17 Matching Annotations
  1. Feb 2024
  2. Dec 2023
    1. Wells, H. G. “The Idea of a World Encyclopedia.” Harper’s Magazine, April 1937. https://harpers.org/archive/1937/04/the-idea-of-a-world-encyclopedia/.

    2. without a World En-cyclopedia to hold men's minds togetherin something like a common interpreta-tion of reality there is no hope whateverof anything but an accidental and transi-tory alleviation to any of our world trou-bles. As mankind is so it will remainuntil it pulls its mind together. And if itdoes not pull its mind together then I donot see how it can help but decline.Never was a living species more peril-ously poised than ours at the presenttime. If it does not take thoughtto endits present mental indecisiveness catastro-phe lies ahead. Our species may yet endits strange eventful history as just the last,the cleverest, of the great apes. Thegreat ape that was clever-but not cleverenough. It could escape from mostthings but not from its own mental con-fusion.
    3. My impression is that human brains arevery much of a pattern, that under thesame conditions they react in the sameway, and that were it not for tradition,upbringing, accidents of circumstance,and particularly of accidental individualobsessions, we should find ourselves-since we all face the same universe-muchmore in agreement than is superficiallyapparent. We speak different languagesand dialects of thought and can even attimes catch ourselves flatly contradictingone another in words while we are doingour utmost to express the same idea.How often do we see men misrepresent-ing one another in order to exaggerate adifference and secure the gratification ofan argumentative victory!

      We're far more alike than we imagine says Wells. Most of our difference is nitpicking for the sake of argument itself rather than actual meaning.

  3. Nov 2023
  4. May 2023
  5. Oct 2022
    1. November 7, 1916: "I expect to vote for Woodrow Wilson

      I wonder if others use the sense making features of a note card system to think through their voting decisions? This seems an interesting and useful exercise which Paxson has done.

  6. Sep 2022
    1. Why%do%I%write?

      I have an experience of my mother that I am trying to express that I know is true. That epistemology is true, but the saying of it is all manner of false, approximate. The doing is all wrong. untrued in the machinists sense, off, useless.

  7. Jul 2022
  8. bafybeicuq2jxzrw7omddwzohl5szkqv6ayjiubjy3uopjh5c3cghxq6yoe.ipfs.dweb.link bafybeicuq2jxzrw7omddwzohl5szkqv6ayjiubjy3uopjh5c3cghxq6yoe.ipfs.dweb.link
    1. This eventof cognition, or better yet the event of making sense – the primal mental event, allencompassing, both forming and dissolving boundaries, multiple4 and affirming, Ifind to be the proper stage to present my research

      !- definition : event * the event of making sense is primordial prerequisite for a conceptual life of mind and is the gateway into modern human culture, into the symbolosphere

    2. My interest goes yet further, to the metaphysical ground of cognition andmental processes and how they reflect on existence, meaning and value. There is anobvious and unavoidable strange loop (Hofstadter, 2013) here: the cognitive think-ing agent trying to make sense of these same sense-making processes that bring forthboth her as a subject and the objects of her observation while these are being broughtforth.

      !- key insight : making sense of making sense is a strange loop! * This sentence deeply resonates

  9. Nov 2020
    1. I was originally interested in figuring out how you could figure out what’s actually true online.

      Conor was trying to figure out how to find out what's true online with Roam.

  10. Sep 2020
  11. Jan 2020
  12. Oct 2019
  13. Jun 2018
    1. Here is my sense of the topics that resonated most clearly:

      Here is my sense of what you say in translation:

      A Numbered LIst

      1. I am aware, so aware, that definitions rule. They make us imagine our practice.
      2. I am aware that less is so often more.
      3. The R&D arm of each generation is already at work constraining and cajoling.
      4. Our poets and dogs drag home the damndest things: bones, mirrors and seeds.
      5. And still it is not enough.
      6. The margins are a moving target that even its authors may no longer recognize.
      7. Even if Yeats is right and the best lack all conviction and the worst are full of passionate hootery, we still note our thanks, we continue to add to the pile, and we keep open and keep on. and get down now.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BARAHLk-8dk