,000 results! If you do a search for the entirety of the first sentence in this paragraph, you'll likely only find one very good and very specific result, and the things which are linked to it are going to have tremendous specific value to you by comparison.

      Perhaps the better portions of your time while reviewing notes would be taking the 150 highlights and finding the three to five most important, useful, and (importantly) reusable ones to write out in your own words and begin expanding upon and linking? These are the excerpts you'll want to spend more time on and tag/index for future use rather than the other hundreds. Over time, you may eventually realize that the hundreds are far less useful than the handful (in management spaces this philosophy is known as the Pareto principle), so spending a lot of make work time on them is less beneficial for whatever end goals you may have. (The make work portions are often the number one reason I see people abandoning these practices because they feel overwhelmed working on raw administrivia instead of building something useful and interesting to themselves.) Naturally though, you'll still have those hundreds sitting around in a file if you need to search, review, or use them. You won't have lost them by not working on them, but more importantly you'll have gained loads of extra time to work on the more important pieces. You should notice that the time you save and the value you create will compound over time.

      And as ever, play around with these to see if they work for you and your specific needs. Some may be good and others bad—it will depend on your needs and your goals. Practice, experiment, have fun.

      Meme image from Office Space featuring a crowd of office employees standing in front of a banner on the wall that reads: Is this Good for the Zettelkasten?

    1. Oliar, Dotan; Sprigman, Christopher (2008). "There's No Free Laugh (Anymore): The Emergence of Intellectual Property Norms and the Transformation of Stand-Up Comedy". Virginia Law Review. 94 (8): 1848. JSTOR 25470605. Retrieved September 16, 2020. There is also evidence in the [Diller archive…at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.] file suggesting that Diller appropriated from other sources [apart from self-creation or using her writing team], including newspaper comic strips and comedy books. For example, a number of Diller's jokes about her dysfunctional marriage to her fictional husband 'Fang' appear to have been inspired by a comic strip, 'The Lockhorns,' that Diller followed obsessively over the course of nearly a decade. The Diller joke files contain hundreds of 'Lockhorns' panels cut out of newspapers and mounted on index cards.
    1. Indigenous cultures can "see" dark constellations (example: the Australian emu in the sky) which are defined empty spaces which are explicitly visible.

      Using this concept, one could think of or use blank index cards in a zettelkasten or even the empty (negative) spaces between cards as "dark ideas" (potential ideas which need to be thought of and filled in).

      Link to: https://hypothes.is/a/FlqusEN1Ee6XEr_9StPUlA

    2. I could continue a thread anywhere, rather than always picking it up at the end. I could sketch out where I expected things to go, with an outline, rather than keeping all the points I wanted to hit in my head as I wrote. If I got stuck on something, I could write about how I was stuck nested underneath whatever paragraph I was currently writing, but then collapse the meta-thoughts to be invisible later -- so the overall narrative doesn’t feel interrupted.

      Notes about what you don't know (open questions), empty outline slots, red links as [[wikilinks]], and other "holes" in tools for thought provide a bookmark for where one may have quit exploring, but are an explicit breadcrumb for picking up that line of thought and continuing it at a future time.

      Linear writing in one's notebooks, books they're reading, and other places doesn't always provide an explicit space which invites the reader or writer to fill them in. One has to train themselves to annotate in the margins to have a conversation with the text. Until one sees these empty spaces as inviting spaces they can be invisible to the eye.

    3. In fact, it might be good if you make your first cards messy and unimportant, just to make sure you don’t feel like everything has to be nicely organized and highly significant.

      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.

    1. Imagine the younger generation studying great books andlearning the liberal arts. Imagine an adult population con-tinuing to turn to the same sources of strength, inspiration,and communication. We could talk to one another then. Weshould be even better specialists than we are today because wecould understand the history of our specialty and its relationto all the others. We would be better citizens and better men.We might turn out to be the nucleus of the world community.

      Is the cohesive nature of Hutchins and Adler's enterprise for the humanities and the Great Conversation, part of the kernel of the rise of interdisciplinarity seen in the early 2000s onward in academia (and possibly industry).

      Certainly large portions are the result of uber-specialization, particularly in spaces which have concatenated and have allowed people to specialize in multiple areas to create new combinatorial creative possibilities.

    2. The mathematical specialist, for example, canget further faster into the great mathematicians than a readerwho is without his specialized training. With the help ofgreat books, specialized knowledge can radiate out into agenuine interfiltration of common learning and common life.

      Here Hutchins is again prefiguring C.P. Snow's "two cultures". He makes the argument that by having a shared base of knowledge and culture in our society's past history of knowledge (and especially early scientists and mathematicians), everyone, despite their individual interests and specializations, can be an active participant in a broader human conversation.

    3. The task is to have a communitynevertheless, and to discover means of using specialties topromote it. This can be done through the Great Conversa-tion.

      The commons as a social glue

      Perhaps there's a framing of "the commons" as a larger entity from which we not only draw, but to which we contribute and in which we participate that glues us all together.

      Link under: https://hypothes.is/a/mEgAiEIFEe6trVPf7HjFhQ

    4. The task is to have a communitynevertheless, and to discover means of using specialties topromote it. This can be done through the Great Conversa-tion.

      We need some common culture to bind humanity together. Hutchins makes the argument that the Great Conversation can help to effectuate this binding through shared culture and knowledge.

      Perhaps he is even more right in the 2000s than he was in the 1950s?

    5. I should like to add that specialization, instead of makingthe Great Conversation irrelevant, makes it more pertinentthan ever. Specialization makes it harder to carry on anykind of conversation; but this calls for greater effort, not theabandonment of the attempt.

      The dramatic increase in economic specialization of humanity driven by the Industrial Revolution has many benefits to societies, but it also has detrimental effects when the core knowledge and shared base of the society is lost.

      Certainly individuals have a greater reliance on specialists for future outcomes (think about the specialization of areas like climate science which can have destructive outcomes on all of humanity or public health outcomes with respect to vaccines and specialized health care delivery), but they also need to have a common base of knowledge/culture and the ability to think critically for themselves to be able to effect necessary changes, particularly when the pace of those changes is more rapid than humans have generally been evolved to accept them.

    6. In general the professors of the humanities and the socialsciences and history, fascinated by the marvels of experi-mental natural science, were overpowered by the idea thatsimilar marvels could be produced in their own fields by theuse of the same methods. They also seemed convinced thatany results obtained in these fields by any other methods werenot worth achieving. This automatically ruled out writerspreviously thought great who had had the misfortune to livebefore the method of empirical natural science had reachedits present predominance and who had never thought ofapplying it to problems and subject matters outside the rangeof empirical natural science.

      Hutchins indicates that part of the fall of the humanities was the result of the rise of the scientific method and experimental science. In wanting fields from the humanities—like social sciences and history—to be a part of this new scientific paradigm, professors completely reframed their paradigms in a more scientific mode and thereby erased the progenitors and ideas in these fields for newer material which replaced the old which was now viewed as "less than" in the new paradigms. This same sort of erasure of Indigenous knowledges was also similarly effected as they were also seen as "less than" from the perspective of the new scientific regime.

      One might also suggest that some of it was the result of the acceleration of life brought on by the invention of writing, literacy, and the spread of the printing press making for larger swaths of knowledge to be more immediately available.

    1. there is a disconnect between the long period of evolution that honed our humanity and the short period of rapid technology change we are facing.
      • for: progress trap, quote, quote - progress trap, quote Brian Southwell, Science in the Public Sphere Program, RTI International
      • quote

        • We are likely to make some gains in personal health, are likely to face some collective concerns in terms of environmental health and
        • are not likely to cope with the alienation and despair that is a part of a life lived largely online.
        • In the latter case, there is a disconnect between the long period of evolution that honed our humanity and
        • the short period of rapid technology change we are facing.
      • author: Brian Southwell

        • director, Science in the Public Sphere Program, RTI International
    1. Technological change is an accelerant and acts on the social ills like pouring gasoline on a fire
      • for: quote, quote - Stowe Boyd, quote - progress trap, quote - unintended consequences, unintended consequences, progress trap, cultural evolution, technology - futures, futures - technology, progress trap
      • quote:
        • Technological change is an accelerant and acts on the social ills like pouring gasoline on a fire
      • author: Sowe Boyd
        • consulting futurist on technological evolution and the future of work
      • paraphrase
        • In an uncontrolled hyper-capitalist society,
          • the explosion in technologies over the past 30 years has only
            • widened inequality,
            • concentrated wealth and
            • led to greater social division.
          • And it is speeding up with the rise of artificial intelligence,
            • which like globalization has destabilized Western industrial economies while admittedly pulling hundreds of millions elsewhere out of poverty.
        • And the boiling exhaust of this set of forces is pushing the planet into a climate catastrophe. -The world is as unready for hundreds of millions of climate refugees as it was for the plague.
        • However, some variant of social media will likely form the context for the rise of a global movement to stop the madness
          • which I call the Human Spring
        • which will be more like
          • Occupy or
          • the Yellow Vests
        • than traditional politics.
        • I anticipate a grassroots movement
          • characterized by
            • general strikes,
            • political action,
            • protest and
            • widespread disruption of the economy
          • that will confront the economic and political system of the West.
        • Lead by the young, ultimately this will lead to large-scale political reforms, such as
          • universal health care,
          • direct democracy,
          • a new set of rights for individuals and
          • a large set of checks on the power of
            • corporations and
            • political parties.
        • For example,
          • eliminating corporate contributions to political campaigns,
          • countering monopolies and
          • effectively accounting for economic externalities, like carbon.
    2. What won’t change is people’s tendency toward gossip, tribalism driven by gossip and the ability of anybody to inform anybody else about anything, including wrongly. The only places where news won’t skew fake will be localities in the natural world. That’s where the digital and the physical connect best. Also expect the internet to break into pieces, with the U.S., Europe and China becoming increasingly isolated by different value systems and governance approaches toward networks and what runs on them.
      • for: progress trap, unintended consequence, unintended consequence - digital technology, quote, quote - progress trap, quote - Doc Searls
      • quote
        • What won’t change is people’s tendency toward gossip,
          • tribalism driven by gossip and the ability of anybody to inform anybody else about anything,
            • including wrongly.
        • The only places where news won’t skew fake will be localities in the natural world.
        • That’s where the digital and the physical connect best.
        • Also expect the internet to break into pieces, with
          • the U.S.,
          • Europe and
          • China
        • becoming increasingly isolated by different value systems and governance approaches toward
          • networks and
          • what runs on them.
    1. ExxonMobil, the world’s biggest oil company, knew as early as 1981 of climate change – seven years before it became a public issue, according to a newly discovered email from one of the firm’s own scientists. Despite this the firm spent millions over the next 27 years to promote climate denial.

      Exxon knew as early as 1981 of climate change, and since has been actively denying and distracting from the real issue - burning fossil fuels

    1. why does it in a sense if we think of money as a voting tool why is it that a billionaire has a 00:32:31 billion times more power to decide what society should be like than i do
      • for: voting, power - money, money - voting, inequality, voting - money, equity, voting power - rich
      • paraphrase
      • question
        • if we think of money as a voting tool
          • why does a billionaire have a billion times more power to decide what society should be like than i do?
      • for: emissions reduction, bend the curve, TPF, W2W, emissions reduction - cultural sector, bend the curve - cultural sector, TPF - cultural sector, W2W - cultural sector, carbon emissions - cultural sector, carbon inequality

      • comment

        • well written article on the carbon emissions challenges of the cultural sector
        • this is related to the carbon emissions of the luxury industry as well
      • question
        • same question as asked about luxury, since there is overlap with culture industry and luxury
        • Given that the 1% have the same carbon emissions as the bottom half of humanity, does the sustainability impacts of the decarbonization efforts of the luxury aspects of the culture industry measure up to stay under earth system boundaries in time?
      • reference
    1. I do want to point out one more really significant implication here which is how it affects our experience of time
      • for: the lack project, sense of lack, the reality project, sense of self, sense of self and lack, poverty mentality, sense of time, living in the future, living in the present, human DOing, human BEing
      • key insight
        • we construct different types of experiences of time, depending on the degree of sense of lack we experience
        • it means the difference between
          • living in the present
          • living in the future
      • paraphrase
        • it's the nature of lack projects insofar as we become preoccupied with them
        • that they tend to be future oriented naturally
        • I mean the whole idea of a lack project or a reality project is right here right now is not good enough
          • because I feel this sense of inadequacy this sense of lack
          • but in the future when I have what I think I need
            • when I'm rich enough or
            • when I'm famous enough or
            • my body is perfect enough or whatever
          • when I have all this then everything will be okay
          • and what of course that does is that future orientation traps Us in linear time in a way that tends to devalue the way we experience the world and ourselves in the world right here and now
          • it treats the now as a means to some better ends
          • Now isn't good enough
            • but when I have what I think I need everything is going to be just great
        • So many of the spiritual Traditions taught
        • especially the mystics and the Zen Masters
        • they end up talking about what is sometimes called
          • the Eternal now
          • or the Eternal present - a different way of experiencing the now
        • As long as the present is a means to some better end
          • this future when I'm gonna be okay
        • then the present is experienced as
          • a series of Nows that fall away
          • as we reach for that future
        • but if we're not actually needing to get somewhere that's better in the future
        • it's possible to experience the here and now
          • as lacking nothing and myself in the here and now
          • as lacking nothing
      • it's possible to experience the present as something that doesn't arise and doesn't fall away
    2. t the irony of course is that if this desire if this craving for money if this lack project and we could also call it reality project because another 00:13:08 way to talk about all this is to say that we don't feel real enough and we're looking for that which somehow will make us feel more real more complete more whole right 00:13:20 because whatever the lack project may be it is looking for out something outside that's going to secure this sense of self-insight the tragedy of the whole process of 00:13:32 course is that it doesn't matter how much money you earn it's never going to be enough because what we're dealing with is just a symptom and not the core problem
      • for: the lack project, the reality project, sense of lack, sense of self, poverty mentality, polylcrisis, polycrisis - root
      • paraphrase
        • the irony is that
          • if this desire
          • if this craving for money
          • if this lack project and
          • we could also call it reality project
            • because another way to talk about all this is to say that we don't feel real enough and we're looking for that which somehow will make us feel more real more complete more whole
        • because whatever the lack project may be it is looking for out something outside
          • that's going to secure this sense of self-inside
        • the tragedy of the whole process is that it doesn't matter how much money you earn
          • it's never going to be enough
          • because what we're dealing with is just a symptom and not the core problem
      • key insight
        • the lack project is at the root of our polycrisis
    3. if you ask about things like lack projects or reality projects on the individual level you know I was talking 00:32:01 about how the separation is a delusion it's uncomfortable we become preoccupied with trying to find something out here that'll fill up our sense of lack and you know we can Wonder is there 00:32:13 something comparable at the civilizational level and frankly I think that there is I think that it is our Collective preoccupation with progress
      • for: progress trap, sense of lack, the lack project, collective lack project, individual lack project
      • key insight
        • progress, and the shadow side, the progress trap
        • is the collective lack project, that corresponds to the individual's lack project
    1. highlights the dire financial circumstances of the poorest individuals, who resort to high-interest loans as a survival strategy. This phenomenon reflects the interplay between human decision-making and development policy. The decision to take such loans, driven by immediate needs, illustrates how cognitive biases and limited options impact choices. From a policy perspective, addressing this issue requires understanding these behavioral nuances and crafting interventions that provide sustainable alternatives, fostering financial inclusion and breaking the cycle of high-interest debt.

    1. It is not unrealistic to forsee the costs ofcomputation and memory plummeting by orders ofmagnitude, while the cost of human programmers increases.It will be cost effective to use large systems like ~. forevery kind of programming, as long as they can providesignificant increases in programmer power. Just ascompilers have found their way into every application overthe past twenty years, intelligent program-understandingsystems may become a part of every reasonablecomputational environment in the next twenty.
      • for: gene culture coevolution, carrying capacity, unsustainability, overshoot, cultural evolution, progress trap

      • Title: The genetic and cultural evolution of unsustainability

      • Author: Brian F. Snyder

      • Abstract

      • Summary
      • Paraphrase
        • Anthropogenic changes are accelerating and threaten the future of life on earth.
        • While the proximate mechanisms of these anthropogenic changes are well studied
          • climate change,
          • biodiversity loss,
          • population growth
        • the evolutionary causality of these anthropogenic changes have been largely ignored.
        • Anthroecological theory (AET) proposes that the ultimate cause of anthropogenic environmental change is
          • multi-level selection for niche construction and ecosystem engineering.
        • Here, we integrate this theory with
          • Lotka’s Maximum Power Principle
        • and propose a model linking
          • energy extraction from the environment with
          • genetic, technological and cultural evolution
        • to increase human ecosystem carrying capacity.
        • Carrying capacity is partially determined by energetic factors such as
          • the net energy a population can acquire from its environment and
          • the efficiency of conversion from energy input to offspring output.
        • These factors are under Darwinian genetic selection
        • in all species,
        • but in humans, they are also determined by
          • technology and
          • culture.
        • If there is genetic or non-genetic heritable variation in
          • the ability of an individual or social group
        • to increase its carrying capacity,
        • then we hypothesize that - selection or cultural evolution will act - to increase carrying capacity.
        • Furthermore, if this evolution of carrying capacity occurs - faster than the biotic components of the ecological system can respond via their own evolution,
          • then we hypothesize that unsustainable ecological changes will result.
    1. what are we gonna do with all these boundaries once this is their set right 01:43:58 what I always say that this esps really need to be linked to actors if they are going to have any bearing in real world and to guide the practice so we can do that by cross-scale 01:44:11 translation try to bring down this you know planetary level kind of our boundaries into actors cities and businesses in particular so when we talk about this cross-scale translation what we are talking about is if the boundary 01:44:24 is transgressed then what we are talking about is how do you allocate the responsibilities equal um equitably
      • for: downscaled planetary boundaries, bend the curve, allocate responsibilities, fair share, science-based targets
      • key insight
        • downscaling to city scale and to business actdors
        • based on Science based targets
    1. I like their simplicity and cloth texture, but family members seem to think that my 1952 set of The Great Books of the Western World are a bit on the "dreary looking side" compared with the more colorful books in our home library. (It says something that the 12 year old thinks my yellow Springer graduate math texts are more inviting...) Has anyone else had this problem and solved it with custom printed dust jackets?

      • Has anyone seen them for sale?
      • Made their own?
      • Interested in commissioning some as a bigger group?
      • Used a third-party company to design and print something?

      In doing something like this for fun, I might hope that the younger kids in the house might show more interest in some more lively/colorful custom covers.

      I'm partially tempted to use a classical painting as a display across the spines (a la Juniper Books collections) perhaps using:

      Other thoughts? suggestions?

      Syndication link: https://www.reddit.com/r/ClassicalEducation/comments/15gv2cz/custom_dust_jackets_for_the_great_books_of_the/

  3. Jul 2023
    1. I have been using the Outline of Knowledge (OoK) which Adler developed for the Propædia volume of the 15th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica (orig. publ. 1974) as my way of indexing knowledge (there is a blog series describing this). I am now working on Part 7 of the series, which is concerned with porting from a card-based analogue system to a digital computer-based form, using the insights gained from having done so via the analogue approach initially.It appears as though the final version of the OoK which ever appeared was in 2010, and is archived at The Internet Archive.I am interested in whether anyone has continued using the OoK or has expanded upon it in any formalised or systematic way. I have made my own mods to it, of course, as it is several decades old and could bear with some revision. But I am not aware of any organisation or group that may already be doing this, including the Britannica itself (which seems a shame, if it is the case).Does anyone know of any such efforts?

      reply to u/TheVoroscope at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/va2s09/comment/jtwqhd7/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

      u/TheVoroscope, the only things I've seen on it are the original and what you've written. I suspect anything current will be quite niche and would require searching in the areas of academic journal articles or at the level of graduate studies within the library sciences where you might find something. Simon Winchester had a section on the rise and downfall of the Encyclopedia Britannica in his most recent book Knowing What We Know (2023) which has a brief mention of the Propædia, but it was broadly described as a $32 million dollar bomb that ended the Encyclopedia. I would suspect that the last printings in 2010 and 2012 were probably the last more as a result of the rise of internet usage than they were the form and function of the Propædia itself though.

    1. The Divine image
      • for: William Blake, poem, evolution, beauty, climate communication, motivation
        • William Blake Poem
          • The Divine Image
            • To Mercy, pity, peace and love all pray in their distress and in these virtues of delight return their thankfulness
            • when push comes to shove as they say in English
            • when you're up against the wall when you're in an extreme situation
              • someone's going to hit you and what do you do? Mercy Mercy you just say it or
              • you see someone else, they're about to hit someone and you say for pity's sake don't do that or
              • you find somebody very, very attractive and you feel this love right?
            • that's why he says
              • love the human form Divine
              • mercy has a human heart
              • pity a human face
              • love the human form Divine
            • these things are actually almost spontaneous intuitive things that happen and what does it mean?
              • they come from the biosphere
              • they come from your body
              • they come from evolution
            • it's very, very clear for example that art and language ritual comes from at least as far back as primates
      • for: ecological civilization, degrowth, futures, deep ecology, emptiness, polycrisis, human exceptionalism, planned descent
      • source
      • Description

        • Nate hosts this discussion on what constitutes an ecological civilization with guests
          • William Rees
          • Rex Weyler
          • Nora Bateson
      • Reflections Overall,

        • an insightful discussion on the polycrisis and
        • reflections on what is in store for civilization.
      • There is consensus that
        • what we are experiencing has been decades in the making and
        • the solutions-oriented approach to solving problems has only treated the symptoms and indeed has made things worse.
      • There is a strong undercurrent of the emptiness in nature
      • Rex

        • emphasized the folly of human exceptionalism that has been socially normalized and which
        • continues to create the major separation that fuels the polycrisis.
        • Not recognizing that we are nature, not recognizing our animal nature
        • we look upon nature with an attitude of controlling nature, rather than flowing with her.
        • advocated Taoism as a more consistent way to frame nature rather than the reductionist, control methodology that separates us from nature.
      • Nora's perspective is the folly of abstraction that generates fixed preconceptions of aspects of nature that we then reify.

        • The fixed preconceptions are solidified but they are an oversimplified version of reality,
        • and that oversimplification leads to actualizing the cliche"a little knowledge is dangerous" into civilization
        • in other words, the continuous manufacture of progress traps.
      • William sees our impending crash as not only inevitable, but natural.

        • In this, he concurs with Rex's perspective.
        • Human beings are simply another species and like them,
          • we are susceptible to population explosions when negative feedbacks are removed,
          • which can lead to nature self-correcting with mass dieoff when resources are overconsumed.
    1. It does not make sense for   one species to command most of the energy flow  through the ecosystems of which it is a part.   That's a very destabilizing situation. And  the wise species would do everything possible   to reestablish some kind of balanced energy and  material throughput. If we don't do that, again,   01:15:52 I keep harping on this, people hate me for it,  but we will go down
      • for: anthropomorphism, apex species
      • quote
        • it does not make sense for one species to command most of the energy flow through the ecosystems which it is part of. That's a very destabilizing situation and the wise species would do everything possible to reestablish some kind of balanced energy material throughput.
    1. Books aren’t something one approves or disapproves of; they are to be understood, interpreted, learned from, shocked by, argued with and enjoyed. Moreover, the evolution of literature and the other arts, their constant renewal over the centuries, has always been fueled by what is now censoriously labeled “cultural appropriation” but which is more properly described as “influence,” “inspiration” or “homage.” Poets, painters, novelists and other artists all borrow, distort and transform. That’s their job; that’s what they do.
    1. you may have seen last week that the global carbon budget to 00:11:43 have a chance of holding 1.5 was cut by half so no longer 500 billion tons of carbon dioxide but rather 250 billion tons of carbon dioxide remaining to have a chance of holding 1.5 that's only like 00:11:56 six seven years under current burning of fossil fuels so an orderly phase out means that we really need to start bending the curve immediately and reduce emissions by in the order of six to seven percent per year to have a net 00:12:09 Seer World economy between 2014 and 2050
      • for: bend the curve, climate clock
    1. The common definition of a progress trap is derived from the book’s cover text: “..it is the condition in which we find ourselves when science, technology and industry create more problems than they can solve. Often inadvertently.”
      • for: progress trap
      • definition
      • quote
        • progress trap
          • A progress trap is the condition in which we find ourselves when science, technology and industry create more problems than they can solve. Often inadvertently.
      • author
        • Dan O'Leary
      • source
    1. The concept of the purity of science should be abandoned.
      • for: progress trap, abstraction
        • comment
          • we do not recognize the power of abstraction
          • through it, we begin to construct Indra's Net of Jewels, one jewel (idea) at a time
          • but each jewel (idea) that we construct is just a little knowledge, and as Dan observes, a little knowledge, compared to the endless knowledge reflected in any jewel is dangerous.
          • this then, is our dangerous predicament - we base technology on incomplete jewels of Indra's net
          • as we know from mathematics, when the finite meets the infinite, it can never win
    1. most of what we do when we look at power is we say, "This person is bad, let's get them out." And then we end up with another bad person a few minutes later or a few months later. And as a result of that, we end up replicating the exact same problems over and over and over.
      • we look at a bad person
      • try to get rid of him/her
      • when we do, then another bad person ends up in the role
      • this is because we are treating the symptom, not the root cause
    2. power does corrupt. We have plenty of evidence that it changes your psychology, it changes your neuroscience, it changes your brain, but it's only a small part of the story. And the much more interesting part of the story is how people interact with systems and why we end up with the wrong people in charge.
      • comment
        • interesting analysis that it is the system that promotes the wrong type of people to positions of leadership.
    1. The "Dokkōdō" (Japanese: 獨行道) ("The Path of Aloneness", "The Way to Go Forth Alone", or "The Way of Walking Alone") is a short work written by Miyamoto Musashi a week before he died in 1645. It consists of 21 precepts. "Dokkodo" was largely composed on the occasion of Musashi giving away his possessions in preparation for death, and was dedicated to his favorite disciple, Terao Magonojō (to whom the earlier Go rin no sho [The Book of Five Rings] had also been dedicated), who took them to heart. "Dokkōdō" expresses a stringent, honest, and ascetic view of life.

      The work of Musashi, Dokkodo, is the Japanese for "The way of walking alone", which I like most as a translation.

      • Title
        • The landscape of biomedical research
      • Authors
        • Rita González-Márquez,
        • Luca Schmidt,
        • Benjamin M. Schmidt,
        • Philipp Berens
        • Dmitry Kobak
      • Date
        • April 11, 2023
      • Source
      • Abstract
        • The number of publications in biomedicine and life sciences
        • has rapidly grown over the last decades,
        • with over 1.5 million papers now published every year.
        • This makes it difficult to
          • keep track of new scientific works and
          • to have an overview of the evolution of the field as a whole.
        • Here we
          • present a 2D atlas of the entire corpus of biomedical literature, and
          • argue that it provides
            • a unique and
            • useful overview
          • of the life sciences research.
        • We base our atlas on the abstract texts of
        • 21 million English articles from the PubMed database.
        • To embed the abstracts into 2D, we use
          • a large language model PubMedBERT, combined with
          • t-SNE tailored to handle samples of our size.
        • We use our atlas to study
          • the emergence of the Covid-19 literature,
          • the evolution of the neuroscience discipline,
          • the uptake of machine learning, and
          • the distribution of gender imbalance in academic authorship.
        • Furthermore, we present an interactive web version of our atlas that
          • allows easy exploration and
          • will enable further insights and facilitate future research.
    1. Professor Büchs said
      • quote
        • "Policymakers need to win public support for energy demand reduction mechanisms. -The reality is decarbonisation on the supply side, where energy is generated and distributed, will not be enough to deliver the emission reductions that are needed. -So, energy demand will have to be reduced. That is the inescapable reality."
      • Author
        • Milena Buchs
      • Experts on the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimate that
        • reducing energy demand could produce between 40% and 70% of the emissions reductions that need to be found by 2050.

      "Our research is indicating that public support for energy demand reduction is possible if the public see the schemes as being fair and deliver climate justice."

    1. The second great separation followed the industrial revolution.
      • Second great separation
        • Industrial Revolution
          • The early enclosure movement during the 1600s
          • Prior to the enclosures, land was held in common for public use, not owned by individuals.
          • The rise of capitalism also occurred during this time.
            • Adam Smith wrote his landmark book, The Wealth of Nations, in 1776.
            • Land was privatized so the most efficient use of land could be determined
              • by market competition rather than
              • community consensus.
            • Labor then also had to be ​“commodified,” or bought and sold,
              • so non-farmers could work for wages and buy food and the other necessities of life they had been getting from the land.
            • With reliance on working for wages, buying, and selling
              • the necessity for personal relationships were diminished.
            • With the diminished necessity for personal relationships,
              • the social cohesion within families, communities and society began to diminish as well.
          • The persistence of chronic poverty and malnutrition, even during times of tremendous economic growth and individual wealth, are direct consequences of a growing sense of disconnectedness from each other that was nourished by the industrial era of economic development.
    1. Some writers have made an important contribution to theGreat Conversation, but in a way that makes it impossible toinclude it in a set like this. These are writers, of whom Leib-nitz, Voltaire, and Balzac are notable examples, whose con-tribution lies in the total volume of their work, rather thanin a few great works, and whose total volume is too largeto be included or whose single works do not come up to thestandard of the other books in this set.
    2. We attach importance to making whole works, as distin-guished from excerpts, available; and in all but three cases,Aquinas, Kepler, and Fourier, the 443 works of the 74 auth-ors in this set are printed complete.

      There are 443 works by 74 authors in the Great Books of the Western World. All of them are printed in their entirety except for Aquinas, Kepler and Fourier.

    3. In many cases, all or some of an author'sworks included in this set were unavailable.

      One of the primary goals of The Great Books, was to make some of the (especially ancient writers) more accessible to modern audiences with respect to ready availability of their works which were otherwise much more expensive.

      This certainly says something about both publishing and reading practices of the early 20th century.

    4. The reason, then, for the omission of authors and worksafter 1900 is simply that the Editors did not feel that they oranyone else could accurately judge the merits of contempo-rary writings.

      The idea of the Lindy effect is subtly hiding here. Presumably it also existed before.

      It's often seen in how historians can or can't easily evaluate the impact of recent historical figures without the appropriate amount of additional evaluation with respect to passing time.

    5. The final decision on the list wasmade by me.

      Robert Hutchins takes sole responsibility for the final decision on the selection for the books which appear in The Great Books of the Western World series.

      One wonders what sort of advice he may have sought out or received with respect to a much broader diversity of topics and writers with respect to his own time. I reminded a bit of the article The 102 Great Ideas (Life, 1948) which highlights a more progressive stance with respect to women and feminism in the examples used.

      See: LIFE. “The 102 Great Ideas: Scholars Complete a Monumental Catalog.” January 26, 1948. Https://books.google.com/books?id=p0gEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA92&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=2#v=onepage&q&f=false. Google Books.

    6. They now have the chance to understandthemselves through understanding their tradition.

      It feels odd that people wouldn't understand their own traditions, but it obviously happens. Information overload can obviously heavily afflict societies toward forgetting their traditions and the formation of new traditions, particularly in non-oral traditions which focus more on written texts which can more easily be ignored (not read) and then later replaced with seemingly newer traditions.

      Take for example the resurgence of note taking ideas circa 2014-2020 which completely disregarded the prior histories, particularly in lieu of new technologies for doing them.

      As a means of focusing on Western Culture, the editors here have highlighted some of the most important thoughts for encapsulating and influencing their current and future cultures.

      How do oral traditions embrace the idea of the "Great Conversation"?

    7. democracyrequires liberal education for all.

      Two of the driving reasons behind the Great Books project were improvement of both education and democracy.

      The democracy portion was likely prompted by the second Red Scare from ~1947-1957 which had profound effects on America. Published in 1952, this series would have considered it closely and it's interesting they included Marx in the thinkers at the end of the series.

    1. Has anybody or could anybody ever have   the experience of consciousness emerging?
      • question
      • has ANYONE ever experienced consciousness emerging from matter?

      • comment

        • what Spira is getting at is that there is a fundamental category confusion
          • deep down, matter is an abstract concept
          • matter is NOT a phenomenological experience
          • from this perspective, a phenomena cannot emerge from a concept
          • in fact a concept ALWAYS emerges from consciousness, not the other way around
          • the claim that consciousness emerges from brains is a fundamental category error that makes an impossible claim
            • that phenomena emerges from a concept
  4. bafybeihzua2lldmlutkxlie7jfppxheow6my62x2qmywif2wukoswo5hqi.ipfs.w3s.link bafybeihzua2lldmlutkxlie7jfppxheow6my62x2qmywif2wukoswo5hqi.ipfs.w3s.link
      • Title
        • Three levels of the symbolosphere
      • Authors
        • Mark Burgin and John H. Schumann
      • Abstract

        • This paper attempts to understand the coexistence of the
          • material and
          • non-material
        • aspects of our lives.
        • By synthesizing ideas about
          • structures,
          • physical entities,
          • mental phenomena, and
          • symbolic relations,
        • we argue that
          • the nonmaterial can emerge from the material, and
          • then the nonmaterial may mediate the production of material entities.
        • Finally, this cycle is applied to notions of creativity and invention.
      • Comment

        • the authors are situated in materialism that explains non-materialism as an epi-phenomena
    1. transcendental need for reason as the vehicle of itself undermining
      • insight
      • there is a transcendental need for reason as the vehicle of itself undermining

        • the only way to understand that
          • reason isn't self-justifying
          • there is knowledge that transcends reason
        • is to use reason to reach a stage where you think reason might need to be abandoned,
          • reason becomes most necessary
        • Understanding the limits of reason requires reason
          • that is the essence of Madhyamaka
      • comment

        • when reason is turned upon itself, when consciousness studies itself, that is where paradoxes emerge - at the limits of thought and the limits of conceptualization
    2. no we don't
      • Answer

        • No.
        • we end up with a non conceptual insight that:
          • we can then communicate
          • that we can discuss
          • that we can articulate
          • that requires that reason be present at:
            • the beginning like the seed
            • in the middle when we're performing the analysis
            • like the rain that nourishes the crops and
            • in the end in the harvest
          • because non conceptuality is really easy to achieve all you need is a very large rock,
            • just bang right on your head and non conceptuality is there
          • but that's a mute inert non-conceptual
          • Non-conceptuality needs to be enriched by the conceptual insight that allows you to actually make something of it
      • The Middle Way

        • using the conceptual to reach a deeper appreciation of the state of non-conceptuality,
        • in other words, using dualistic thought and language to reach insights about the nondual
      • Title
        • Madhyamaka: Jay Garfield
      • Description
        • Jay Garfield talks about why Nagarjuna's technique employts reason to undermine itself to achieve peace in a nonconceptual state.
          • He humorously points out how its easy to achieve nonconceptual states in many ways, such as a large rock to the head, but that kind of nonconceptual state is not really insightful for penetrating the deep philosophical questions we all have.
          • He clarifies why Nagarjuna's process is called the Middle Way,
            • it employs (conceptual) analysis to achieve wisdom of the nondual (nonconceptual) state
    1. The takeaway: A negative finding.
      • comment
        • the study could not find any detectable EEG signal in the deceased monks practicing Thukdam
        • Philosopher Evan Thompson commented that this does not disprove the existence of consciousness in the Thukdam state, merely that the instruments used may not have been where the critical signals reside
    1. readers typically turn to translations not to hear about culinary ephemera but to read literature.

      Part of literature is the Great Conversation, which often turns on the ability for writers to be understood and appreciated, often in translation. Gary Saul Morson takes P&V to task for their Russian translations which often focus on the incredibly specific nuances of direct translation, but which simultaneously lose the beauty and sense of literature. He says, "[...] readers typically turn to translations not to hear about culinary ephemera but to read literature."

    1. this division of attention Works to our advantage when we use both however it is 00:08:39 a handicap in fact it is a catastrophe when we use only one
      • In his book, The Master and his Emissary,
        • McGilchrist explains what happens when left and right hemisphere are out of balance and the left hemisphere takes over
          • namely, disaster
        • this will be the third time the imbalance manifests
    1. The notion of functional integration as a basis for biological identity was fully developed only in the 19th century, where it was transformed by the rise of both cell and evolutionary theory. Herbert Spencer
      • Herbert Spencer fully developed Digby's concept into the modern concept of functional integration
        • Spencer introduced the term "survival of the fittest"
        • ‘He tried to unite complex new findings about metabolism and organismic development with evolution and the seeming correspondence of organisms to their environments.
          • In The Principles of Biology (1864), Spencer wrote
            • a biological individual is one in which
            • the interdependence of the parts allows it to function and
            • respond to environmental change as a whole.
          • That is: ‘any concrete whole having a structure which enables it,
            • when placed in appropriate conditions,
        • to continuously adjust its internal relations to external relations, - so as to maintain the equilibrium of its functions.’
  5. Jun 2023
    1. During the Baroque Era, the “Rule of the Octave” was a practical tool that enabledmusicians to gain harmonic flexibility at the keyboard.5 The rule prescribed how toharmonize a scale in the bass using stylistic tonal progressions. In jazz, a similar rule canalso be developed. Instead of placing the scale in the bass, the major scale is placed in thesoprano voice. The jazz rule of the octave explains how to harmonize a descending majorscale with idiomatic jazz progressions. By examining different harmonic outcomes, therelationship of melodies to chords and chords to melodies becomes clear. The jazz ruleof the octave also helps us to realize the harmonic potential of different melodic segmentsand examines their behavior in the context of underlying chord progressions. Figures21.3a–21.3d illustrate four distinct harmonizations of the descending major scale
    1. One) Successful men realize that the most important decision in their life is the woman they choose, because outside of work, this is what they'll be spending most time on. The woman must understand the man's grand ambition, and support them with it. (Cf. Flow & The Intellectual Life as well). Women should be chosen on personality, not looks. Looks fade (attraction as well), personality "stays".

      Two) Everyone deserves an opinion but not everyone deserves a say. Charlie Munger sums this up right: "I don't ever allow myself to have [express] an opinion about anything that I don't know the opponent side's argument better than they do." Or Marcus Aurelius, who says: "The opinion of ten thousand men is of no value if none of them know anything about the subject." In short: Only state your opinion when you can back it up!; knowledge and experience. The same goes for judging opinion (and advice) from others.

      Three) Successful people buy assets when the money is enough. Assets > Luxury. (See also: Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Robert Kiyosaki). Only buy glamor and other "interests" once your assets are there to secure your financial success.

      Four) Be pragmatic. Do what's practical, not what is "sexy". Notice inefficiencies and solve them. The entrepreneurial mindset.

      Five) The morning sets the tone for the rest of the days. Time is subjective, waking up early doesn't matter as much as waking up later. It depends on the person. Someone who wakes up at 10am can be as successful as someone who wakes up at 6am. Instead, what defines success, is a highly effective morning routine.

      Six) The less you talk, the more you listen. Talking less means less mistakes. In addition, the less you talk, the more people will listen when you do speak. It puts extra weight on your message. Listening means analysis and learning.

      Seven) Pick the right opportunity at the right time. Pick the right vehicle. Do the right things in the right order! The advice "don't do what someone says, do what they do" is bullshit, as you can't do what someone is able to do after ten years of experience.

      Eight) Discipline > Motivation. Motivation, like Dr. Sung says, fluctuates and is multifactorial dependent... When you are lead by motivation you will not be as productive. Don't rely on chance. Rely on what is stable.

      Nine) Once a good career has been made, buy A1 assets and hold on to them to secure a financially successful future.

      Ten) Just because you won, you are not a winner. Being a winner is a continuous process, it means always learning and reflecting as well as introspecting. Don't overvalue individual wins but do celebrate them when appropriate.

      Eleven) Build good relationships with the banks early on. At times you need loans to fund certain ventures, when having a good relation with them, this will be significantly easier. Understand finance as early as possible. Read finance books.

      Twelve) Keep the circle small. Acquintances can be many, but real close relationships should be kept small. Choose your friends wisely. "You become the average of the five people you spend most time with." Privacy is important. Only tell the most deep secrets to the Inner Circle, to avoid overcomplication.

      Thirteen) Assume that everything is your fault. Responsibility. It leads to learning. It requires reflection and introspection. It leads to Dr. Benjamin Hardy's statement: "Nothing happens to you, everything happens for you."

      Fourteen) Work like new money, but act like your old money. Combine the hunger of the new with the wisdom of the old.

      Fifteen) Assume that you can't change the world, but slightly influence it. It prevents disappointments and gives a right mindset. Do everything (that has your ambition) with an insane drive. Aim to hit the stars. To become the best of the best.

      Sixteen) Private victories lead to public victories. The solid maxim is the following: "The bigger the public victory, the more private victories went into it." Work in private. Social media doesn't need to known the struggle. Let your results talk for you. This is also why you should never compare yourself to others, but rather to your own past self.

      Seventeen) After extreme experience, the most complicated task will look elegant and effortless. Unconscious competence.

    1. I do think it’s helpful for members of the public to know some basic facts about the past. For me, it’s the same idea as the saying “If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.” Similarly, if you know nothing you can be convinced of anything.

      These are much pithier versions of what Robert Hutchins is getting at when he's talking about the importance of the Great Conversation with respect to Democracy.

    1. There are many things that we have to take on trust; everyminute of every day we have to accept the testimony and the guidance of thosewho are in a position to offer an authoritative view.

      Perhaps there is a need for balance between the two perspectives of formal and progressive education. While one can teach another the broad strokes of the "rules" of note taking, for example, using the zettelkasten method and even give examples of the good and the bad, the affordances, and tricks, individuals are still going to need to try things out to see what works for them in various situations and for their specific needs. In the end, its nice to have someone hand one the broad "rules" (and importantly the reasons for them), so that one has a set of tools which they can then practice as an art.

    1. Deeper commitment creates deeper trust. The greatest results you are capable of. Transformation — you’ll be able to shift some of those things you think you can’t do or be or have. A deeper relationship, with more trust. A deeper relationship with yourself, with more trust. A realization that you didn’t need the exit door. A deeper devotion to whatever you care about.

      Advantages of Commitment

    1. The men who crafted Great Books programs, most prominently John Erskine, Mortimer Adler, and Scott Buchanan, promoted the idea that the reading of classics was a task meant for all students, at all levels, even if the works were translated from their original language. At several colleges, the curricula of undergraduate programs came to be based upon the reading of these Great Books.
    1. 6:30

      This book was not easy to write. [...] This book tried my patriotism, and it stretched it to thin, to a string. Because as I went through these documents, and looked at the behavior of my country, it was appalling. It was shocking, that we were involved in things that we've been involved in over the last 50 years. In fact, I got chastised for bringing up a word that I find ironic, I guess you're not supposed to use. When you read this, what bothered me, but I'll use it. I tell it like it is. I believe, in many instances in this book, you can substitute the word Nazi and it works. There's behavior in this book that is as you'd expect it from the Nazi's. But it isn't the Nazi's, it's us. It’s our country.

      yes, operation paperclip.

      the US government recruited literal Nazi scientists for the US military and secret services.

      also here in germany, the "denazification" was only for show, to deceive a naive public. obviously, the puppet masters have never changed, and also many of their puppets have continued their work in government and industry.

      fun fact: Theodor Pfizer was a nazi collaborateur. yes, the same Pfizer family as the pharma corporation Pfizer.