328 Matching Annotations
  1. Last 7 days
    1. The whole industry is built on this concept of planned obsolescence. That’s the term that I think IBM famously came up with in the sixties, where basically you’re intentionally trying to constantly sell people on the new new thing. And that’s what drives the stock price up. And that’s what drives the press cycle. And that’s what gets people to buy new products and things. And so, the whole industry is predicated around this idea of there’s always a new thing around the horizon.

      Where did the concept of planned obsolescence originate? Was it really IBM as Alex Wright suggests here?

      How does planned obsolescence drive capitalism? And as a result of that is there a balance between future innovation and waste? Is there a mechanism within capitalism that can fix this waste (or dramatically mitigate it)?

  2. Feb 2024
    1. scholastic learning

      How much different things may have been if the state, and not the Church, had been the progenitor and supporter of the early university?

      How might education have been different if it came out of itself (or something like curiosity or even society in general) without the influences on either church or state?

    2. As thehistorian Jean Leclercq, himself a Benedictine monk, puts it, ‘in theMiddle Ages, one generally read by speaking with one’s lips, at leastin a whisper, and consequently hearing the phrases that the eyessee’.6

      quoted section from:<br /> [au moyen âge, on lit généralement en pronançant avec les lèvres, au moins à voix basse, par conséquent en entendant les phrases que les yeux voient.] Jean Leclercq, Initiation aux auteurs monastiques du Moyen Âge, 2nd edn (Paris: Cerf, 1963), p. 72.

      What connection, if any, is there to the muscle memory of movement while speaking/reading along with sound/hearing to remembering what we read? Is there research on this? Implications for orality and memory?

    1. during theyears that Leslie Stephen contributed to the OED, he started his owncrowdsourced project, the Dictionary of National Biography (DNB). Just asMurray’s Dictionary traced the lives of thousands of words, Stephen’sdictionary traced the lives of thousands of people who made a notable impacton British history. Stephen invited 653 people to write 29,120 articles. Sixty-three volumes comprising 29,108 pages were published, the first volume in1885 and the last in 1900. The DNB is still going today, under the aegis ofOxford University Press, and it now covers the lives of 55,000 people.

      Presumably this dictionary also used a card index for collection? (check...)

    2. And yet he desperately needed the help of Subeditors because the task wastoo massive to do alone. Two years into the job, Murray had estimated thathe had sent out 817,625 blank slips to Readers. If they returned them withquotations, and if he spent a minimum of 30 seconds reading each one andallocating it to the correct sense of an entry, it would take him three workingyears to get through a third of the materials gathered.

      By the second year into his editing work on the OED, John Murray estimated that he had sent out 817,625 slips to readers.

      At the average price of $0.025 for bulk index cards in 2023, this would have cost $20,440, so one must wonder at the cost of having done it. How much would this have been in March 1879 when Murray tool over editorship?

      How many went out in total? Who cut them all? Surely mass manufacture didn't exist at the time for them?

      Sending them out would have helped to ensure a reasonable facsimile of having cards of equal size coming back.

    1. Knowing is not a rationale for not acting. Can we doubt that knowl-edge has become a weapon we wield against ourselves?
  3. Jan 2024
    1. The Charging This consists in its interior arrangement ofCabinet rows of pigeon-holes constructed on an inclineupwards so that the base of each horizontalrow of pigeon-holes is higher than its predecessor. Into thesepigeon-holes the charging shps are placed and there is a guidecard to each pigeon-hole marking the divisions of the charging slipsby giving the number of the slip which is to be filed immediatelybehind it.

      While slightly different in its physical configuration, the office charging cabinet (with a bleacher-like set up) is very similar to the similarly named library card charging tray.

      Which came first?

    1. Having at most four references to notes containing the same keyword (in an archive of sixty thousand notes / ZK II), the austerity of the keyword index's entries speaks to Luhmann's appreciation of meandering through relationships rather than searching for exact "hits."

      Source for the claim of "at most four references"?

      I could believe this on first blush, but has his archive done this work?

    1. Top down thinking is when you plan a meal, find recipes, get ingredients, and then cook the meal. You started with the result and worked your way down to what was needed to make it happen.Bottoms up is when you rifle through your cabinets and fridge to try to cobble together something edible. You start with the components and figure out what you can do.

      https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/106e5v1/eli5_what_is_topdown_and_bottomup_thinking/

      In this example both versions have a specific goal in mind: "to diminish hunger". What does this look like when we have no specific goal in mind, but are exploring a space without purpose, but only for cause?

      exploring with relationship to: ᔥ[[Bob Doto]] in What Do We Mean When We Say "Bottom-Up?"

    1. It seems to me farmore likely that a robotic existence would not be like a human one inany sense that we understand, that the robots would in no sense be ourchildren, that on this path our humanity may well be lost.

      Here would be a good place to give a solid definition of humanity? What makes it special beyond the "self"?

      We are genetically very closely related to great apes and chimpanzees and less closely to dogs, cats, and even rats. Do we miss our dogicity? Or ratanity?

      What if the robot/human mix is somehow even more interesting and transcendent than humanity? His negativity doesn't leave any space for this possible eventuality.

    1. Some of these goals might include: - Reading to understand an author's argument, so you can critique it or respond to it;- Reading to accumulate information and data the author uses, for your own purposes; - Reading to learn facts and ideas that will provide background for a narrative or argument;- Reading for enjoyment, which often involves novelty.

      Nice start on a list of goals for reading

      others?

    1. Christian Lawson-Perfect @christianp@mathstodon.xyz@liseo there are lots of ways of representing colours numerically. The most basic way that computers use is to use a number between 0 and 255 for each of the red, green and blue components, called RGB encoding. The problem with that is that colours that look close to each other don't necessarily have close RGB values. There are other colour spaces which try to get closer to the ideal of having similar colours close together. Oklab, which I use in this tool, is currently the best for that.

      https://mastodon.social/@christianp@mathstodon.xyz/111759984202211741

      Is there a way to mathematically encode colors, similar to RGB perhaps, such that the colors in nearby neighborhoods all have values close to each other?

    1. I've come across Porstmann a few times as the "intellectual father of the A-Series", the "creator of the DIN formats", and the creator of A4 in various contexts. I saw that he wrote an interesting looking handbook in the mid-1920s and was curious if anyone has come across or even read it? It looks like it went into three editions up to the 1950s. I'm not seeing any English translations at present. I suspect it has material on using card indexes as databases and may be focused on business use, but may also have some connections to note taking practices of the time. I've also found several references to Porstmann's work and that of George Christoph Lichtenberg which makes me even more curious about the potential note taking connections.

      Porstmann, Walter. Kartei - Kunde: das Handbuch der Karteitechnik. Stuttgart: Verlag für Wirtschaft und Verkehr, 1928. https://search.worldcat.org/formats-editions/58666432?limit=50&offset=1&orderBy=publicationDateAsc


      Syndication link: https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/2785/anyone-read-porstmanns-kartei-kunde-das-handbuch-der-karteitechnik/p1?new=1

  4. Dec 2023
    1. How to link between Cards The "date" and "time" stamp of a cards define their "absolute name". This is why the time stamp must be unique, but not necessary to be accurate. In addition, it is easy to find a specific card, according to the stamp, if all cards are kept in chronological order. This technique was first introduced on the 2-channel.

      https://www.flickr.com/photos/hawkexpress/192480328/in/album-72157594200490122/

      The PoIC system allows linking of cards using date/timestamps for indexing/finding. Interestingly they were all kept in chronological order rather than in idea order as in Luhmann's zettelkasten.

      What are the pros/cons of this?<br /> - more searching and hunting through cards certainly is a drawback for lack of "threaded" ideas - others...

      hawkexpress apparently learned this technique on the 2-channel.

      (Edited 2022-10-13, 2023-12-27)

    1. When the Keynesian settlement was nally put into eect, afterWorld War II, it was oered only to a relatively small slice of theworld’s population. As time went on, more and more people wantedin on the deal. Almost all of the popular movements of the periodfrom 1945 to 1975, even perhaps revolutionary movements, couldbe seen as demands for inclusion: demands for political equality thatassumed equality was meaningless without some level of economicsecurity. This was true not only of movements by minority groups inNorth Atlantic countries who had rst been left out of the deal—such as those for whom Dr. King spoke—but what were then called“national liberation” movements from Algeria to Chile, whichrepresented certain class fragments in what we now call the GlobalSouth, or, nally, and perhaps most dramatically, in the late 1960sand 1970s, feminism. At some point in the ’70s, things reached abreaking point. It would appear that capitalism, as a system, simplycannot extend such a deal to everyone

      How might this equate to the time at which Rome extended its citizen franchise to larger swaths of people and the attendant results which came about? particularly the shift towards an empire versus a republic?

      These seem to have been happening in the case of America with Donald Trump attempting to become a modern day Julius Caesar. To whom is Trump indebted?

    1. Das Bemerkenswerte an dieser Aussage ist, dass sie klar zum Ausdruck bringt, was wir in system-theoretischen Begriffen als Produktion von Komplexität durch Selektion bezeichnen könnten. DerGrundgedanke ist, dass der Zettelkasten, wenn er richtig eingerichtet ist, in der Lage sein muss, vielmehr Komplexität zu erzeugen, als in den Zettelkasten eingeführt worden ist. Das ist eben der Fall,wenn seine Innenstruktur, wie Luhmann (1992a, S. 66) es formuliert hat, „selbständige kombinatori-sche Leistungen“ ermöglicht, so dass das, was der Zettelkasten bei jeder Abfrage mitzuteilen hat, im-mer viel mehr ist, als der Benutzer selbst im Kopf hatte.

      machine translation:

      The remarkable thing about this statement is that it clearly expresses what we might call, in systems theory terms, the production of complexity by selection. The basic idea is that the Zettelkasten, when set up correctly, must be able to generate much more complexity than was introduced into the Zettelkasten. This is precisely the case if its internal structure, as Luhmann (1992a, p. 66) put it, enables “independent combinatorial performances”, so that what the Zettelkasten has to communicate with each query is always much more than that user himself had in mind.


      Perhaps a usable quote to support my own theory, but certainly nothing new to me.

      Perhaps some interesting overlap with Ashby's law of requisite variety here? Perhaps an inverse version for creating variety and complexity?

    2. Dieser Aspekt war den gebildeten Menschen der frühen Neuzeit nicht entgangen. Am Ende des 18.Jahrhunderts hatte Christoph Meiners (1791, S. 91) darauf hingewiesen, dass „selbst die Vereinigungvon so vielen Factis und Gedanken, als man in vollständigen Excerpten zusammengebracht hat, eineMenge von Combinationen und Aussichten [veranläßt], die man sonst niemals gemacht oder erhaltenhätte“.

      Machine translation:

      This aspect was not lost on the educated people of the early modern period. At the end of the 18th century, Christoph Meiners (1791, p. 91) had pointed out that “even the union of as many facts and ideas as have been brought together in complete excerpts [causes] a multitude of combinations and prospects that otherwise never made or received would have".

      Find the Meiners reference and look more closely at his version of combinatorial creativity with respect to excerpts.

      See: Meiners, Christoph. 1791. Anweisungen für Jünglinge zum eigenen Arbeiten besonders zum Lesen, Excerpiren, und Schreiben. Hannover: In der Helwingschen Hofbuchhandlung.

    1. How to fold and cut a Christmas star<br /> Christian Lawson-Perfect https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S90WPkgxvas

      What a great simple example with some interesting complexity.

      For teachers trying this with students, when one is done making some five pointed stars, the next questions a curious mathematician might ask are: how might I generalize this new knowledge to make a 6 pointed star? A 7 pointed star? a 1,729 pointed star? Is there a maximum number of points possible? Is there a minimum? Can any star be made without a cut? What happens if we make more than one cut? Are there certain numbers for which a star can't be made? Is there a relationship between the number of folds made and the number of points? What does all this have to do with our basic definition of what a paper star might look like? What other questions might we ask to extend this little idea of cutting paper stars?

      Recalling some results from my third grade origami days, based on the thickness of most standard office paper, a typical sheet of paper can only be folded in half at most 7 times. This number can go up a bit if the thickness of the paper is reduced, but having a maximum number of potential folds suggests there is an upper bound for how many points a star might have using this method of construction.

  5. Nov 2023
    1. It would seem that people who spend too much time online experience more anxiety. Could it be that we've evolved to only be able to manage so many inputs and amounts of variety of those inputs? The experiencing of too much variety in our environments and the resultant anxiety may be a result of the limits of Ross Ashby's law of requisite variety within human systems.

      This may also be why chaos machines like Donald Trump are effective at creating anxiety in a populace whose social systems are not designed to handle so many crazy ideas at once.

      Implications for measurements of resilience?

    1. As to the mechanics of research, I take notes on four-by-six indexcards, reminding myself about once an hour of a rule I read long agoin a research manual, “Never write on the back of anything.”

      Barbara Tuchman took her notes on four-by-six inch index cards.

      She repeated the oft-advised mantra to only write on one side of a sheet.


      What manual did she read this in? She specifically puts quotes on "Never write on the back of anything." so perhaps it might be something that could be tracked down?

      Who was the earliest version of this quote? And was it always towards the idea of cutting up slips or pages and not wanting to lose material on the back? or did it also (later? when?) include ease-of-use and user interface features even when not cutting things up?

      At what point did double sided become a thing for personal printed materials? Certainly out of a duty to minimize materials, but it also needed the ability to duplex print pages or photocopy them that way.

    1. The example of maps he shows here discusses a social interaction component which allows for an interdisciplinary approach to the knowledge scaffolding (especially if students shared their work with each other).

      Are there other non-social affordances in this system? Affordances that would let an individual go further/faster by themselves?

  6. Oct 2023
    1. Israel was forbidden to set up sacred stones, pillars: “you shall not set up a pillar (massebah), which the LORD your God hates” (Deuteronomy 16:22).

      Relationship to the first two commandments against worshiping other gods and the use of idols?

      How does this relate to the standing stone found in the room at Khirbet Qeiyafa from the time of David?

      Dates of this text with respect to Khirbet Keiyafa?

    1. The rules of such learningconstitute the art of unaided discovery.

      There always seems to be a duality of "rules" and "art" I see in almost every representation of the idea of art.

      Thesis: To practice an art, there are always rules which one is following. Often the rules may be unwritten or hidden, but they are being followed on some level.

      Is there art which doesn't have any rules?

    1. Presenter says that Coppola divided the book into 50 scenes. Source for this?

      Link to Frank Daniel's advice for 70 scenes.

      What is the average number of scenes in a film? (Measured by slug lines.) Average over time? (5 year or 10 year increments?)

  7. Sep 2023
    1. Spiral Dynamics (SD) is a model of the evolutionary development of individuals, organizations, and societies. It was initially developed by Don Edward Beck and Christopher Cowan based on the emergent cyclical theory of Clare W. Graves, combined with memetics as proposed by Richard Dawkins and further developed by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

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

      related to ideas I've had with respect to Werner R. Loewenstein?

    1. Merchants and traders have a waste book (Sudelbuch, Klitterbuch in GermanI believe) in which they enter daily everything they purchase and sell,messily, without order. From this, it is transferred to their journal, whereeverything appears more systematic, and finally to a ledger, in double entryafter the Italian manner of bookkeeping, where one settles accounts witheach man, once as debtor and then as creditor. This deserves to be imitatedby scholars. First it should be entered in a book in which I record everythingas I see it or as it is given to me in my thoughts; then it may be enteredin another book in which the material is more separated and ordered, andthe ledger might then contain, in an ordered expression, the connectionsand explanations of the material that flow from it. [46]

      —Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Notebook E, #46, 1775–1776


      In this single paragraph quote Lichtenberg, using the model of Italian bookkeepers of the 18th century, broadly outlines almost all of the note taking technique suggested by Sönke Ahrens in How to Take Smart Notes. He's got writing down and keeping fleeting notes as well as literature notes. (Keeping academic references would have been commonplace by this time.) He follows up with rewriting and expanding on the original note to create additional "explanations" and even "connections" (links) to create what Ahrens describes as permanent notes or which some would call evergreen notes.

      Lichtenberg's version calls for the permanent notes to be "separated and ordered" and while he may have kept them in book format himself, it's easy to see from Konrad Gessner's suggestion at the use of slips centuries before, that one could easily put their permanent notes on index cards ("separated") and then number and index or categorize them ("ordered"). The only serious missing piece of Luhmann's version of a zettelkasten then are the ideas of placing related ideas nearby each other, though the idea of creating connections between notes is immediately adjacent to this, and his numbering system, which was broadly based on the popularity of Melvil Dewey's decimal system.

      It may bear noticing that John Locke's indexing system for commonplace books was suggested, originally in French in 1685, and later in English in 1706. Given it's popularity, it's not unlikely that Lichtenberg would have been aware of it.

      Given Lichtenberg's very popular waste books were known to have influenced Leo Tolstoy, Albert Einstein, Andre Breton, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. (Reference: Lichtenberg, Georg Christoph (2000). The Waste Books. New York: New York Review Books Classics. ISBN 978-0940322509.) It would not be hard to imagine that Niklas Luhmann would have also been aware of them.


      Open questions: <br /> - did Lichtenberg number the entries in his own waste books? This would be early evidence toward the practice of numbering notes for future reference. Based on this text, it's obvious that the editor numbered the translated notes for this edition, were they Lichtenberg's numbering? - Is there evidence that Lichtenberg knew of Locke's indexing system? Did his waste books have an index?

    1. -It looks like the system is also very similar to Luhmann’s Zettelkasten

      Ryan Holiday's system puts some of the work farther from the note taking origin compared with Nicholas Luhmann's system which places more of it up front.

      How, if at all, do the payoffs from doing each of these vary for the end user of the system?

    1. In 2000, de Bono advised a UK Foreign Office committee that the Arab–Israeli conflict might be due, in part, to low levels of zinc found in people who eat unleavened bread (e.g. pita flatbread). De Bono argued that low zinc levels leads to heightened aggression. He suggested shipping out jars of Marmite to compensate.[19][20]

      an interesting hypothesis, but was it ever fully tested?

      Could tests on other groups with long standing levels of aggression be used to support it? Possible examples:<br /> - The Troubles in Northern Ireland;<br /> - cultural aggressiveness of the Scots-Irish, particularly in America (Hatfields & McCoys, et al.) (Did Malcolm Gladwell have some work on this?)


      References in the article include: <br /> - Lloyd, John; Mitchinson, John (2006). The Book of General Ignorance. Faber & Faber. - Jury, Louise (19 December 1999). "De Bono's Marmite plan for peace in Middle Yeast". The Independent. Retrieved 3 January 2022.

    1. On Philosophical Method

      How do historical method and philosophical method compare? contrast?

      Were they tied to similar traditions? co-evolve? evolve separately?

    2. Mortimer]. Adler

      Searching for "commonplace" and "card" in the text doesn't reveal anything positive.

      re: https://hypothes.is/a/NiMaVO_iEeuNF7N35U9BpA

      It would seem that Adler considered the method a simple bit of memory storage and not as a thinking tool or processing tool.

      Is there anything we can find that is dispositive to this?

  8. Aug 2023
    1. Diesen organizistischen Überlegungen über das ge-schichtliche Werden, das einem »verborgenen Plan«(Menke-Glückert) folgt, ordnete Warburg einen weiterenZettel zu, auf dem er sich eine Stelle aus Ernst Bern-heims Lehrbuch der Historischen Methode notiert, inder auf Wilhelm Wundt verwiesen wird, der darlegt, soexzerpiert Warburg, »daß historische AllgemeinvorgängeAnwendungen allgemeiner psychologischer Prinzipiensind, wie z. B. die Reaktion eine Anwendung des Principsder Kontrastverstärkung« ist.362

      Warburg definitely read Bernheim's Lehrbuch!!! He excerpted it! Though based on the footnote in the text, it may appear that his quotation was from the 1908 edition of Bernheim.

      Machine translation of the German:

      Warburg assigned another piece of paper to these organicistic considerations about historical development, which follows a »hidden plan« (Menke-Glückert), on which he noted a passage from Ernst Bernheim’s Lehrbuch der Historischen Method in which Wilhelm Wundt is referred to, who explains, as Warburg excerpts, »that historical general processes are applications of general psychological principles, such as e.g. B. the reaction is an application of the principle of "contrast enhancement".

      362 Z. 0 02/0 0 0411. Warburg zitier t Wundt, Logik. Eine Untersuchung der Principien der Erkenntnis und der Methode wissenschaf tlicher Forschung, Stuttgar t 1895, Bd. II/2, S. 413, aus Ernst Bernheim, Lehrbuch der Historischen Methode und der Geschichtsphilosophie. Mit Nachweis der wichtigsten Quellen und Hilfsmit tel zum Studium der Geschichte, Leipzig 1908, S. 60 f.

      Link to: https://hypothes.is/a/Th2g4kVoEe6OSV9qNo31rQ

    1. If leisure and political power requirethis education, everybody in America now requires it, andeverybody where democracy and industrialization penetratewill ultimately require it. If the people are not capable ofacquiring this education, they should be deprived of politicalpower and probably of leisure. Their uneducated politicalpower is dangerous, and their uneducated leisure is degrad-ing and will be dangerous. If the people are incapable ofachieving the education that responsible democratic citizen-ship demands, then democracy is doomed, Aristotle rightlycondemned the mass of mankind to natural slavery, and thesooner we set about reversing the trend toward democracythe better it will be for the world.

      This is an extreme statement which bundles together a lot without direct evidence.

      Written in an era in which there was a lot of pro-Democracy and anti-Communist discussion, Hutchins is making an almost religious statement here which binds education and democracy in the ways in which the Catholic church bound education and religion in scholasticism. While scholasticism may have had benefits, it also caused a variety of ills which took centuries to unwind into the Enlightenment.

      Why can't we separate education from democracy? Can't education of this sort live in other polities? Hasn't it? Does critical education necessarily lead to democracy?

      What does the explorable solution space of admixtures of critical reasoning and education look like with respect to various forms of government? Could a well-educated population thrive under collectivism or socialism?

      The definition of "natural slavery" here is contingent and requires lots of context, particularly of the ways in which Aristotle used it versus our current understanding of chattel slavery.

    1. Meador, Jake. “The Misunderstood Reason Millions of Americans Stopped Going to Church.” The Atlantic, July 29, 2023. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/07/christian-church-communitiy-participation-drop/674843/.

      Meador looks at how churches might offer better community as a balm to W.E.I.R.D. lifeways and toxic capitalism.

      Why must religion be the source for these communal and social supports? Why can't alternate social structures or institutions handle these functions?

      Is this why the religious right is also so heavily opposed to governmental social support programs? Are they replacing some of the needs and communal desires people in need have? Why couldn't increased governmental support programs be broader and more holistic in their leanings to cover not only social supports, but human contact and community building as well.

      Do some of these tensions between a mixed W.E.I.R.D. and non-W.E.I.R.D Americans cause a lot of the split political identities we see in the last few decades? What is the balm for this during the transition?

    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/

  9. Jul 2023
    1. In the case of ResearchEquals the author must pay if they want to have their work published using a more restrictive Creative Commons license. Octopus also employs Creative Commons licenses, but requires one which allows derivative works. The publication types in Octopus are based on the eight stages of scientific research: Research Problem Rationale/Hypothesis Method Results Analysis Interpretation Real World Application Peer Review For ResearchEquals there are many more publication types and they are called modules. Thus, enabling the publication of text, data, code and media. With both platforms, each publication is assigned its own DOI. __ATA.cmd.push(function() { __ATA.initDynamicSlot({ id: 'atatags-26942-64c40660082d9', location: 120, formFactor: '001', label: { text: 'Advertisements', }, creative: { reportAd: { text: 'Report this ad', }, privacySettings: { text: 'Privacy', } } }); });

      Compares the difference between [[Octopus.ac]] and [[ResearchEquals]] platforms in the [[open science]] movement. Looks like Octopus is more strictly matching the [[eight stages of scientific research]], whereas RE allows for more options (including "publication of text, data, code and media.") Notably, each platform gives a [[DOI]] to each publication.

      Questions:

      Does each module in RE get it's own DOI?

      Likewise, does each publication type in Octopus get it's own DOI?

      Do either of these address the concern of other academics "scooping" each other's work?

    1. Only one eye is shown in the illustration. The two simultaneous over-lapping arrays admitted to the two eyes are quite another factor in theperceptual situation. Since they converge to station-points that are sepa-rated by about two and a half inches, they are not the same array.They are slightly different perspective mappings of the room; therefore,when they are treated as overlapping fields the pattern of one is not con-gruent with the pattern of the other, as noted in the last chapter

      Convergence to different station-points implies different arrays (but not sure if either effective or ambient?)

    2. These five perceptual systems overlap one another; they are not mutuallyexclusive. They often focus on the same information - that is, the sameinformation can be picked up by a combination of perceptual systemsworking together as well as by one perceptual system working alone.

      If the 5 perceptual systems are "looking, listening, sniffing, tasting, and touching", then I'm not sure what "information" would be the same. What does Gibson mean by "information"?

    1. Here we report a patient with a lesion of the superior parietal lobe who shows both sensory and motor deficits consistent with an inability to maintain such an internal representation between updates. Our findings suggest that the superior parietal lobe is critical for sensorimotor integration, by maintaining an internal representation of the body's state. <div class="c-nature-box c-nature-box--side " data-component="entitlement-box"> <div class="js-access-button"> <a href="https://wayf.springernature.com?redirect_uri&#x3D;https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nature.com%2Farticles%2Fnn1098_529" class="c-article__button" data-test="ra21" data-track="click" data-track-action="institution access" data-track-label="button"> <svg class="u-icon" width="18" height="18" aria-hidden="true" focusable="false"><use href="#icon-institution"></use></svg> <span class="c-article__button-text">Access through your institution</span> </a> </div> <div class="js-buy-button"> <a href="#access-options" class="c-article__button c-article__button--inverted" data-test="ra21" data-track="click" data-track-action="buy or subscribe" data-track-label="button"> <span>Buy or subscribe</span> </a> </div> </div>

      Suggests the [[superior parietal lobule]] helps maintain an internal model of the body's state.

      Does this imply that it's a part of the [[default mode network]] when doing this modeling?

    1. the same platform

      Does Roy mean [[ChatGPT]]?

    2. The question is, will CG4 breach the metaphorical dam in our metaphorical beaver pond?

      What is the "dam"?

    3. potential state

      If there's a "[[potential state]]", then what's its opposite? The "actual state" or "kinetic state"?

    4. we can think of finance capitalism as the action protocol that governs most of the procedures that are associated with the movement of natural resources in and out of various input-throughput systems around the world.

      What are the actions/procedures?

      What is the protocol/code?

    5. This shows that the term “action protocol” can integrate across different epistemological domains.

      What does "integrate across different epistemological domains" mean?

    6. integrate

      Does this integration provide any insight? If so, what is it?

    1. 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"?

  10. Jun 2023
    1. The command to schools—the invective about education—was, perhaps as ever, Janus-like: the injunction was to teach more and getbetter results, but to get kids to be imaginative and creative at the same time.They had to learn the facts of science, but they shouldn’t have original thinkingsqueezed from them in the process. It was the formal versus progressivecontroversy in a nutshell.

      Can the zettelkasten method be a means of fixing/helping with this problem of facts versus creativity in a programmatic way?

    1. All digital transitions have had losers, some of whom we may care about more than others. Musicians seem to have a raw deal in the streaming age, receiving fractions of pennies for streams when they used to get dollars for the sales of physical media. Countless regional newspapers went out of business in the move to the web and the disappearance of lucrative classified advertising. The question before society, with even a partial transition to digital books, is: Do we want libraries to be the losers?

      Will libraries have the same problems with the digital transition that music and journalism have had?

    1. Todd Henry in his book The Accidental Creative: How to be Brilliant at a Moment's Notice (Portfolio/Penguin, 2011) uses the acronym FRESH for the elements of "creative rhythm": Focus, Relationships, Energy, Stimuli, Hours. His advice about note taking comes in a small section of the chapter on Stimuli. He recommends using notebooks with indexes, including a Stimuli index. He says, "Whenever you come across stimuli that you think would make good candidates for your Stimulus Queue, record them in the index in the front of your notebook." And "Without regular review, the practice of note taking is fairly useless." And "Over time you will begin to see patterns in your thoughts and preferences, and will likely gain at least a few ideas each week that otherwise would have been overlooked." Since Todd describes essentially the same effect as @Will but without mentioning a ZK, this "magic" or "power" seems to be a general feature of reviewing ideas or stimuli for creative ideation, not specific to a ZK. (@Will acknowledged this when he said, "Using the ZK method is one way of formalizing the continued review of ideas", not the only way.)

      via Andy

      Andy indicates that this review functionality isn't specific to zettelkasten, but it still sits in the framework of note taking. Given this, are there really "other" ways available?

    1. Roth asks ‘how might our own reading of early modern sources change if we had access to the oral spheres within which they were embedded and which framed their reception?’

      The level of orality in societies can radically change our perceptions of their histories, though quite often this material is missing in our evaluations.

  11. May 2023
    1. British historian of science, StaffanMueller-Wille at the Centre for Medical History at the University of Exeter, recently claimedthat Swedish natural scientist Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778), the father of modern taxonomy,had “invented” the card index to manage his information storage and retrieval.

      How can Linnaeus (1707-1778) be said to have invented the card index or the index card when there are systems that predate him including Vincent Placcius and Leibnitz?

      Linnaeus' version were all of a standard size at least. Would this have been a shift in the definition or did others have and recommend "cards of equal size" before this?

    1. Is there potentially a worry amongst Republicans that by losing the "culture wars" that they'll somehow lose control of society and the capitalist order which funds their party and helps to keep them in control?

      Link to Gramsci's idea about cultural hegemony: https://hypothes.is/a/pRnPLPTtEe2_pyt2-Z7pwg

    1. WD-40 for Crinkle Finish Typewriters — Does it work??

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nz1t6QtARyI

      WD-40, which has paraffin wax as an ingredient, can be brushed onto the crinkle finish of a typewriter to clean it up and give it some shine. Use a rag to wipe off excess and take care not to get any in the segment comb. The difference on a generally clean typewriter appears to be negligible and primarily results in a WD-40 smell.

      Would something like Armor All work better? Car wax might also work as well. Powder coating polish could work, but it may act as a gentle abrasive as it is also meant to lift stains.

  12. Apr 2023
    1. A writer collective is a set of editorial and financial structures designed to give writers the autonomy and upside that they get from writing alone, and the support and security they get from working for a media company. 

      If the "whole is greater than the sum of its parts" who benefits from the excess value and how is that economically broken up in a fair manner?

    1. Zhao briefly describes Cal Newport's Questions, Evidence, Conclusions (QEC) framework which she uses as a framework for quickly annotating books and then making notes from those annotations later.

      How does QEC differ from strategies in Adler/Van Doren?

    1. Only small tidbits of math remain unresolved for Rubik’s Cube. While God’s number is 20, it’s unknown exactly how many of the 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 combinations require a whole 20 moves to be solved.

      We've got solutions for the number of configurations there are to solve a Rubic's cube with from 1 move up to 15, but we don't know how many cube configurations there are that can be solved with 16-20 moves.

      • Example: the number of positions that require exactly one move solve them is 18, which is counted by multiplying the six faces and each of the three ways they can be twisted.
    1. The Medici effect is a concept that describes the way in which innovation arises from the intersection of different disciplines and ideas. The term was coined by author Frans Johansson in his book “The Medici Effect: What Elephants and Epidemics Can Teach Us About Innovation”. The Medici family of Renaissance-era Florence is used as an example of the way in which the intersection of different disciplines, such as art, science, and finance, led to a period of great innovation and cultural advancement. Similarly, Johansson argues that innovation today is more likely to occur when people from different backgrounds and disciplines come together to share ideas and collaborate. The Medici effect highlights the importance of diversity, curiosity, and creativity in driving innovation and problem-solving.

      Frans Johansson's "Medici effect" which describes innovation arriving from an admixture of diversity of people and their ideas sounds like a human-based mode of combinatorial creativity similar to that seen in the commonplace book/zettelkasten traditions. Instead of the communication occurring between a person and their notes or written work, the communication occurs between people.

      How is the information between these people crystalized? Some may be written, some may be in prototypes and final physical products, while some may simply be stored in the people themselves for sharing and re-sharing over time.

    1. Some observers termed Thom’s text a biography while others refer to it as a history. But these monikers might mislead contemporary readers who would expect a biography or history produced by an academic press to be undergirded by scholarly methods – including archival research and citations that document its claims in that record. Today we understand Thom’s text to be less a work of biography or history and more a hagiography: the effort of an admiring descendant who compiled the varied recollections of elders and their impressions of Mr. Hopkins and his family.

      How do we better distinguish the margins between histories, biographies, and hagiographies and the motivations of the writers who produce them?

      How do we better underline these subtleties to the broader publics outside of historians and other specialists?

    1. Oakeshott saw educationas part of the ‘conversation of mankind’, wherein teachers induct their studentsinto that conversation by teaching them how to participate in the dialogue—howto hear the ‘voices’ of previous generations while cultivating their own uniquevoices.

      How did Michael Oakeshott's philosophy overlap with the idea of the 'Great Conversation' or 20th century movement of Adler's Great Books of the Western World.

      How does it influence the idea of "having conversations with the text" in the annotation space?

    1. There is no real difference if you think about the boundaries between reading and notetaking. Moving the eyes over text: Sounds like reading. Highlighting key words while reading: Still sounds like reading. Jotting down keywords in the margins: Some writing, but still could count as reading. Writing tasks in the marings (e.g. "Should compare that to Buddhism"): Don't know. Reformulating key sections in your own words: Sounds like writing. But could be just the externalisation of what could be internal. Does make a difference if you stop and think about what you read or do it in written form?

      Perhaps there is a model for reading and note taking/writing with respect to both learning and creating new knowledge that follows an inverse mapping in a way similar to that seen in Galois theory?

      Explore this a bit to see what falls out.

    1. Based on yesterday's discussion at Dan Allosso's Book Club, we don't include defense spending into the consumer price index for calculating inflation or other market indicators. What other things (communal goods) aren't included into these measures, but which potentially should be to take into account the balance of governmental spending versus individual spending. It seems unfair that individual sectors, particularly those like defense contracting which are capitalistic in nature, but which are living on governmental rent extraction, should be free from the vagaries of inflation?

      Throwing them into the basket may create broader stability for the broader system and act as a brake via feedback mechanisms which would push those corporations to work for the broader economic good, particularly when they're taking such a large piece of the overall pie.

      Similarly how might we adjust corporate tax rates with respect to the level of inflation to prevent corporate price gouging during times of inflation which seems to be seen in the current 2023 economic climate. Workers have seen some small gains in salary since the pandemic, but inflationary pressures have dramatically eaten into these taking the gains and then some back into corporate coffers. The FED can increase interest rates to effect some change, but this doesn't change corporate price gouging in any way, tax or other policies will be necessary to do this.

  13. Mar 2023
    1. San/sand (? what is the correct word?) box invented with a hinge which moves forward allowing one to more easily thumb through the slips in their box.

    1. Die schiere Menge sprengt die Möglichkeiten der Buchpublikation, die komplexe, vieldimensionale Struktur einer vernetzten Informationsbasis ist im Druck nicht nachzubilden, und schließlich fügt sich die Dynamik eines stetig wachsenden und auch stetig zu korrigierenden Materials nicht in den starren Rhythmus der Buchproduktion, in der jede erweiterte und korrigierte Neuauflage mit unübersehbarem Aufwand verbunden ist. Eine Buchpublikation könnte stets nur die Momentaufnahme einer solchen Datenbank, reduziert auf eine bestimmte Perspektive, bieten. Auch das kann hin und wieder sehr nützlich sein, aber dadurch wird das Problem der Publikation des Gesamtmaterials nicht gelöst.

      Google translation:

      The sheer quantity exceeds the possibilities of book publication, the complex, multidimensional structure of a networked information base cannot be reproduced in print, and finally the dynamic of a constantly growing and constantly correcting material does not fit into the rigid rhythm of book production, in which each expanded and corrected new edition is associated with an incalculable amount of effort. A book publication could only offer a snapshot of such a database, reduced to a specific perspective. This too can be very useful from time to time, but it does not solve the problem of publishing the entire material.


      While the writing criticism of "dumping out one's zettelkasten" into a paper, journal article, chapter, book, etc. has been reasonably frequent in the 20th century, often as a means of attempting to create a linear book-bound context in a local neighborhood of ideas, are there other more complex networks of ideas which we're not communicating because they don't neatly fit into linear narrative forms? Is it possible that there is a non-linear form(s) based on network theory in which more complex ideas ought to better be embedded for understanding?

      Some of Niklas Luhmann's writing may show some of this complexity and local or even regional circularity, but perhaps it's a necessary means of communication to get these ideas across as they can't be placed into linear forms.

      One can analogize this to Lie groups and algebras in which our reading and thinking experiences are limited only to local regions which appear on smaller scales to be Euclidean, when, in fact, looking at larger portions of the region become dramatically non-Euclidean. How are we to appropriately relate these more complex ideas?

      What are the second and third order effects of this phenomenon?

      An example of this sort of non-linear examination can be seen in attempting to translate the complexity inherent in the Wb (Wörterbuch der ägyptischen Sprache) into a simple, linear dictionary of the Egyptian language. While the simplicity can be handy on one level, the complexity of transforming the entirety of the complexity of the network of potential meanings is tremendously difficult.

    2. questions:

      • What were the exact sizes of the slips? Had they been standardized at the time?
    1. Oxford English Dictionary first attests 'commonplace' (from the Latin 'locus communis') asnoun in 1531 and a verb in 1656; 'excerpt' (from the Latin 'excerpere') as a verb in 1536 and anoun in 1656.

      The split between the ideas of commonplace book and zettelkasten may stem from the time period of the Anglicization of the first. If Gessner was just forming the tenets of a zettelkasten practice in 1548 and the name following(?) [what was the first use of zettelkasten?] while the word commonplace was entering English in 1531 using a book format, then the two traditions would likely have been splitting from that point forward in their different areas.

    1. How do we make them ‘‘benefit humanity as a whole’’ when humanity itself can’t agree on basic facts, much less core ethics and civic values?
    2. ‘‘I think it lets us be more thoughtful and more deliberate about safety issues,’’ Altman says. ‘‘Part of our strategy is: Gradual change in the world is better than sudden change.’’

      What are the long term effects of fast breaking changes and gradual changes for evolved entities?

    1. Note-taking techniques I: The index card method<br /> by Raul Pacheco-Vega

      What does his full collection look like? Does he have a larger filing cabinet or boxes or are they all smaller modular boxes?

      How does he handle the variety of sizes here? Particularly the differences between 4 x 6 and 5 x 8 as it sounds like he may use them similarly outside of their size difference.

    1. The Language Master<br /> BBC - Michel Thomas<br /> [English CC]<br /> [Leg. PT-BR]

      Michel Thomas is one of the most brilliant language teachers in the world. His usual clients are movie stars and business leaders. This programme takes him to a Sixth Form College in London to work with school pupils, to test his claim that he can teach anyone a language in a week - with no reading, writing or homework. The film also explores his personal history - as a hero of the French Resistance during WW II.

      The Michel Thomas method involves: - slow build up of words, phrases, natural grammar - forced production of the language through practice - positive interaction - patience - no stress - no judgement - encouragement - constant evidence of progress

      How does "understanding" of the language evolve out of this method? It's more like revelation rather than understanding...

      This method appears much more atomic than that of SSiW (Aran Jones), but some of this is down to the fact that there's a live person who is able to unjudgementally prompt one with pieces which they've missed. The teacher has the context whereas the taped instructors do not. Presumably this sort of interpersonal prompting and context isn't necessarily required, but it can help to better lower the learner's stress and potentially speed up the learning process. It would require some standardization to set up a specific experiment to test between these two modes to tease this data out.

      Reference key: [[Levy1997]]<br /> “The Language Master.” 1:33 : 1, color. London, UK: BBC 2, March 23, 1997. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0w_uYPAQic.

    1. The earliest time of composition of any of these fragmentswas, so far as we can judge, 1929. The date at which the latestdatable fragment was written was August 1948. By far thegreatest number came from typescripts which were dictated from1945- 1948

      Based on the dating provided by Anscombe and von Wright, Wittgenstein's zettelkasten slips dated from 1929 to 1948.


      for reference LW's dates were 1889-1951


      Supposing that the notes preceded the typescripts and not the other way around as Anscombe and von Wright indicate, the majority of the notes were turned into written work (typescripts) which were dictated from 1945-1948.

      What was LW's process? Note taking, arranging/outlining, and then dictation followed by editing? Dictating would have been easier/faster certainly if he'd already written down his cards and could simply read from them to a secretary.

    2. . They were for the most partcut from extensive typescripts of his, other copies of which stillexist. Some few were cut from typescripts which we have notbeen able to trace and which it is likely that he destroyed but forthe bits that he put in the box.

      In Zettel, the editors indicate that many of Wittgenstein's zettels "were for the most part cut from extensive typescripts of his, other copies of which still exist." Perhaps not knowing of the commonplace book or zettelkasten traditions, they may have mistook the notes in his zettelkasten as having originated in his typescripts rather than them having originated as notes which then later made it into his typescripts!

      What in particular about the originals may have made them think it was typescript to zettel?

    1. Scott Scheper has popularized a numbering scheme based on Wikipedia's Outline of Academic Disciplines.

      It's not just me who's noticed this.

      Interesting that for someone propounding Luhmann's zettelkasten system that Scheper has done this. Was it because he did it himself and then didn't want to change (likely) or because he spent time seeing others' problems with Luhmann's numbering system and designed a better way (less likely)?

    1. All my final notes are in one folder. They are named using the zettelkasten method (YYYYMMDDhhmm). I also have an MOC (Map Of Content) folder.

      I'm curious what benefit, if any, you get out of the YYYYMMDDhhmm title format other than a simple date ordered listing of files?

    1. In short, in the absence of legal tender laws, the seller will not accept anything but money of certain value (good money), but the existence of legal tender laws will cause the buyer to offer only money with the lowest commodity value (bad money), as the creditor must accept such money at face value.

      During the coronavirus pandemic, many vendors facing inflation began to pass along the 3% (or more) credit card processing fees to their customers. Previously many credit card companies would penalize vendors for doing this (and possibly cut them off). This fee was considered "the cost of doing business".

      Some vendors prior to the pandemic would provide cash discounts on large orders because they could circumvent these fees.

      Does this affect (harm) inflation? Is it a form of Gresham's law at play here? What effect does this have on credit card companies? Are they so integral to the system that it doesn't affect them, but instead the customers using their legal tender?

  14. Feb 2023
    1. This Vast Southern Empire explores the international vision and strategic operations of these southerners at the commanding heights of American politics.

      How does this book speak with respect to Immerwahr's How to Hide an Empire?

    1. What screenwriting books recommend note cards for drafting/outlining? Do any go beyond the general outlining advice?

      What is the overlap of this sort of writing practice with comedians who had a practice of writing jokes on index cards? (Ronald Reagan, Phyllis Diller, etc.?

    1. Not sure I completely follow the logic of the debate between Sascha and taurusnoises (Bob Doto) here. I'll have to look closer.

      Perhaps mapping out the 1-1 distinctions between the digital and the analog here would be helpful. What structures would be needed to make them 1-1?

    1. Folgezettel

      Do folgezettel in combination with an index help to prevent over-indexing behaviors? Or the scaling problem of categorization in a personal knowledge management space?

      Where do subject headings within a zettelkasten dovetail with the index? Where do they help relieve the idea of heavy indexing or tagging? How are the neighborhoods of ideas involved in keeping a sense of closeness while still allowing density of ideas and information?

      Having digital search views into small portions of neighborhoods like gxabbo suggested can be a fantastic affordance. see: https://hypothes.is/a/W2vqGLYxEe2qredYNyNu1A

      For example, consider an anthropology student who intends to spend a lifetime in the subject and its many sub-areas. If they begin smartly tagging things with anthropology as they start, eventually the value of the category, any tags, or ideas within their index will eventually grow without bound to the point that the meaning or value as a search affordance within their zettelkasten (digital or analog) will be utterly useless. Let's say they fix part of the issue by sub-categorizing pieces into cultural anthropology, biological anthropology, linguistic anthropology, archaeology, etc. This problem is fine while they're in undergraduate or graduate school for a bit, but eventually as they specialize, these areas too will become overwhelming in terms of search and the search results. This problem can continue ad-infinitum for areas and sub areas. So how can one solve it?

      Is a living and concatenating index the solution? The index can have anthropology with sub-areas listed with pointers to the beginnings of threads of thought in these areas which will eventually create neighborhoods of these related ideas.

      The solution is far easier when the ideas are done top-down after-the-fact like in the Dewey Decimal System when the broad areas are preknown and pre-delineated. But in a Luhmann-esque zettelkasten, things grow from the bottom up and thus present different difficulties from a scaling up perspective.

      How do we classify first, second, and third order effects which emerge out of the complexity of a zettelkasten? - Sparse indexing can be a useful long term affordance in the second or third order space. - Combinatorial creativity and ideas of serendipity emerge out of at least the third order. - Using ZK for writing is a second order affordance - Storage is a first order affordance - Memory is a first order affordance (related to storage) - Productivity is a second+ order (because solely spending the time to save and store ideas is a drag at the first order and doesn't show value until retrieval at a later date). - Poor organization can be non-affordance or deterrent which results in a scrap heap - lack of a reason why can be a non-affordance or deterrence as well - cross reference this list and continue on with other pieces and affordances

    1. level 2A_Dull_SignificanceOp · 2 hr. agoYes! When I run across a comment on a book I haven’t read yet but seems interesting I make a little card with the comment and book title2ReplyGive AwardShareReportSaveFollowlevel 2taurusnoises · 2 hr. agoObsidianSo, you keep the titles of books you want to read organized in folgezettel (you give them an alphanumeric ID?) among your ZK notes? That's really interesting!

      I've done something like this when I think a particular reference(s) can answer a question related to a train of thought. But I keep cards of unread sources at the front of my sources section so that it's easier to pull it out frequently to prioritize and decide what I should be reading or working on next. These will then have links to the open questions I've noted, so that I can go back to those sections either as I'm reading/writing or to add those ideas into the appropriate folgezettel. These sorts of small amounts of work documented briefly can add up quickly over time. Source cards with indications of multiple open questions that might be answered is sometimes a good measure of desire to read, though other factors can also be at play.

      That to-read pile of bibliographic source notes (a mini antilibrary) is akin to walking into a party and surveying a room. I may be aware of some of the people I haven't met yet and the conversations we might have, but if there are interesting questions I know I want to ask of specific ones or conversations I already know I want to have, it can be more productive to visit those first.

      This sort of practice has been particularly helpful for times when I want to double check someone's sources or an original context, but don't have the time to do it immediately, don't want to break another extended train of thought, have to wait on materials, or may have to make a trip to consult physical materials that are singular or rare. For quick consultative reading, this can be a boon when I know I don't want or need to read an entire work, but skimming a chapter or a few pages for a close reading of a particular passage. I'll often keep a pile of these sorts of sources at hand so that I can make a short trip to a library, pick them up, find what I need and move on without having to recreate large portions of context to get the thing done because I've already laid most of the groundwork.

    1. Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Library

      One of Ronald Reagan's Index cards with four bullet-pointed one-liners has the annotation "(over)" written on the bottom which indicates that he wrote on both sides of his cards.

      If he was keeping these in clear plastic sheets in a binder, this would have been easy to see the opposite sides.

      Were all of his cards double-sided? This particular example seems to be a list of one liners which may have been used in the same speech (or timeframe) and thus served solely as a reminder of the jokes to be told.

    1. Hesiod’s depictionof humans in the myth of Prometheus and Pandora. We consider theimplications of this myth for the Greek view of society and particularly of

      women and gender roles.

      If my perception of mythology and orality is correct, can we look at Indigenous stories, myth, and knowledge and draw parallels from their knowledge about women and gender to similar stories in the Western canon which have lost linkage to their narratives? What would this show us potentially about Western mythology and gender studies?

    1. “Writing a thesis,”Eco wrote, “requires a student to organize ideas and data, towork methodically, and to build an ‘object’ that in principlewill serve others. In reality, the research experience mattersmore than the topic.”

      Where does the learning portion of education morph into research? Where is the dividing line?

    1. Can a language model be transgressive without intentionality?
    2. “...it can be very useful for coming up with ideas out of thin air, essentially. All you need is a little bit of seed text, maybe some notes on a story you've been thinking about or random bits of inspiration and you can hit a button that gives you nearly infinite story ideas.”- Eugenia Triantafyllou

      Eugenia Triantafyllou is talking about crutches for creativity and inspiration, but seems to miss the value of collecting interesting tidbits along the road of life that one can use later. Instead, the emphasis here becomes one of relying on an artificial intelligence doing it for you at the "hit of a button". If this is the case, then why not just let the artificial intelligence do all the work for you?

      This is the area where the cultural loss of mnemonics used in orality or even the simple commonplace book will make us easier prey for (over-)reliance on technology.


      Is serendipity really serendipity if it's programmed for you?

    1. One of the problems in approaching quantum gravity is the choice for how to best represent it mathematically. Most of quantum mechanics is algebraic in nature but gravity has a geometry component which is important. (restatement)


      This is similar to the early 20th century problem of how to best represent quantum mechanics: as differential equations or using group theory/Lie algebras?

      This prompts the question: what other potential representations might also work?

      Could it be better understood/represented using Algebraic geometry or algebraic topology as perspectives?

      [handwritten notes from 2023-02-02]

    1. Zettelkasten and the big picture .t3_10xqd30._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; }

      This question calls to mind that I haven't seen the word consilience in this space at all. Search pulls up only one post: https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/zg80qc/comprehensible_texts_productivity_and_again/

      Where does consilience sit with respect to the use of a zettelkasten?

    2. Rookie question: Part of my knowledge database is based on the Zettelkasten method, i.e. I have concept-oriented, atomic notes that are linked to each other. I don't, however, however use IDs and neither the Folgezettel method.

      Example of someone (u/HerrRey) who defines zettelkasten as "concept oriented, atomic notes that are linked to each other", but who doesn't use or exclude "IDs or the folgezettel method". Interestingly they feel like they're not getting the "big picture" of their work.

      Is there an affordance in these missing pieces that prevents them from seeing the big picture because of what they're missing? Is it just neurodiversity? Are they not creating outputs which connect the small to the big, and thus missing it that way?

    1. Zettelkasten can be described as a collection of conceptual maps in a written format.

      What are the connections between zettelkasten and conceptual maps?

      How are they different/similar to Tony Buzan's mind maps?

    1. What signals are available to participants,and how are they compiled into estimates of rank? Their modelassumes that knowledge of rank is noisy, but not (statistically) biased.While we can build more-sophisticated models of the biases in ourjudgments, however, Kawakatsu et al.’s (1) success highlights thevirtues of simplicity. It is possible, for example, that, even if the sig-nals are not accurate at first, we might act to make them so.

      In the fraternity and other social spaces, how does one correct for a "bad first date", a botched meeting, or a lone bad day? Does statistical thermodynamics as a model provide clues? How would rank be determined here in an unbiased way? What about individual chemical affinities and how chemical interactions change and/or bias the samples?

    2. they must be visible enough to provide commonexpectations.

      Useful ranks versus unuseful ranks... list them. What factors separate them and why?

      For ranks to provide useful outcomes, they must be visible and their underlying factors should be transparent.

    1. Perhaps the best that could be said of them is that theirbrutality was in no way unusual by the standards of their time, buttheir democratic practices were almost completely unprecedented.

      If the theory in Colin Woodard's American Nations is applicable here, where would these pirates/proto-democratic practitioners have gotten their ideals from to have infected the larger group? What did their social networks look like such that they evolved this way? Was there some common source (written/oral) that they may have used 20-50 years earlier that created their own generation?

  15. Jan 2023
    1. Goethe's Maxims and Reflections represents a commonplace book of sorts.

      Who numbered the maxims though? Was it Goethe or someone after him?

      (stray note on a slip of paper dated 2022-10-27)

    1. There are severalpoints at which my analysis breaks with conventional understandingsof the period.

      Given the breaks with conventional understandings, is there underlying evidence to support them? We should watch out for the indication of these conventional understandings, his indication of breaks, and the evidence.

    2. It was Eric Williams (Capitalism and Slavery) who first developed the idea thatEuropean slave plantations in the New World were, in effect, the first factories; theidea of a “pre-racial” North Atlantic proletariat, in which these same techniques ofmechanization, surveillance, and discipline were applied to workers on ships, waselaborated by Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker (The Many-Headed Hydra).

      What sort of influence did these sorts of philosophy have on educational practices of their day and how do they reflect on our current educational milieu?

    3. the Enlightenment project, one now seen inrevolutionary quarters as a false dream of liberation that has insteadunleashed unspeakable cruelty upon the world

      Was the Enlightenment a false dream of liberation which has really unleashed an unspeakable cruelty upon the world?

    1. Once you somehow got your idea, there’s the task of placing and connecting your idea to your collection of existing ideas. What kind of connection am I looking for? What relationships are worthy of calling a connection? Do any connections work, or do some work better than others? Should I categorize the connections?

      Most only get so far as, what could/should I connect this to and don't get any farther.

      Some good questions for mulling over here though.

    1. https://www.complexityexplorer.org/courses/162-foundations-applications-of-humanities-analytics/segments/15625

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZklLt80wqg

      Looking at three broad ideas with examples of each to follow: - signals - patterns - pattern making, pattern breaking

      Proceedings of the Old Bailey, 1674-1913

      Jane Kent for witchcraft

      250 years with ~200,000 trial transcripts

      Can be viewed as: - storytelling, - history - information process of signals

      All the best trials include the words "Covent Garden".

      Example: 1163. Emma Smith and Corfe indictment for stealing.

      19:45 Norbert Elias. The Civilizing Process. (book)

      Prozhito: large-scale archive of Russian (and Soviet) diaries; 1900s - 2000s

      How do people understand the act of diary-writing?

      Diaries are:

      Leo Tolstoy

      a convenient way to evaluate the self

      Franz Kafka

      a means to see, with reassuring clarity [...] the changes which you constantly suffer.

      Virginia Woolf'

      a kindly blankfaced old confidante

      Diary entries in five categories - spirit - routine - literary - material form (talking about the diary itself) - interpersonal (people sharing diaries)

      Are there specific periods in which these emerge or how do they fluctuate? How would these change between and over cultures?

      The pattern of talking about diaries in this study are relatively stable over the century.

      pre-print available of DeDeo's work here

      Pattern making, pattern breaking

      Individuals, institutions, and innovation in the debates of the French Revolution

      • transcripts of debates in the constituent assembly

      the idea of revolution through tedium and boredom is fascinating.

      speeches broken into combinations of patterns using topic modeling

      (what would this look like on commonplace book and zettelkasten corpora?)

      emergent patterns from one speech to the next (information theory) question of novelty - hi novelty versus low novelty as predictors of leaders and followers

      Robespierre bringing in novel ideas

      How do you differentiate Robespierre versus a Muppet (like Animal)? What is the level of following after novelty?

      Four parts (2x2 grid) - high novelty, high imitation (novelty with ideas that stick) - high novelty, low imitation (new ideas ignored) - low novelty, high imitation - low novelty, low imitation (discussion killers)

      Could one analyze television scripts over time to determine the good/bad, when they'll "jump the shark"?

    1. a common technique in natural language processing is to operationalize certain semantic concepts (e.g., "synonym") in terms of syntactic structure (two words that tend to occur nearby in a sentence are more likely to be synonyms, etc). This is what word2vec does.

      Can I use some of these sorts of methods with respect to corpus linguistics over time to better identified calcified words or archaic phrases that stick with the language, but are heavily limited to narrower(ing) contexts?

    1. All that remained was the small matter of actually writing the chapter. I don’t do this in Obsidian: I think it would be asking for trouble to mix notes and their end-products in the same place.

      I've not seen this explicitly laid out as advice before though in most contexts people's note taking spaces have historically been divorced from their writing spaces for publication because slips and notes are usually kept physically separate from the working spaces or finished parts, but Richard Carter specifically separates the digital spaces in which he takes his notes and then uses them for creating end products. While he could both take notes in Obsidian, his tool of choice for notes, as well as write his finished pieces there, he actively changes contexts to use a different digital app to compose his notes into final pieces.

      What affordances does this context shift provide? <br /> - blank slate may encourage reworking and expansion of original notes - is there a blank slate effect and what would it entail? - potentially moves the piece into a longer format space or tool which provides additional writing, formatting or other affordances (which? there don't seem to be any in this case aside from a potential "distraction free mode" which may tend to force one to focus only on the piece at hand rather than the thousands of other pieces (notes) hiding within the app)

      What affordances does this remove?<br /> - He's forced to repeat himself (cut & paste / DRY violation)

      Is it easier or harder (from a time/effort perspective) to provide citations with such a workflow? Carter does indicate that for him:

      Having links to original sources in my outline makes the compilation of references for the chapter far easier than it used to be.

    1. I wonder if we forget that the sea cucumber is a living creature.

      Are animals inherently subordinate? Why or why not? (Because this phrase seems silly to input)

    2. humans know more about the surface of Mars than the ocean floor.

      Is this why we have more art that alludes to space than the deep sea? If so, why are we more willing to travel via sea rather than space?

    1. One even better plan is to get regular library index cards and, afterthe lecture is fairly well learned, transfer the points underlined to them, onecard to a lecture. These cards can be carried about and studied at oddmoments. One is enabled by their use to get the perspective view of thelecture which brings out the sense of values which one loses when onestudies the notes in their mass of detail only. With the skeleton in mindone has little difficulty in recalling the details .

      Here again he comes close to some of the methods and ideas of having flashcards for spaced repetition, but isn't explicitly aware of the words or techniques. Note that he also doesn't use the word flashcard. When was the word first used?

      Rewriting things as flashcards also tends to be a part of the spaced repetition itself.

      By cutting the notes up he's specifically decontextualizing them so as to make one's memory be better tested in coming up with the solutions/answers as they are more likely to appear on a test, decontextualized from the original lecture.

    1. To exercise one’s capacities to their fullest extent is to take pleasure in one’s own existence, and with sociable creatures, such pleasures are proportionally magnified when performed in company. From the Russian perspective, this does not need to be explained. It is simply what life is. We don’t have to explain why creatures desire to be alive. Life is an end in itself. And if what being alive actually consists of is having powers—to run, jump, fight, fly through the air—then surely the exercise of such powers as an end in itself does not have to be explained either. It’s just an extension of the same principle.

      I'm not sure I like that Graeber waves away the question "why play?" here. I don't think there's an equivalency to the "why life?" question.

      It will take some additional thinking to build something up to refute this idea however.

    2. Why does the existence of action carried out for the sheer pleasure of acting, the exertion of powers for the sheer pleasure of exerting them, strike us as mysterious? What does it tell us about ourselves that we instinctively assume that it is?
    1. For some scholars, it is critical thatthis new Warburg obsessively kept tabs on antisemitic incidents on the Easternfront, scribbling down aphorisms and thoughts on scraps of paper and storingthem in Zettelkasten that are now searchable.

      Apparently Aby Warburg "obsessively kept" notes on antisemitic incidents on the Eastern front in his zettelkasten.


      This piece looks at Warburg's Jewish identity as supported or not by the contents of his zettelkasten, thus placing it in the use of zettelkasten or card index as autobiography.


      Might one's notes reflect who they were as a means of creating both their identity while alive as well as revealing it once they've passed on? Might the use of historical method provide its own historical method to be taken up on a meta basis after one's death?

    1. May 19, 2004 #1 Hello everyone here at the forum. I want to thank everyone here for all of the helpful and informative advice on GTD. I am a beginner in the field of GTD and wish to give back some of what I have received. What is posted below is not much of tips-and-tricks I found it very helpful in understanding GTD. The paragraphs posted below are from the book Lila, by Robert Pirsig. Some of you may have read the book and some may have not. It’s an outstanding read on philosophy. Robert Pirsig wrote his philosophy using what David Allen does, basically getting everything out of his head. I found Robert Pirsigs writing on it fascinating and it gave me a wider perspective in using GTD. I hope you all enjoy it, and by all means check out the book, Lila: An Inquiry Into Morals. Thanks everyone. arthur

      Arthur introduces the topic of Robert Pirsig and slips into the GTD conversation on 2004-05-19.

      Was this a precursor link to the Pile of Index Cards in 2006?

      Note that there doesn't seem to be any discussion of any of the methods with respect to direct knowledge management until the very end in which arthur returns almost four months later to describe a 4 x 6" card index with various topics he's using for filing away his knowledge on cards. He's essentially recreated the index card based commonplace book suggested by Robert Pirsig in Lila.

    1. Thanks to funding from the Gertrud-und-AlexanderBöhlig Stiftung, it was possible to inspect the content of the boxes, and to re-establish the original order of the lexicographical slips and their internal hierarchical structure.

      What was the nature of the hierarchical structure of Gertrud Bauer's zettelkasten?

      Some of the structure may be understandable by the nature of the digital database.

    1. Our analytical groups are: aurochs, birds, bison, caprids, cervids, fish, horses, mammoths, rhinos. Because of exceptionally low numbers we exclude snakes and wolverines. We also omitted sequences associated with apparent human depictions, or images in which such were part, in order to treat these separately at a later date.

      Given the regular seasonality of most animal rutting and parturition, how is it that the human animal evolved to have a more year-round mating season?

    1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIfH-iSGa5M

      2021-05-12

      Dr. Hanan Harif started out as a Geniza scholar but is now a biographer of Shlomo Dov Goitein.

      In the 1920s Goitein published his only play Pulcellina about a Jewish woman who was burned at the stake in France in 1171.

      Had a friendship with Levi Billig (1897-1936)

      You know very well the verse on Tabari that says: 'You wrote history with such zeal that you have become history yourself.' Although in your modesty you would deny it, we suggest that his couplet applies to yourself as well." —Norman Stillman to S.D. Goitein in letter dated 1977-07-20

      Norman Stillman was a student of Goitein.


      What has Hanan Harif written on Goitein? Any material on his Geniza research and his note cards? He addressed some note card material in the Q&A, but nothing direct or specific.

      Goitein's Mediterranean Society project was from 1967-1988 with the last volume published three years after his death. The entirety of the project was undertaken at University of Pennsylvania.

      The India Book, India Traders was published in 2007 (posthumously) as a collaboration with M.A. Friedman.

      Goitein wrote My Life as a Scholar in 1970, which may have some methodological clues about his work and his card index.

      He also left his diaries to the National Library of Israel as well and these may also have some clues.

      His bibliography is somewhere around 800 publications according to Harif, including his magnum opus.

      Harif shows a small card index at 1:15:20 of one of Goitein's collaborators (and later rival) Professor Eliasto (unsure of this name, can't find direct reference?). Harif indicates that the boxes are in the archives where he's at (https://www.nli.org.il/en/discover/archives/archives-list ? though I don't see a reasonable name/materials there, so perhaps it's at his home at Rothberg International School of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem).

    1. About twenty thousand of those cards are 3 × 5 inches and seven thousand 5 × 8 inches.

      Goitein's zettelkasten is comprised of about 20,000 3 x 5" index cards and 7,000 5 x 8" index cards.

      Link to: https://hypothes.is/a/TEiQ5H1rEe2_Amfzi4XXmg

      While not directly confirmed (yet), due to the seeming correspondence of the number of cards and their corpus descriptions, it's likely that the 20,000 3 x 5" cards were his notes covering individual topics while the 7,000 5 x 8" cards were his notes and descriptions of a single fragment from the Cairo Geniza.

    2. The number is even more impressive when one realizes that both sides of many of the cardshave been written on.

      Goitein broke the frequent admonishment of many note takers to "write only on one side" of his cards.

      Oded Zinger doesn't mention how many of his 27,000 index cards are double-sided, but one might presume that it is a large proportion.

      How many were written on both sides?

    1. the city of Khirbet Qeiyafa, radiocarbon dated to the end ofthe 11th and the beginning of the 10th century BCE, existed during theperiod to which the biblical tradition attributes this battle. The question thenarises if and how the excavation at Khirbet Qeiyafa contributes to ourunderstanding of this tradition.

      Since Khirbet Qeiyafa is radiocarbon dated to the end of the 11th and beginning of the 10th century BCE in a location where the biblical tradition situates the battle between David and Goliath, how might its excavation contribute to our knowledge of this time period and these events?

  16. Dec 2022
    1. Humphreys, James E. Introduction to Lie Algebras and Representation Theory. Graduate Texts in Mathematics, 9.0. Springer, 1972. is one of the first Springer texts in my collection which has a Luhmann-esque sort of numbering system in its table of contents. Surely there must be earlier others though?

    1. He filled the library at Vivarium with texts onthese subjects and transformed the production of manuscripts in hisscriptorium by developing proper standards and methods forcopying. As one of the few notable scholars of his period,Cassiodorus played a vital role in the survival of classical culture inItaly, saving books from the smoking ruins of Roman libraries,preserving and reproducing them

      What exactly were the standards created for copying manuscripts by Cassiodorus at the scriptorium at Vivarium?

    1. I came to this page after reading the "About the Author (The Second Right Answer)" page of Roger von Oech's "A Whack on the Side of the Head: How You Can Be More Creative" which was mentioned by Kevin Bowers in his discussion with John Vervaeke titled "Principles & Methods for Achieving a Flow State | Voices w/ Vervaeke | John Vervaeke & Kevin Bowers".

      von Oech stated that

      I wrote my doctoral dissertation on the twentieth century German philosopher Ernst Cassirer, the last man to know everything. From him, I learned that it's good to be a generalist, and that looking at the Big Picture helps to keep you flexible.

      This was a surprising reference since Bowers stated that the book was written for helping entrepreneurs become more creative; the book seems more widely applicable based on the examples and exercises given in the first 20 pages.

      Cassirer appears to bridge between the continental and analytic traditions in philosophy. Cassirer's touching on mathematics, aesthetics, and ethics reminds me of - John Vervaeke's work - ie, the process of relevance realization and his neo platonic, transformational reading of ancient texts - Forrest Landry work - ie, his magnum opus "An Immanent Metaphysics" which he purports to be pointing to a foundation between ontology, epistemology, and ethics. Recently, IDM (Immanent Domain Metaphysics) made more sense to me when I attempted to translat the 3 axioms and 3 modalities into language from category theory

      The following seem important and related somehow: 1. the symbolic process 2. the process of abstraction 3. the process of representation

      Maybe these are related to the means by which one can can transcend their current self? ie, is it through particular symbolic practices that one can more easily shed one identity and acquire another?

      Also, are 1., 2., and 3. different aspects of the same thing/event?

    1. A pesar de que la variante moderna fue creada por Luhmann, las "máquinas de pensamiento" y otros métodos de tomar notas similares se originan en el siglo XVII.

      I've now seen a handful of (all online) sources quote a 17th Century origin for similar note taking methods. What exactly are they referring to specifically? What are these sources? None seem to be footnoted.

    1. Musk appears to be betting that the spectacle is worth it. He’s probably correct in thinking that large swaths of the world will not deem his leadership a failure either because they are ideologically aligned with him or they simply don’t care and aren’t seeing any changes to their corner of the Twitterverse.

      How is this sort of bloodsport similar/different to the news media coverage of Donald J. Trump in 2015/2016?

      The similarities over creating engagement within a capitalistic framing along with the need to only garner at least a minimum amount of audience to support the enterprise seem to be at play.

      Compare/contrast this with the NBAs conundrum with the politics of entering the market in China.

    1. for settling in a finite number of steps, whether a relevant object hasproperty P.Relatedly, the answer to a question Q is effectively decidable ifand only if there is an algorithm which gives the answer, again by adeterministic computation, in a finite number of steps.

      Missing highlight from preceding page:

      A property \( P \) is effectively decidible if and only if there is an algorithm (a finite set of instructions for a deterministic computation) ...

      Isn't this related to the idea of left & right adjoints in category theory? iirc, there was something about the "canonical construction" of something X being the best solution to a particular problem Y (which had another framing like, "Problem Y is the most difficult problem for which X is a solution")

      Different thought: the Curry-Howard-Lambek correspondance connects intuitionistic logic, typed lambda calculus, and cartesian closed categories.

  17. Nov 2022
    1. Our familiarity with these elements makes the overall story seem plausible, even—or perhaps especially—when facts and evidence are in short supply.

      Storytelling tropes play into our system one heuristics and cognitive biases by riding on the tailcoats of familiar story plotlines we've come to know and trust.

      What are the ways out of this trap? Creating lists of tropes which should trigger our system one reactions to switch into system two thinking patterns? Can we train ourselves away from these types of misinformation?

    1. What if instead of addressing individual pieces of misinformation reactively, we instead discussed the underpinnings — preemptively?

      Perhaps we might more profitably undermine misinformation by dismantling the underlying tropes the underpin them?

    1. http://www.cs.ucr.edu/~eamonn/meaningless.pdf Paper that argues cluster time series subsequences is "meaningless". tl;dr: radically different distributions end up converging to translations of basic sine or trig functions. Wonder if constructing a simplicial complex does anything?

      Note that one researcher changed the algorithm to produce potentially meaningful results

    1. In 1971, Eno co-formed the glam and art rock band Roxy Music. He had a chance meeting with saxophonist Andy Mackay at a train station, which led to him joining the band. Eno later said: "If I'd walked ten yards further on the platform, or missed that train, or been in the next carriage, I probably would have been an art teacher now".[24]

      How does idea density influence the rate of creativity?

      What are the thermodynamics of creativity? I've probably got enough material for a significant book chapter if not perhaps a book on this topic.

      May need a more public friendly name. Burning Creativity?

    2. In 1964, after earning four O-levels, including one in art and maths, Eno had developed an interest in art and music and had no interest in a "conventional job".[12]

      When did the definition of a so-called "conventional job" emerge? Presumably after the start of the industrial revolution when people began moving from traditional crafts, home work, farm work, and other general subsistence work.

      What defines a non-conventional job? Does it subsume caring work? What does David Graeber have to say about this in Bullshit Jobs?

    1. Testing if Google Chrome can make annotations on this Auto Hotkey documentation page.

      It (and Brave) can't make highlights or annotations for some reason. The prompt doesn't appear when text is highlighted, why is this? Is there a way to force the prompt to appear?

    1. Robert Amsler is a retired computational lexicology, computational linguist, information scientist. His P.D. was from UT-Austin in 1980. His primary work was in the area of understanding how machine-readable dictionaries could be used to create a taxonomy of dictionary word senses (which served as the motivation for the creation of WordNet) and in understanding how lexicon can be extracted from text corpora. He also invented a new technique in citation analysis that bears his name. His work is mentioned in Wikipedia articles on Machine-Readable dictionary, Computational lexicology, Bibliographic coupling, and Text mining. He currently lives in Vienna, VA and reads email at robert.amsler at utexas. edu. He is currenly interested in chronological studies of vocabulary, esp. computer terms.

      https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Robert-Amsler

      Apparently follow my blog. :)

      Makes me wonder how we might better process and semantically parse peoples' personal notes, particularly when they're atomic and cross-linked?

    1. it became clear that Fermat's Last Theorem could be proven as a corollary of a limited form of the modularity theorem (unproven at the time and then known as the "Taniyama–Shimura–Weil conjecture"). The modularity theorem involved elliptic curves, which was also Wiles's own specialist area.[15][16]

      Elliptical curves are also use in Ed25519 which are purportedly more robust to side channel attacks. Could there been some useful insight from Wiles and the modularity theorem?

    1. I am not particularly strict about how I organize these. The point is to be able to find them again, which I can whether it's noted in the source or as a more detailed claim.

      Konik cites Raccoon Nation on PBS which indicates that a racoon's most heightened sense is it's sense of touch, a sense which is increased when the hands are wet or under water.

      Is this tied into the popular stories of raccoons which presumably like to "wash their food?" Is it really their sense of touch and affordances which come from that that presses this impression?

    1. It’s a basic question—what are children and young people in school for?
    2. Although Rousseau had an influence on a handful of European educators, itwould be misleading to imply that the impact on education of these new ideasabout learning through discovery was, at the time, profound.

      Did Rousseau have an influence on Maria Montessori? Where was the origin of her philosophy?

    1. Weare on record as holding that unlimited educational opportunity-or, speaking practically, educational opportunity thatis limited only by individual desire, ability, and need-is themost valuable service that society can provide for its members.

      This broadly applies to both oral and literate societies.

      Desire, ability, and need are all tough measures however... each one losing a portion of the population along the way.

      How can we maintain high proportions across all these variables?

    1. evolution of my processes.

      A note taking practice is almost always an evolving process with a variety of different pressures and variables in how it takes form.

      List out these variables and pressures.

    2. How do you make sure you don’t lose track of cards? I don’t make sure I don’t lose track of cards. As I said above and as some of the people below talk about, one of the joys of the system is when you surprise yourself, when you rediscover, when you find the perfect card while you were looking for something else.

      Oppenheimer doesn't keep track of specific cards (he didn't discuss how he files them, other than loosely together, potentially for specific projects) and finds that this creates a greater amount of surprise for him when searching for ideas within his system.

      Missing here is any sort of topic or subject headings.... double check this as it's a key to most systems.

    3. And improving the quality and quantity of material available to your brain when you sit down to create something—that is why we implement The Notecard System.

      Increasing the quantity and quality of ideas and materials one has at their disposal when one desires to create something new is one of the reasons for having a note taking system.

      memory, learning, sense making, improving understanding, improved creativity, and others are also at play... any others? we should have a comprehensive list eventually.

    4. “People always say of great athletes that they have a sixth sense,” Malcolm Gladwell says in Miracle and Wonder: Conversations with Paul Simon. “But it’s not a sixth sense. It’s memory.” Gladwell then analogizes James’ exacting memory to Simon’s. In the way James has precise recall of basketball game situations, Simon has it of sounds and songs. “Simon’s memory is prodigious,” Gladwell says. “There were thousands of songs in his head. And thousands more bits of songs—components—which appeared to have been broken down and stacked like cordwood in his imagination.”

      In Miracle and Wonder: Conversations with Paul Simon, Malcolm Gladwell comments on the prodigious memories of both Paul Simon with respect to sounds and Lebron James with respect to basketball game play.

      Where these sorts of situational memories built and exercised over time or were they natural gifts? Or perhaps natural gifts that were also finely tuned over time?

    1. e. T. F. T.

      What is this editor's actual name?

      My first guess is "Tools for Thought", but that can't be right. 🤣

    Tags

    Annotators

  18. Oct 2022
    1. It is possible this Miscellany collection was assembled by Schutz as part of his own research as an historian, as well as the letters and documents collected as autographs for his interest as a collector;

      https://catalog.huntington.org/record=b1792186

      Is it possible that this miscellany collection is of a zettelkasten nature?

      Found via a search of the Huntington Library for Frederic L. Paxson's zettelkasten

    1. He had a separate bibliographical file,kept in six scantily filled drawers in his coat closet, and it is obvious

      that he used it little in later years. His author-title entries usually went into the main file, after the appropriate subject index cards.

      This is a curious pattern and not often seen. Apparently it was Paxson's practice to place his author-title entries into his main file following the related subject index cards instead of in a completely separate bibliographical file. He did apparently have one comprised of six scantily filled drawers which he kept in his coat closet, but it was little used in his later years.


      What benefits might this relay? It certainly more directly relates the sources closer in physical proximity within one's collection to the notes to which they relate. This might be of particular beneficial use in a topical system where all of one's notes relating to a particular subject are close physically rather than being linked or cross referenced as they were in Luhmann's example.

      A particular color of cards may help in this regard to more easily find these sources.


      Also keep in mind that Paxson's system was topical-chronological, so there may also be reasons for doing this that fit into his chronological scheme. Was he filing them in sections so that the publication dates of the sources fit into this scheme as well? This may take direct review to better known and understand his practice.

    1. Turner's sectionalism essays are collected in The Significance of Sections in American History, which won the Pulitzer Prize in History in 1933. Turner's sectionalism thesis had almost as much influence among historians as his frontier thesis, but never became widely known to the general public as did the frontier thesis. He argued that different ethnocultural groups had distinct settlement patterns, and this revealed itself in politics, economics and society.

      Was sectionalism discussed or mentioned in Colin Woodard's American Nations (2011) as part of an underlying piece of his thesis about American history? It seems applicable.

    1. for as Dialectic will have shown all branches oflearning to be inter-related, so Rhetoric will tend to show that all knowledgeis one.

      How did we shift from inter-related subjects and "one knowledge" of rhetoric in the Middle Ages to such strict departmentalization in the academy to only now be moving back toward multi-disciplinary research?

    1. Émile flew offthe shelves in 18th-century Paris. In fact, booksellers found it more profitable torent it out by the hour than to sell it. Ultimately the excitement got too much forthe authorities and Émile was banned in Paris and burned in Geneva

      Émile: or On Education was so popular that it was rented out by the hour for additional profit instead of being sold outright. [summary]


      When did book rental in education spaces become a business model? What has it looked like historically?

    2. Rousseau’sheretical view was that anything which was outside children’s experience wouldbe meaningless to them, much as Plato, Comenius, and others had warned. Hisinsights had condensed principally out of the prevailing intellectual atmosphereat the time—empiricism, explicated by philosophers such as John Locke. We’lllook at Locke and Rousseau in more detail in Chapter 2.

      Just as the ideas of liberty and freedom were gifted to us by Indigenous North Americans as is shown by Graeber and Wengrow in The Dawn of Everything, is it possible that the same sorts of ideas but within the educational sphere were being transmitted by Indigenous intellectuals to Europe in the same way? Is Rousseau's 18th century book Emile, or On Education of this sort?

      What other sorts of philosophies invaded Western thought at this time?

    3. Learning became firmly subject centred rather than child centred.

      What would schooling look like if it had been historically developed as child-centered rather than subject-centered.

    4. Out of our cleverness has emerged something almost more importantthan the cleverness itself. Out of it has come learning about how to share ideasand pass down skills and knowledge. Out of it has come education.

      Gary Thomas posits that it's our cleverness which birthed education. Isn't it more likely our extreme ability to mimic others which is more likely from a cognitive and evolutionary perspective?

      Were early peoples really "teaching" each other how to make primitive hand axes? Or did we first start out by closely mimicking our neighbors?

    1. I would put creativity into three buckets. If we define creativity as coming up with something novel or new for a purpose, then I think what AI systems are quite good at the moment is interpolation and extrapolation.

      Demis Hassabis, the founder of DeepMind, classifies creativity in three ways: interpolation, extrapolation, and "true invention". He defines the first two traditionally, but gives a more vague description of the third. What exactly is "true invention"?

      How can one invent without any catalyst at all? How can one invent outside of a problem's solution space? outside of the adjacent possible? Does this truly exist? Or doesn't it based on definition.

    1. Wheredoes meaning come from?
    2. Intellectual readiness involves a minimumlevel of visual perception such that the child can take in andremember an entire word and the letters that combine to formit. Language readiness involves the ability to speak clearly andto use several sentences in correct order.

      Just as predictive means may be used on the level of letters, words, and even whole sentences within information theory at the level of specific languages, does early orality sophistication in children help them to become predictive readers at earlier ages?

      How could one go about testing this, particularly in a broad, neurodiverse group?

    3. The Activity and Art of Reading 15 If you ask a living teacher a question, he will probably answer you. If you are puzzled by what he says, you can save yourself the trouble of thinking by asking him what he means. If, however, you ask a book a question, you must answer it yourself.

      What effect might this have on the learning process of purely oral cultures?

    1. Max Raisin (1881–1957),reflected that lessons often devolved into ‘reading several events with dates out of alittle notebook’ (Raisin, 1952: 147; Hertzman, 1985: 83-8).

      Max Raisin indicated that Gotthard Deutsch read several events with dates out of a little notebook during lectures. Was this really a notebook or possibly a small stack/deck of index cards? The could certainly be easily mistaken....

      Check these references

    2. The index frames a figure who may at first glanceseem a curious or even comedic caricature of a certain positivist historical tradition, butone who also imparted to his students a sense of the magnitude of Jewish history, andwho straddled a mechanical pursuit of individual ‘facts’ with a certain attention to novelmethods and visions of comprehensively encyclopedic information.

      From where did Deutsch learn his zettelkasten method? And when? Bernheim's influential Lehrbuch der historischen Methode (1889) was published long after Deutsch entered seminary in October 1876 and 9 years before he received his Ph.D. in history in1881.

      One must potentially posit that the zettelkasten method was being passed along in (at least history circles) long before Bernheim's publication.

      I'm hoping that Lustig isn't referring to zettelkasten when he says "novel methods", as they weren't novel, even at that time. Deutsch certainly wasn't the first to have comprehensive encyclopedic visions, as Zettelkasten practitioner Konrad Gessner preceded him by several centuries.

      I'm starting to severely question Lustig's familiarity with these particular traditions....

    1. Adams H. B. (1886) Methods of Historical Study. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University.

      Where does this fit with respect to the zettelkasten tradition and Bernheim, Langlois/Seignobos?

    2. It may seem a curious relic of positivistic history, but closer examination allows us to interrogate the materiality of scholarly labor.

      Given the time period (1859-1921), what was the potential influence, if any, on Deutsch and his methods by historical methods writers and the evolution of the science of history by Ernst Bernheim or Seignobos/Langlois from that same period?

    3. Indeed, Deutsch’s index is massive but middling, especially when placed alongside those of Niklas Luhmann, Paul Otlet, or Gershom Scholem.

      Curious how Deutsch's 70,000 facts would be middling compared to Luhmann's 90,000? - How many years did Deutsch maintain and collect his version?<br /> - How many publications did he contribute to? - Was his also used for teaching?

      Otlet didn't create his collection alone did he? Wasn't it a massive group effort?

      Check into Gershom Scholem's collection and use. I've not come across his work in this space.

    4. Does Deutsch’s index constitute a great unwritten work of history, as some have claimed, or are the cards ultimately useless ‘chips from his workshop’?

      From his bibliography, it appears that Deutsch was a prolific writer and teacher, so how will Lustig (or others he mentions) make the case that his card index was useless "chips from his workshop"? Certainly he used them in writing his books, articles, and newspaper articles? He also was listed as a significant contributor to an encyclopedia as well.

      It'd be interesting to look at the record to see if he taught with them the way Roland Barthes was known to have done.

    1. The nature of physics problem-solvingBelow are 29 sets of questions that students and physicists need to ask themselves during the research process. The answers at each step allow them to make the 29 decisions needed to solve a physics problem. (Adapted from reference 33. A. M. Price et al., CBE—Life Sci. Edu. 20, ar43 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.20-12-0276.)A. Selection and planning1. What is important in the field? Where is the field heading? Are there advances in the field that open new possibilities?2. Are there opportunities that fit the physicist’s expertise? Are there gaps in the field that need solving or opportunities to challenge the status quo and question assumptions in the field? Given experts’ capabilities, are there opportunities particularly accessible to them?3. What are the goals, design criteria, or requirements of the problem solution? What is the scope of the problem? What will be the criteria on which the solution is evaluated?4. What are the important underlying features or concepts that apply? Which available information is relevant to solving the problem and why? To better identify the important information, create a suitable representation of core ideas.5. Which predictive frameworks should be used? Decide on the appropriate level of mechanism and structure that the framework needs to be most useful for the problem at hand.6. How can the problem be narrowed? Formulate specific questions and hypotheses to make the problem more tractable.7. What are related problems or work that have been seen before? What aspects of their problem-solving process and solutions might be useful?8. What are some potential solutions? (This decision is based on experience and the results of decisions 3 and 4.)9. Is the problem plausibly solvable? Is the solution worth pursuing given the difficulties, constraints, risks, and uncertainties?Decisions 10–15 establish the specifics needed to solve the problem.10. What approximations or simplifications are appropriate?11. How can the research problem be decomposed into subproblems? Subproblems are independently solvable pieces with their own subgoals.12. Which areas of a problem are particularly difficult or uncertain in the solving process? What are acceptable levels of uncertainty with which to proceed at various stages?13. What information is needed to solve the problem? What approach will be sufficient to test and distinguish between potential solutions?14. Which among the many competing considerations should be prioritized? Considerations could include the following: What are the most important or most difficult? What are the time, materials, and cost constraints?15. How can necessary information be obtained? Options include designing and conducting experiments, making observations, talking to experts, consulting the literature, performing calculations, building models, and using simulations. Plans also involve setting milestones and metrics for evaluating progress and considering possible alternative outcomes and paths that may arise during the problem-solving process.B. Analysis and conclusions16. Which calculations and data analysis should be done? How should they be carried out?17. What is the best way to represent and organize available information to provide clarity and insights?18. Is information valid, reliable, and believable? Is the interpretation unbiased?19. How does information compare with predictions? As new information is collected, how does it compare with expected results based on the predictive framework?20. If a result is different from expected, how should one follow up? Does a potential anomaly fit within the acceptable range of predictive frameworks, given their limitations and underlying assumptions and approximations?21. What are appropriate, justifiable conclusions based on the data?22. What is the best solution from the candidate solutions? To narrow down the list, decide which of those solutions are consistent with all available information, and which can be rejected. Determine what refinements need to be made to the candidate solutions. For this decision, which should be made repeatedly throughout the problem-solving process, the candidate list need not be narrowed down to a single solution.23. Are previous decisions about simplifications and predictive frameworks still appropriate in light of new information? Does the chosen predictive framework need to be modified?24. Is the physicist’s relevant knowledge and the current information they have sufficient? Is more information needed, and if so, what is it? Does some information need to be verified?25. How well is the problem-solving approach working? Does it need to be modified? A physicist should reflect on their strategy by evaluating progress toward the solution and possibly revising their goals.26. How good is the chosen solution? After selecting one from the candidate solutions and reflecting on it, does it make sense and pass discipline-specific tests for solutions to the problem? How might it fail?Decisions 27–29 are about the significance of the work and how to communicate the results.27. What are the broader implications of the results? Over what range of contexts does the solution apply? What outstanding problems in the field might it solve? What novel predictions can it enable? How and why might the solution be seen as interesting to a broader community?28. Who is the audience for the work? What are the audience’s important characteristics?29. What is the best way to present the work to have it understood and to have its correctness and importance appreciated? How can a compelling story be made of the work?
    2. why is there so little correlation between students’ performance in their physics courses and their ability to do physics research?
    3. The experts often noted that research breakthroughs came from recognizing the significance of some additional information that other researchers had overlooked.

      Breakthroughs in problem solving and basic research often come from recognizing the significance of overlooked information.


      How is this additional information gleaned in these cases? Through combinatorial creativity, chance, other? Can methods for pushing these sorts of additional information be created in the problem solving process?

    1. Thesis to bear out (only tangentially related to this particular text):

      Part of the reason that index card files didn't catch on, especially in America, was that they didn't have a solid/concrete name by which they went. The generic term card index subsumed so much in relation to library card catalogues or rolodexes which had very specific functions and individualized names. Other cultures had more descriptive names like zettelkasten or fichier boîte which, while potentially bland within their languages, had more specific names for what they were.

    2. For the second time Goutor mentions using different size cards for different note types, but doesn't specifically advise for it or provide a reason. Perhaps his advice for consistency and card size applies only to cards of particular types? (p28)

      link to: https://hypothes.is/a/XPphjkNZEe2s3i9VV4qt1g


      Incidentally he also specifically mentions 7x9" cards here too. How frequently used were these as a standard?

    3. As is common in the tradition of the zettelkasten, Goutor advises "that each note-card should contain only one item of information, whether a quotation, a summary, or anything else". (p28) He ascribes this requirement to his earlier need for clarity. (cross reference: https://hypothes.is/a/SfWFwENIEe2KfGMbR5n7Qg)

      He indicates that while it may seem wasteful to have only one item on each card that the savings in time, efficiency in handling, classification, and retrieval will more than compensate for the small waste.

      This sort of small local waste being compensated for by a larger global savings and efficiency can be seen in the design of the shipping container industry as discussed in Mark Levinson's The Box (Princeton University Press, 2008). Was this the exact sort of efficiency mentioned by Ahrens'? (Compare at https://hypothes.is/a/t4i32IXoEeyF2n9jQxu6BA)

    4. Goutor defines self-help notes as notes which one would use to refresh their memory about what remains to be done or researched, problems that remain to be solved, or information which is needed to be researched or found. (p26) These are akin in some sense to what I call "open questions". He also indicates that these notes might be triggered by one's daily activities or occasional musings which relate to one's project but occur outside of its active pursuit. In this sense, they have a similar feel to the idea of Ahrens' fleeting notes, but in Goutor's practice they aren't defined as occurring while one is doing active reading or research.

      He suggests that one keeps these notes in a separate area so that they might be systematically and regularly visited for review, further research, or answering as the opportunities to do so present themselves. Once the questions have been answered and appropriate notes updated or added, these self-help notes can be discarded.

    1. Mosca backs up histhesis with this assertion: It's the power of organization thatenables the minority always to rule. There are organizedminorities and they run things and men. There are unorganizedmajorities and they are run.

      In a democracy, is it not just rule by majority, but rule by the most organized that ends up dominating the society?

      Perhaps C. Wright Mills' work on the elite has some answers?

      The Republican party's use of organization to create gerrymandering is a clear example of using extreme organization to create minority rule. Cross reference: Slay the Dragon in which this issue is laid out with the mention of using a tiny amount of money to careful gerrymander maps to provide outsized influences and then top-down outlines to imprint broad ideas from a central location onto smaller individual constituencies (state and local).

    1. I saw this ad for Storyteller Tactics on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/CiybhKcA3ZV/?hl=en. The pitchman indicates that he distilled down a pile of about 25 books into a deck of informative cards which writers can use in their craft. Rather than sell it as a stand alone book, it's a set of cards (in digital format too) that they're selling for a order of magnitude more than they could have gotten for a book format.

      They're advertising for a product from https://pipdecks.com/. They're essentially selling custom zettelkasten collections of cards for niche topics! Who else is going to sell sets of cards like this? Anyone else seen examples of zettelkasten-like products like this?

  19. Sep 2022
    1. Unemployed workers are much more likelyto fall into poverty in countries like the United States, Canada, and Japan,compared with countries such as the Netherlands and Iceland.

      Is part of this effect compounded by America's history of the Protestant work ethic (see Max Weber)?

      Do the wealthy/powerful benefit by this structure of penalizing the unemployed this way? Is there a direct benefit to them? Or perhaps the penalty creates a general downward pressure on overall wages and thus provides an indirect benefit to those in power?

      What are the underlying reasons we tax the unemployed this way?

    2. David Brady and colleagues have shown this to be empirically the case across29 rich democracies. The authors focused on four major risks of poverty—loweducation, single motherhood, young adults heading a household, and unem-ployment. They found that although the prevalence of these risks in the UnitedStates is actually below the average in other countries, the rate of poverty inthe United States is the highest. The reason is that “the penalties for risks inthe United States are the highest of the 29 countries. An individual with allfour risks has an extremely heightened probability of being poor in the UnitedStates.”

      How did we get to this point and how do we move away from it?

      What does David Brady's research indicate about the other countries that makes them more resilient to poverty despite these problems?

      Is it a feature of institutional racism that causes this problem?

    3. What is abnormal about this situation is not that people experience theseevents, but that we have collectively chosen as a society to punish these normallife events so severely

      Why???

    4. One reason for this is that poverty is not something that people wish to ac-knowledge or draw attention to. Rather, it is something that individuals andfamilies would like to go away. As a result, many Americans attempt to concealtheir economic difficulties as much as possible.22 This often involves keeping upappearances and trying to maintain a “normal” lifestyle. Such poverty downthe block may at first appear invisible. Nevertheless, the reach of poverty iswidespread, touching nearly all communities across America.

      Middle Americans, and particularly those in suburbia and rural parts of America that account for the majority of poverty in the country, tend to make their poverty invisible because of the toxic effects of extreme capitalism and keeping up appearances.

      Has this effect risen with the rise of social media platforms like Instagram and the idea of "living one's best life"? How about the social effects of television with shows like "Keeping up with the Kardashians" which encourage conspicuous consumption?


      More interesting is the fact that most of these suburban and rural poverty stricken portions of the country are in predominantly Republican held strongholds.

      Is there a feedback mechanism that is not only hollowing these areas out, but keeping them in poverty?

    5. In 1990, 15.1 percent of the poor were residingin high- poverty neighborhoods. That figure dropped to 10.3 percent by 2000,rose to 13.6 percent for 2010, and then fell to 11.9 percent for 2015.

      Is there a long term correlation between these rates and political parties? Is there a potential lag time between the two if there is?

    6. three-fourths of Americans will encounterpoverty or near- poverty (150 percent below the official poverty line).4

      Open question:<br /> Why is the word "below" used with numbers like "150 percent below the poverty line" when in fact this number indicates near, but above, poverty based on my reading?

    7. Could the maintenance of these mythsactually be useful for particularly powerful constituencies? Does the contin-uation of these myths serve a purpose or function for other segments of theAmerican population? If so, who and what might that be?
    1. Experiments on Twitter by Bjarke Mønsted and his colleagues at the Technical University of Denmark and the University of Southern California indicate that information is transmitted via “complex contagion”: when we are repeatedly exposed to an idea, typically from many sources, we are more likely to adopt and reshare it. This social bias is further amplified by what psychologists call the “mere exposure” effect: when people are repeatedly exposed to the same stimuli, such as certain faces, they grow to like those stimuli more than those they have encountered less often.

      This seems slightly different than the mere-exposure effect that Ahrens (2017) delineated. Are they same/different/related, but contextually different?

    2. In a set of groundbreaking studies in 1932, psychologist Frederic Bartlett told volunteers a Native American legend about a young man who hears war cries and, pursuing them, enters a dreamlike battle that eventually leads to his real death. Bartlett asked the volunteers, who were non-Native, to recall the rather confusing story at increasing intervals, from minutes to years later. He found that as time passed, the rememberers tended to distort the tale's culturally unfamiliar parts such that they were either lost to memory or transformed into more familiar things.

      early study relating to both culture and memory decay

      What does memory decay scale as? Is it different for different levels of "stickiness"?

    1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2HegcwDRnU

      Makes the argument that note taking is an information system, and if it is, then we can use the research from the corpus of information system (IS) theory to examine how to take better notes.

      He looks at the Wang and Wang 2006 research and applies their framework of "complete, meaningful, unambiguous, and correct" dimensions of data quality to example note areas of study notes, project management notes (or to do lists) and recipes.

      Looks at dimensions of data quality from Mahanti, 2019.


      What is the difference between notes and annotations?

    1. This text fills a gap in the professional literature concerning revision because currently,according to Harris, there is little scholarship on “how to do it” (p. 7).

      I'm curious if this will be an answer to the question I asked in Call for Model Examples of Zettelkasten Output Processes?