136 Matching Annotations
  1. Mar 2024
    1. What is the most that a working-class person could hope for from a net-zero future?

      for - quote - working class - net zero - adjacency - working class - net zero - key insight - working class - net zero

      quote - Chris Yates - within class - net zero - (see quote below)

      • What is the most that a working-class person could hope for
        • from a net-zero future?
      • At present,
        • in the vision being broadly promoted,
        • it’s
          • the same hard work,
          • the same exploitation,
        • but with
        • a heat pump instead of
          • a gas boiler.
    2. it reveals that it’s those immediate experiences of the environment rather than global atmospheric concentrations of CO2 that affect people’s ideas about climate.

      insight - hyperobjects

      Comment - This of why a Deep Humanity approach that identifies and clarifies the fundamental issues is so important

    3. If acting on climate change means sacrificing what little freedom I have left, then what value is that to me?

      key insight - of all about the venison of individual liberty that modernization had sold is a companion bill of goods on

  2. Feb 2024
    1. Leisure was one precondition: enough people had to be free of the demands of subsistence to have time on their hands that required filling.

      for - boredom - Deep Humanity - boredom - psychology - boredom - adjacency - boredom - insight - history - modernity

      adjacency - between - boredom - insight - history - modernity - Adjacency statement - This is an insightful observation that - the affordances of a technologically sophisticated modernity - promotes boredom by providing a means to escape it, - rather than deal with it. - The notable decline of religiosity in the West also cuts off a traditional means of getting in touch with the wonder of existence - This could explain the tiffin popularity of meditation in the West as a non religious vehicle for centering in the here and now, - as boredom is a condition of avoiding the here and now

      • Leisure was one precondition:
        • enough people had to be free of the demands of subsistence
        • to have time on their hands that required filling.
      • Modern capitalism multiplied amusements and consumables,
      • while undermining spiritual sources of meaning
      • that had once been conferred more or less automatically.
    1. we 00:11:13 have a media that needs to survive based on clicks and controversy and serving the most engaged people

      for - quote - roots of misinformation, quote - roots of fake news, key insight - roots of misinformation

      key insight - roots of misinformation - (see below)

      quote - roots of misinformation - we have a media that needs to survive based on - clicks and - controversy and - serving the most engaged people - so they both sides the issues - they they lift up - facts and - lies - as equivalent in order to claim no bias but - that in itself is a bias because - it gives more oxygen to the - lies and - the disinformation - that is really dangerous to our society and - we are living through the impacts of - those errors and - that malpractice -done by media in America

  3. Jan 2024
    1. What is more lacking, however, are approaches to transformation that can be applied in and adapted to multiple (and necessarily unique) contexts

      for - key insight - movement of movements - What's missing - transformation catalyst - indyweb / Indranet

      • What is more lacking, however,
      • are approaches to transformation
      • that can be applied in and adapted to
      • multiple (and necessarily unique) contexts
      • to provide a framework for building such action strategies.
      • Here I would introduce the concepts of transformation catalysts
      • who build effective, purposeful transformation systems
      • using three general processes of
        • connecting,
        • cohering, and
        • amplifying.
    2. Doing that requires new approaches to organizing for transformation where multiple initiatives connect, cohere, and amplify their individual and collective transformative action

      for - key insight - global movement requirements - new organising system - indyweb /Indranet - people-centered - interpersonal - individual collective gestalt - a foundational idea of indyweb / Indranet epistemology - Deep Humanity - epistemological foundation of indyweb / Indranet

      • The world cannot wait
      • for us to learn or know everything that we need to know
      • for bringing about purposeful system change
      • towards desired and broadly shared aspirations
      • for a more
        • equitable,
        • just, and
        • ecologically flourishing
      • world.
      • The key question before us is
        • how to become transformation catalysts
        • that work with numerous associated
          • initiatives and
          • leaders
        • to form
          • purposeful and
          • action-oriented
        • transformation systems
        • that build on the collective strength inherent
        • in the many networks already working towards transformation.
      • Doing that requires new approaches
      • to organizing for transformation
      • where multiple initiatives
        • connect,
        • cohere, and
        • amplify
      • their
        • individual and
        • collective
      • transformative actions

      Comment - indyweb / Indranet is ideally suited for this - seeing the mention of individual and collective in a sentence surfaced the new Deep Humanity concept of individual collective gestalt that is intrinsic to the epistemological foundation of the Indyweb / Indranet - This is reflected in the words to describe the Indyweb / Indranet as people-centered and interpersonal

    1. in general countries tend to excavate enormous volumes of earth and this earth is incredibly considered as a waste material

      for - circular economy - building - excavation waste - circular economy - construction - excavation waste - key insight - repurpose excavation waste as building material

      key insight - She makes an pretty important observation about the inefficiency of current linear construction process - The excavation part requires enormous amounts of energy, and the earth that is excavated is treated as waste that must be disposed of AT A COST! - Instead, with a paradigm shift of earth as a valuable building resource, the excavation PRODUCES the building materials! - This is precisely what BC Material's circular economy business model is and it makes total sense!<br /> - With a simple paradigm and perspective shift, waste is suddenly transformed into a resource! - waste2resource - waste-to-resource

      new meme - Waste-2-Resource

    1. this is whitehead's fallacy of misplaced concreteness

      for - key insight - Whitehead's fallacy of misplaced concreteness - adjacency - fallacy of misplaced concreteness - climate denialism - mistrust in science - polycrisis - Deep Humanity

      • the worry for Goethe and whitehead is that
        • we forget sometimes with the typical scientific method that = we can only ever apply concepts derived from our empirical experience
      • and so if we're trying to understand experience as if it were really
        • an illusion produced by
          • collisions of particles or
          • brain chemistry or
          • something that we can never in principle experience
      • what we're doing is
        • applying concepts derived from our experience
        • to an imagined realm that
          • we think is beyond experience
      • but it's not
      • This is Whitehead's fallacy of misplaced concreteness.

      key insight - Whitehead's fallacy of misplaced concreteness - This helps explain the rising rejection of science from the masses. I didn't realize there was already a name for the phenomena responsible for the emergence of collective denialist behavior

      adjacency - between - fallacy of misplaced concreteness - increasing collective rejection of science in the polycrisis - adjacency statement - Whitehead's fallacy of misplaced concreteness exactly names and describes - the growing trend of a populus rejection of climate science (climate denialism), COVID vaccine denialism, exponential growth of conspiracy theory and misinformation - because of the inability for non-elites and elites alike to concretize abstractions the same way that elite scientists and policy-makers do - Research papers have shown that the knowledge deficit model which was relied upon for decades was not accurate representation of climate denialism - Yet, I would hold that Whitehead's fallacy of misplaced concretism plays a role here - This mistrust in science is rooted in this fallacy as well as progress traps - Deep Humanity is quite steeped in Whitehead's process relational ontology and the fallacy of misplaced concreteness requires mass education for a sustainable transition - This abstract concreteness is everywhere: - Shift from Ptolemy's geocentric worldview to the Copernican heliocentric worldview - Now we are told that the sun is not fixed, but is itself rotating around the Milky Way with billions of other galaxies - scientific techniques like radiocarbon dating for dating objects in deep time - climate science - atomic physics - quantum physics - distrust of vaccines, which we cannot see - Timothy Morton's hyperobjects is related to this fallacy of misplaced concreteness. - "Seeing is believing" but we cannot directly experience the ultra large or ultra small. So we have scientific language that draws parallels to that, but it is not a direct experience. - - Those not steeped in years or decades of science have the very real option of feeling that the concepts are fallacies and don't hold as much weight as that which they can experience directly, even though those concepts have obviously produced artefacts that they use, like cellphones, the internet and airplanes.

    2. i want to now uh introduce the key concept in in whitehead's mature metaphysics concrescence

      for - key insight - concrescence - definition - concrescence - Whitehead - definition - The many become the one - Whitehead - definition - Res Potentia - Tim Eastman - definition - superject - Whitehead - definition - moment of satisfaction - Whitehead - definition - dipolar - Whitehead - definition - ingression - Whitehead definition - CONCRESCENCE - is the description of the phases of the iterative process by which reality advances from the past into the present then into the future - this definition is metaphysical and applies to all aspects of reality

      • Concrescence is the process by which

        • THE MANY BECOME THE ONE and
        • THE MANY ARE INCREASED BY ONE
          • The "many" here refers to the past
          • the perished objects in the past environment
      • There's another domain that whitehead makes reference to

        • He's a platonist in this sense, though he's a reformed platonist
        • He makes reference to this realm of eternal objects which for him are pure possibilities
        • i was mentioning Tim Eastman earlier
          • He calls this domain "RES POTENTIA", the realm of possibilities which have not yet been actualized
      • And so for Whitehead
        • the realm of possibility is infinite
        • the realm of actuality is finite
      • In the realm of actuality, there's a limited amount of certain types of experience which have been realized
        • but the realm of actuality draws upon this plenum of possibility and
        • it's because there is this plenum of possibility in relationship to the realm of actuality that
        • novelty is possible
        • new things can still happen we're not just constantly repeating the past
      • Whitehead describes the process of concrescence or each drop of experience as DIPOLAR, having two poles:

        • a physical pole and
        • a mental pole
      • Each concrescence or drop of experience begins with the physical pole

        • where the perished objects of the past environment are apprehended or felt and
        • these feelings of the past grow together into this newly emerging drop of experience
        • and then in the process of their growing together
          • the actualized perished objects of the past environment
          • are brought into comparison with eternal objects or pure potentials possibilities and
          • these possibilities INGRESS so there's
            • INGRESSION of eternal objects and
          • PREHENSION of past actualities
          • INGRESSION of potentials PREHENSIONS of past actualities
      • and what the ingression of eternal objects do is provide each occasion of experience, each concrescence with

        • the opportunity to interpret the past differently
      • to say maybe it's not like that maybe it's like this
      • and so these ingressions come into the mental pole
      • If the physical pole is what initiates the experience of each concrescing occasion

        • the mental pole is is a subsequent process that compares
          • what's been felt in the past with
          • what is possible alternatives that could be experienced that are not given yet in the past
      • The subjective form is how the occasion fills the past

      • The subjective aim is what draws the many feelings of the past towards the unification and the mental pole
        • where
          • the ingression of eternal objects and
          • the feelings of past actualities
        • are brought together into what Whitehead calls this MOMENT OF SATISFACTION
      • it's the culmination of the process of concrescence
        • where a new perspective on the universe is achieved - This is the many have become one
      • They are increased by one when the satisfaction is achieved
      • It's a new perspective on the whole
      • As soon as this new perspective is achieved
        • it becomes a SUPERJECT which is not a subject enjoying its own experience anymore
        • it's a perished subject
      • The superject is the achieved perspective that has been experienced
        • but then perishes itself int a superject-hood to become
        • one among the many that will be inherited by the next moment of experience, the next concrescence and
      • This superject has objective immortality in the sense that
        • every subsequent concrescence will inherit the satisfaction achieved by the prior concrescences
      • And so this is the most general account in Whitehead's view that we can offer

        • of the nature of reality
        • the nature of the passage of nature
        • the movement
          • out of the past
          • through the present and
          • into the future
      • Experience is always in the present and the satisfaction that is achieved by each moment of concrescence is enjoyed in the present

        • but as soon as we achieve that
        • it perishes and the next moment of concrescence arises to inherit what was achieved
        • and this is an iterative process
        • it's repeating constantly and it's cumulative
      • It's a process of growth
        • building on what's been achieved in the past
    1. once you dissolve that boundary you can't tell whose memories or who's anymore that's kind of the big thing about um that that kind of memory wiping the the wiping the identity on these 00:06:18 memories is a big part of multicellularity

      for - key insight - multicellularity - memory wiping

      • key insight
        • individuals have information in their memories about survival
        • when they merge and join, they pool their information and you can't tell whose memories came from whom initially
        • this memory wiping is a key aspect of multcellularity

      investigate - salience of memory wiping for multicellularity - This is a very important biological behavior. - Perform a literature review to understand examples of this

      question - biological memory wiping - can it be extrapolated to social superorganism?

    1. If there’s a commonality between far Left and far Right,

      for - quote - commonality between far left and far right - key insight

      If there’s a commonality between far Left and far Right, says Lyons,

      • it’s a common opposition to the status quo
        • but one that’s based on fundamentally different reasons.
    1. we need to make the transition acceptable and attractive for the vast majority of citizens, and the only way to do that, is to make the changes easy to adopt. This requires strong engagement with society at large, and policies that make sustainable life choices not only easier, but also cheaper and more attractive. Or, put it the other way around, it must be more expensive to destroy the planet or the health of our fellow citizens".
      • for: meme - make it expensive to destroy the planet, quote - Johan Rockstrom, quote - make it expensive to destroy the planet, key insight - make it expensive to destroy the planet

      • key insight

      • meme
      • quote: Johan Rockstrom
        • we need to make the transition acceptable and attractive for the vast majority of citizens, and the only way to do that, is to make the changes easy to adopt. This requires strong engagement with society at large, and policies that make sustainable life choices not only easier, but also cheaper and more attractive. Or, put it the other way around, it must be more expensive to destroy the planet or the health of our fellow citizens".
    1. As like-minded people organized, the three governance styles manifested into the three sectors (government, corporate, and NGOs).  The sectors are emergent qualities of society, not a planned model.
      • for: key insight - sectors emerged naturally
    1. some of the biggest investors in private equity are pension funds. Those are pensions? Do we need to take our money if we have, if we're lucky enough to have a pension, out of the private markets like that? And if so, where do we put it? - Yeah, I would love to see this conversation 00:23:48 happen among institutional investors. I mean, what they have been flocking into private equity and it's the least transparent, the least accountable, the least responsible of the sectors.
      • for: key insight - adjacency - polycrisis - pension funds investing in private equity are a driving force

      • key insight

      • adjacency between
        • polycrisis
        • pension funds
        • private equity
        • inequality
        • climate crisis
      • adjacency statement
        • Pension funds are major investors in private equity, who in turn, through speculative investing are maintaining wealth supremacy and perpetuation inequality and climate crisis
  4. Dec 2023
      • for: James Hansen - 2023 paper, key insight - James Hansen, leverage point - emergence of new 3rd political party, leverage point - youth in politics, climate change - politics, climate crisis - politics

      • Key insight: James Hansen

        • The key insight James Hansen conveys is that
          • the key to rapid system change is
            • WHAT? the rapid emergence of a new, third political party that does not take money from special interest lobbys.
            • WHY? Hit the Achilles heel of the Fossil Fuel industry
            • HOW? widespread citizen / youth campaign to elect new youth leaders across the US and around the globe
            • WHEN? Timing is critical. In the US,
              • Don't spoil the vote for the two party system in 2024 elections. Better to have a democracy than a dictatorship.
              • Realistically, likely have to wait to be a contender in the 2028 election.
      • reference

    1. Washington is a swamp it we throw out one party the other one comes in they take money from special interests and we don't have a government that's serving the interests 01:25:09 of the public that's what I think we have to fix and I don't see how we do that unless we have a party that takes no money from special interests
      • for: key insight- polycrisis - climate crisis - political crisis, climate crisis - requires a new political party, money in politics, climate crisis - fossil fuel lobbyists, climate change - politics, climate crisis - politics, James Hansen - key insight - political action - 3rd party

      • key insight

        • Both democrats and conservatives are captured by fossil fuel lobbyist interests
        • A new third political party that does not take money from special interests is required
        • The nature of the polycrisis is that crisis are entangled . This is a case in point. The climate crisis cannot be solved unless the political crisis of money influencing politics is resolved
        • The system needs to be rapidly reformed to kick money of special interest groups out of politics.
      • question

        • Given the short timescale, the earliest we can achieve this is 2028 in the US Election cycle
        • Meanwhile what can we do in between?
        • How much impact can alternative forms of local governance like https://sonec.org/ have?
        • In particular, could citizens form local alternative forms of governance and implement incentives to drive sustainable behavior?
    1. In the neoliberal era, individuals are forced to assume sole responsibility for navigating “every hardship and every difficulty—from poverty to student debt to home eviction to drug addiction.” When the pandemic exacerbated these hardships, it was an uphill battle to build solidarity and convince people to support collective solutions. After a lifetime of being told they were on their own, “a subset of the population” doubled down on individualism. It does not, now, seem surprising to Klein that they essentially said, “Fuck you: we won’t mask or jab
      • for: key insight - anti-vaxxers, key insight - conspiracy theories, key insight - maga, key insight - neoliberalism and failure at collective action

      • key insight: neoliberalism and failure of collective action

        • neoliberalism's continuous assault on society has striped use off any support system, leaving us to fend for ourselves
        • when polycrisis events occur, it provokes a distrust of any attempt at government intervention
        • this is a sign of things to come when climate chaos will accelerate social breakdown
    1. we need to build this this again this bridge and it's obviously not going to be written in the 00:50:41 same style or standard as your kind of deep academic papers if you think this is uh U unnecessary or irrelevant then you end up with is a scientific 00:50:56 Community which talks only to itself in language that nobody else understands and you live the general Republic uh uh prey to a lot of very 00:51:09 unscientific conspiracy theories and mythologies and theories about the world
      • for: academic communication to the public - importance, elites - two types, key insight - elites, key insight - science communication

      • comment

      • key insight

        • Elites are necessary in every society
        • Historically, people who strongly believe that the current elites aren't necessary or are harmful often become the revolutionaries who become the new elites
        • elites need to speak in their own specialist language to each other but there are two kinds of elites
          • those who serve society
          • those who serve themselves
          • often, we have fox in sheep's clothing - elites who serve themselves but disguise themselves in the language of elites who serve others in order to gain access to power ,
          • we normally think of wealthy people as elites, but Harari classifies scientists as also a kind of elite
        • elites may be necessary but
          • We are caught in a double bind, a wicked problem as elites are also the world's greatest per capita energy consumers and their outsized ecological, consumption and energy footprint is now a existential threat to the survival of our species
      • references

    2. history is always the result of a lot of causes coming together you know 00:29:22 you have this metaphor of the chain of events and this is a terrible metaphor for there is no chain of events a chain of events imagines that every event is a link connected to one previous event and 00:29:36 to one subsequent event so there is a war there is one cause for the war and there will be one consequence it's never like that in history every event is more like a tree there is an entire system of 00:29:50 roots that came together to create it and it has a lot of fruits with lots of different influences
      • for: insight - history - complexity, bad metaphor - chain of events

      • insight: complexity and history

        • chain of events is a bad metaphor for things that occur in history
        • the complexity of history is that many causes come together too being about an event
        • likewise, when that event occurs, it is the cause of many different consequences
        • linear vs systems thinking
      • adjacency between

        • history
        • emptiness
        • Indra's net
      • adjacency statement
        • history reflects emptiness
        • Indra's net extended into historical events
    3. I think part and you see this kind of delicate dance that when things are going uh uh too slow so people vote in a more 00:25:29 liberal Administration that will speed things up and will be more creative Bolder in its social experiments and when things go too fast then you say okay liberals you had your chance now 00:25:41 let's bring the conservatives to slow down a little and and have a bit of of a breath
      • for: insight - conservative vs liberal - speed of sdopting social norm

      • insight

        • liberals are voted in to speed up adoption of a new social -
        • conservatives are voted in to slow down the acceptance of a social norm
        • paradoxically, humans have both a conservative and a liberal nature. We naturally have a tendency to both conserve and to try new things.
    4. in many parts of the world you see a kind of conservative suicide that conservatives are abandoning their kind of traditional role to slow down and conserve 00:26:09 institutions and traditions and so forth and they still call themselves conservatives but they become this kind of new radical party which is more about ignoring traditions and destroying 00:26:23 institutions and then it becomes the job of liberals to be the audience of the institutions
      • for: insight - conservatives destroying instead of conserving
    5. what you see in a lot of modern politics is this delicate dance between conservatives and 00:24:40 liberals which I think that uh uh for many generations they agreed on the basics their main disagreement was about the pace that both conservatives and 00:24:52 liberals they basically agree we need some rules and also we need the ability to to change the rules but the conservatives prefer a much slower Pace
      • for: quote - social constructs - liberals and conservatives, social norms - liberals and conservatives, insight - social norms

      • in other words

      • insight

        • the tug of war between liberals and conservatives is one of the difference in pace of accepting new social norms
      • adjacency between

        • social norms
        • liberal vs conservative
        • stories
      • adjacency statement
        • When stories are different between different cultural groups, the pace of accepting the new social norm can need quite different due b to the stories being very different
    6. does your scholarship suggest why so many societies do that rather than 00:20:09 saying maybe we start with a Declaration of Human Rights today maybe we write a new one from scratch based on what we know today um because it's very difficult to reach an agreement between a lot of 00:20:21 people and also you know you need to base a a a a real Society is something something extremely complex which you need to base on empirical experience 00:20:34 every time that people try to create a completely new social order just by inventing some Theory it ends very badly you need on yes you do need the ability 00:20:46 to change things a long time but not too quickly and not everything at once so most of the time you have these founding principles and shr find in this 00:20:58 or that text also orally it doesn't have to be written down and at least good societies also have mechanisms to change it but you have to start from some kind 00:21:12 of of of of social consensus and some kind of of social experience if every year we try to invent everything from scratch then Society will just collapse
      • for: insight - creating new social norms is difficult

      • insight

        • creating new social norms is difficult because society is complex
        • society adheres to existing social norms. Adding something new is always a challenge
        • social norms are like the rules of a game. If you change the rules too often, it doesn't work. Society needs stable rules.
      • analogy: changing social norms, sports

        • changing social norms is difficult. Imagine changing the rules off a sports competition each time you play.
    7. the question is often do people acknowledge that say the basic rules of their society were created out of the human imagination or are there some kind 00:15:49 of objective thing that came from outside let's say from God you look for instance at the history of slavery so you know the 10 Commandments in the in the 10th commandment there is an 00:16:02 endorsement of slavery the 10th commandment says that you should not covet your neighbor's H uh wife or ox or field or 00:16:14 slaves implying that there is nothing wrong with holding slaves it's only wrong if you CET your neighbor's slaves then God is angry with you now because the Ten Commandments uh don't 00:16:27 acknowledge that they were created by humans they don't have any mechanism to amend them and therefore we still have the tenth commandment and nobody has the power to change the to to strike out 00:16:40 slavery from The Ten Commandments now the US Constitution in contrast as everybody points out it was written partly by slaveholders and also endorses 00:16:52 slavery but the genius of the American Founders The Genius of the American institution is that it acknowledges its own that it's the result of of of human 00:17:05 creation it starts with with the people not with I am your God and therefore it includes a mechanism to amend itself
      • for: insight - holy vs human scriptures

      • comment

        • Harari touches on an important point here. If some edict is interpreted as written by "God", then it is very difficult or impossible to amend.
        • In contrast, human scriptures such as a country's constitution, a scientific law, rules of a sport, engagement rules of the stock market or an economic system are all created by humans and can be amended
        • Why is gay marriage so volatile a subject? It's because there is one interpretation that holy scripture only condones relationships between a man and a woman.
    8. there are good stories and bad stories uh good stories I mean this is very on a very very simplistic level but good stories 00:13:23 benefit people and bad stories can create you know Wars and genocides and and the most terrible crimes in history were committed in the name of some fictional story people believed very few 00:13:38 Wars in history are about objective material things people think that we fight like wolves or chimpanzees over food and territory this is not the case 00:13:52 at least not in the modern world if I look for instance at my country which is at present in at War the Israeli Palestinian conflict is not really about food and territory there is enough food 00:14:04 between the Jordan and Mediterranean to feed everybody there is enough territory to build houses and schools for everybody but you have two conflicting stories or more than two conflicting 00:14:17 stories in the minds of different people and they can't agree on the story they can't find a common story that everybody would be happy with and this is the the Deep source of the conflict
      • for: stories - consequences of good and bad stories, inisight - war and genocide - when people violently disagree on stories,

      • insight

        • disagreement of stories
          • not just wars, but climate change skeptics believe a different story than environmentalists
          • hyperobjects and evolution play a role as well in what we believe
    9. what you're referring to is the idea that people come together and through language culture and story they have narratives that then create their own realities like the 00:12:04 sociologist abely the sociologist wi Thomas said if people think people believe things to be real then they are real in their consequences
      • for: Thomas Theorem, The definition of the situation, William Isaac Thomas, Dorothy Swain Thomas, definition - Thomas Theorem, definition - definition of the situation, conflicting belief systems - Thomas theorem, learned something new - Thomas theorem

      • definition: Thomas Theorem

      • definition: definition of the situation
        • "The Thomas theorem is a theory of sociology which was formulated in 1928 by William Isaac Thomas and Dorothy Swaine Thomas:

      If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.[1]

      In other words, the interpretation of a situation causes the action. This interpretation is not objective. Actions are affected by subjective perceptions of situations. Whether there even is an objectively correct interpretation is not important for the purposes of helping guide individuals' behavior.|

    1. This 1% of humanity uses its awesome power to manipulate societal aspirations and the narratives around climate change. These extend from well-funded advertising to pseudo-technical solutions, from the financialisation of carbon emissions (and increasingly, nature) to labelling extreme any meaningful narrative that questions inequality and power.
      • for: quote - Kevin Anderson, quote - elite positive feedback carbon inequality loop, climate crisis - societal aspirations, elites - societal aspirations, societal aspirations, key insight - societal aspirations

      • quote

        • This 1% of humanity uses its awesome power to manipulate
          • societal aspirations and
          • the narratives around climate change.
        • These extend from
          • well-funded advertising to
          • pseudo-technical solutions,
          • and financialisation of carbon emissions (and increasingly, nature) to
          • labelling extreme any meaningful narrative that questions inequality and power.
      • comment

      • key insight - societal aspirations
        • it is the societal aspiration of the logic of capitalism and the free market that continues to create the next generation of the 1%
        • How can the luxury industry NOT BE high carbon intensity? It's an oxymoron. High carbon is baked into the definition of luxury, and it is luxury goods and services which accelerate climate breakdown.
        • The elites have a strong feeling of entitlement. They feel they DESERVE to reward themselves with a luxury lifestyle. That aspiration and reward structure multiplied by 80 million (1% of 8 billion) is a major variable driving the climate crisis
    1. I tell my researchers look for the 00:57:41 positive feedbacks these are not good feedbacks these are self-reinforcing feedbacks where you get a cycle of of causation that causes it to reinforce itself those 00:57:52 positive feedbacks which may cross several systems like climate economic pandemic Health Systems those positive feedbacks are where you're getting the synchronization if you can find those 00:58:04 then you're making real Headway on the synchronization effect
      • for: adjacency - synchronization - clues - positive feedbacks, key insight - synchronisation - positive feedbacks

      • adjacency between

        • positive feedback
        • synchronization
      • adjacency statement
      • key insight
        • look for where the positive feedbacks are occurring within the system
        • that will tell you where the synchronization is occurring within the system
    1. have you seen this amazing interview from years ago with um what's he called Andrew 00:50:57 marsky yes and um uh and he says and um Andrew Maron says in a incredibly pompous way you know journalist with a stroppy disputatious
      • for: media bias - insight of journalist questions

      • media insight

        • the journalist's question reveals where they are situated
    1. Although there are manyinitiatives, they have not yet reached the scale necessary to respond effectively to the crises; they oftenlack a stable and facile organisation of collaboration and a clearly structured process of joint decisionmaking
      • for: key insight - community capacity

      • key insight - community capacity

      • quote
        • . Although there are many initiatives, they have not yet reached the scale necessary to respond effectively to the crises; they often lack a stable and facile organisation of collaboration and a clearly structured process of joint decision making
  5. Nov 2023
    1. there must be a dozen bodies around the world who are trying to rethink it to some extent economics and 00:47:49 capitalism my issue with all of that is it's still within the frame that our last election was in 14 parties basically saying our future 00:48:03 is fundamentally modern now some of them might say and we want a new kind of capitalism but they're still in a modern frame and so I want to go back to your comment about Donald Trump 00:48:16 and others that there are people who kind of intuitively get it that that we do need to shake up the systems in a really serious way that we've got 00:48:29 but you see it actually took that idea seriously I mean it's just for the moment you and I agree and and anybody who's listening to this agree what we've done in effect 00:48:41 is by agreeing to be oblivious to the systems that we're actually in we have left to people who want to shake 00:48:55 up systems for their own good and in service of their own ego you end up with the Daniel Smiths on Donald Trump's and Eragon in turkey and the Prime Minister the 00:49:08 prime minister of Hungary um and Johnson who was prime minister in England uh I mean you end up with people who are thoroughly destructive yes they're perfectly willing to shake 00:49:21 things up but in a sense to no good end
      • for: key insight - shaking up the system - populists
      • key insight
        • This is a good observation. The point that Ruben makes is that populist leaders want to shake up the system, they have tapped into the discontent, but they channel it to their own nefarious ends. They are still thoroughly within modernity, however. so don't get to the root problem.
    2. Alberta is not a humble place we are not people we are extraordinarily male dominated 00:09:00 you know as well as I do that Alberta did not was not really a place where Europeans showed up uh until late in the 19th century
      • for: key insight - Alberta

      • comment

        • claim
          • Alberta is a very patriarchal province. It was settled in the late 19th century so already had a culture of controlling nature.
    3. sadly the now global sustainability industry is mostly stuck with the very 00:05:03 mindset that is the root cause of the wickednesses we are in over six decades
      • for key insight - sustainability industry is stuck

      • key insight

        • claim
          • sustainability industry is plagued with the same root cause as the problem that it is trying to solve
    1. one of the things that is true of us I 01:13:59 dare say it is true of all of us in our own ways who are listening to this at whatever time we're listening to it and that is there are voices within as we know when we've been dismissed as a person we know when other people have 01:14:13 seen us merely as a function or have taken a quick glance of us and see nothing there a value and they just and we know how much that shrivels us up you know as we know as persons rather 01:14:26 than as functions we're taught in the modern world to take ourselves as functions to work but not your whole person and so one of the things we know as persons is that we light up like 01:14:38 lightbulbs when other persons recognize us as whole persons as a value as a person
      • for: key insight - recognizing the other creates intimacy
    2. in our modern way of thinking the dominant metaphors 01:10:43 are mechanical and in mechanical system is literally the case if you can make the system more efficient you get rid of waste so if you have parts that duplicate each other they're not needed you can get rid of one of them and 01:10:57 that's true for mechanical systems so that waste and mechanical systems can is something you can get rid of and decrease efficiency but in living human 01:11:08 and even biological systems duplication is not waste its resilience
      • for: key insight - modernity - inefficiency - biological system - resilience

      • key insight

        • in our modern way of thinking the dominant metaphors are mechanical
        • and in mechanical system is literally the case if you can make the system more efficient you get rid of waste
        • so if you have parts that duplicate each other they're not needed you can get rid of one of them
        • and that's true for mechanical systems so that waste and mechanical systems is something you can get rid of and decrease efficiency
        • but in living human and even biological systems duplication is not waste it's resilience
      • comment

        • aspectualization and situatedness
    3. the official fantasy of the 20th century after the war but now also the 21st century is this that of course they will 00:53:15 all become like us and after the war we called it development and they were then third world countries would become first world some second world countries as well and the interesting thing is is 00:53:30 that fundamentally that really hasn't changed if you scratch under the paint of the UN's sustainable development goals what you find is they want to take the very best fruits of modernity and 00:53:42 make them in a fair way distribute them more evenly across the planet so that everybody has the advantages of a modern life and as billa suggested that's a 00:53:56 fantasy that isn't going to happen there isn't enough planet for that to happen but nevertheless this is the official fantasy it drives the OECD and the folks at Davos and the UN and most 00:54:08 universities
      • for: key insight - modernity framework is the major narrative, quote - modernity framework is the major narrative

      • key insight: modernity framework is the major narrative

      • quote: modernity framework is the major narrative
        • the official fantasy of the 20th century after the war but now also the 21st century is this that
          • of course they will all become like us
            • after the war we called it development
            • they were then third world countries would become first world
            • some second world countries as well
          • and the interesting thing is is that fundamentally that really hasn't changed
          • if you scratch under the paint of the UN's sustainable development goals what you find is they want to take the very best fruits of modernity and make them in a fair way distribute them more evenly across the planet so that everybody has the advantages of a modern life and
          • as Bill (Reese) suggested, that's a fantasy that isn't going to happen
          • there isn't enough planet for that to happen but
          • nevertheless this is the official fantasy that drives
            • the OECD and
            • the folks at Davos and
            • the UN and
            • most universities
    4. we've got to leave the bottom left-hand corner and that only gives you three other spaces to go to and I've already noted that one of those spaces may be a place that has a certain utility short-run 00:50:27 but don't try to build your culture there because you can't do it it's a place that you want to be in for a while but then you wanna leave so it really only gives you two places
      • for: major cultural paradigms, modernity - leaving, cultural transition, cultural evolution, MET, Major Evolutionary Transition, kiey insight - 4 major cultural paradigms

      • comment

      • key insight: 4 major cultural paradigms

        • This matrix doesn't quite capture what Ruben is proposing because he later talks about neo-indigenous, which means taking elements of modernity but within an overall indigenous framework, so a hybrid
        • It would be worth exploring implications for an evolutionary framework of Major Evolutionary Transitions (MET)
    1. Due to its nature, phenomenology focuses on experiences and emphasizes the sense thatsurrounds the everyday, the meaning of the human being, that is to say, the experience of whatwe are. Phenomenology is sensitive to the problems around the world of life.The world of life represents the reality of daily life, which is investigated under a non-naive eye. This world without categories or explanations, coming from science, is the life's pre-scientific dimension, characterized by being extremely rich, a world of experiences andexperience. In this world, objective sciences are examined as cultural facts. It is the sum of bordersand horizons in which worldly facts are born and established, and which have to be regeneratedby experience. This study corresponds to the worldly phenomenology.
      • for: key insight - phenomenology as life's pre-scientific dimension

      • key insight

      • paraphrase
        • Due to its nature, phenomenology focuses on experiences and emphasizes the sense that surrounds the everyday, the meaning of the human being,,
          • that is to say, the experience of what we are.
        • Phenomenology is sensitive to the problems around the world of life.
        • The world of life represents the reality of daily life, which is investigated under a non-naive eye. -This world without categories or explanations, coming from science, is the life's pre-scientific dimension, characterized by being extremely rich, a world of experiences and experience.
        • In this world, objective sciences are examined as cultural facts.
        • It is the sum of borders and horizons in which worldly facts are born and established, and which have to be regenerated by experience. This study corresponds to the worldly phenomenology.
    1. the main reason for this lack of 00:11:50 awareness is that our attention is almost completely absorbed into the content the what or object of our experience to the detriment of the experience itself
      • for key insight: object overshadows subject

      • paraphrase

        • we become so focused on the object that we lose sight off our subjective involvement in the act of observation or participation.
        • she gives the example of writing in which we forget the sensations of the fingers because we are so engaged with the ideas flowing out
  6. Oct 2023
    1. geomorphology. That's   my favorite word. I always tell my students this,  I'm like, "If there's just one thing I want you   00:29:44 to learn in this class, if you do never come back,  and you're just here the first two days of class,   geomorphic, conforming to the shape of the land."  This is, in my opinion, the fundamental flaw of   our civilization is that our political boundaries  and our land management units, property boundaries   are not conforming to the shape of the land. Because if they did, then decisions we made would   00:30:15 have an integrated holistic landscape scale impact  instead of a fragmented or fractured impact
      • for: key insight, key insight - Andrew Millison, key insight - geomorphology, quote, quote - Andrew Millison, quote - geomorphology

      • definition: geomorphology, geomorphic

        • geomorphology.is the study of the shape of the land and geomorphic means conforming to the shape of the land.
      • quote: Andrew Millison

        • The fundamental flaw of our civilization is that our political boundaries and our land management units, property boundaries are not conforming to the shape of the land. Because if they did, then decisions we made would have an integrated holistic landscape scale impact instead of a fragmented or fractured impact.
      • date: 2023
    1. one of the problems of the double 00:44:14 bind is that you are often so caught in the extreme drama of the situation that it becomes very difficult to see beyond it
      • for: double bind - difficulty, insight - double bind

      • insight: double bind

        • one of the problems of the double bind is that you are often so caught in the extreme drama of the situation that it becomes very difficult to see beyond it
    1. We currently have a climate movement and a biodiversity movement. These are for the most part, two separate movements. As our understandings grow and spread of how important biodiversity is to climate, these two movements can merge and synergize.
      • for: key insight, climate movement, biodiversity movement, adjacency, adjacency - climate movement - biodiversity movement

      • key insight

        • We currently have
          • a climate movement and
          • a biodiversity movement.
        • These are for the most part, two separate movements.
        • As our understandings grow and spread of how important biodiversity is to climate,
          • these two movements can merge and synergize.
  7. Sep 2023
    1. Electrons, protons, quarks, and so on, what they turn out to be is just inferences that we do from marks on the screens of our apparatuses in the laboratory essentially.
      • for: key insight, science - key insight, science - epoche

      • key insight

      • quote
        • Electrons, protons, quarks, and so on, what they turn out to be is just inferences that we do from marks on the screens of our apparatuses in the laboratory essentially.
      • author: Michel Bitbot
    1. the Bodhisattva vow can be seen as a method for control that is in alignment with, and informed by, the understanding that singular and enduring control agents do not actually exist. To see that, it is useful to consider what it might be like to have the freedom to control what thought one had next.
      • for: quote, quote - Michael Levin, quote - self as control agent, self - control agent, example, example - control agent - imperfection, spontaneous thought, spontaneous action, creativity - spontaneity
      • quote: Michael Levin

        • the Bodhisattva vow can be seen as a method for control that is in alignment with, and informed by, the understanding that singular and enduring control agents do not actually exist.
      • comment

        • adjacency between
          • nondual awareness
          • self-construct
          • self is illusion
          • singular, solid, enduring control agent
        • adjacency statement
          • nondual awareness is the deep insight that there is no solid, singular, enduring control agent.
          • creativity is unpredictable and spontaneous and would not be possible if there were perfect control
      • example - control agent - imperfection: start - the unpredictability of the realtime emergence of our next exact thought or action is a good example of this
      • example - control agent - imperfection: end

      • triggered insight: not only are thoughts and actions random, but dreams as well

        • I dreamt the night after this about something related to this paper (cannot remember what it is now!)
        • Obviously, I had no clue the idea in this paper would end up exactly as it did in next night's dream!
    2. the Bodhisattva cognitive system is no longer constrained by the perception that one single self—i.e., its own self—requires special and sustained attention. Instead, Bodhisattva cognitive processes are now said to engage with spontaneous care for all apparent individuals. Thus, an immediate takeaway from non-dual insight is said to be the perception that oneself and all others are ultimately of the same identity.
      • for: bodhisattva's compassion, nondual compassion, non-dual compassion, compassion
      • insightful: bodhisattva's compassion
      • unpacking: bodhisattva's compassion
        • to understand what it is to experience the world free of (object, agent, action) triplet, it is necessary to understand what it means to experience the world from the (object, agent, action) perspective.
        • Buddhism's starting assumption is that experience from the (object, agent, action) perspective is the pathological but normative one.
        • It cannot be simply intellectual understanding, that is not enough for deep transformation. It must be quite deep, to the core of how we experience the world - as a seeming subject moving through a field of seeming objects.
        • This is accompanied by a feeling of alienation. The subject is separated from the field of objects.
        • David Loy has good insights on this subject of the mundane feeling of emptiness that accompanies our meaning crisis: https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?max=100&expanded=true&user=stopresetgo&exactTagSearch=true&any=david+loy
        • Of course if you are able to penetrate the illusory nature of your own self construct in a meaningful way, it also gives you insight into the other perceived selves outside of you. Even this sentence is paradoxical to say, since there is no inside / outside in a nondual realization that penetrates the self.
        • So then, it does make sense to value all aspects of reality, not just yourself and others, but treating it as one unbroken gestalt
        • The concept of poverty mentality is useful here, David Loy refers to this as the "Lack project": https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?max=100&expanded=true&user=stopresetgo&exactTagSearch=true&any=poverty+mentality
  8. Aug 2023
    1. we were designed by you know evolution through evolution we have become we were i really every organism as we'll 00:45:01 talk about in a minute is a problem-solving organism and if i can't solve problems there's like a you know like fundamentally going against the grain of what it means to be an organism
      • for: evolutionary design, organisms - problem solving
      • key insight
        • organisms as evolution's way of solving a specific problem
        • hence, organisms are by their very nature, solvers of specific evolutionary problems of how to best adapt to an environment, and that includes our own human species
    1. there's 00:08:43 nothing there that could be secured and here's the important point I think we experienced that we experience it as a sense of lack 00:08:58 that is to say the sense that something is wrong with me something is missing something isn't quite right I'm not good enough and the reality is I think all of us to 00:09:14 some degree have some sense of that some sense of lack even though we might ignore it or cover it up there's there's some sense of that but because it's mostly sort of unconscious in the sense that we don't 00:09:29 really know where it comes from
      • for: sense of lack, sense of self, sense of self and sense of lack, human condition, poverty mentality, alienation, separation, emptiness, emptiness of emptiness, W2W, inequality
      • key insight
        • sense of self is equivalent to
          • sense of lack
          • duality
          • disconnection
          • alienation
          • separation
          • solidification - the opposite of emptiness
      • comment
        • this sense of lack that is intrinsically associated with the sense of self is perhaps the deepest root of our unhappiness
        • this is a key insight for sharing for both those who have too much (the 1%) as well as those who are so materially impoverished and deprived that they are forced to adopt survivalist strategies to stay alive, and if successful, take on a hard edge to survivalism, over-appreciating materialism
        • the same mistake is committed on both end of the disparity spectrum, both groups are still under the illusion that that sense of lack can be filled
    1. When the tribe is not a cohesive group but an assemblage of thousands or millions whose only commonality is the place they call home, what exactly does the “collective interest” even mean?
      • for: collective interest,
      • paraphrase
        • When the tribe is not a cohesive group but an assemblage of thousands or millions whose only commonality is the place they call home,
          • what exactly does the “collective interest” even mean?
        • By contrast, the interests of individuals and groups within the larger goup, such as
          • unlicensed gun owners,
          • protesters of various stripes, or
          • hate-mongers on social media
        • are pretty easy to delineate.
        • No surprise then that the dysfunctional courts often choose
          • personal interests over
          • an amorphous and undefinable “collective interest”.
      • insight
        • reason why the judicial system often sides with a definitive, but often harmful group, over a vague but beneficial group
      • quote
        • modernity has hollowed out the word "collective interest
      • author
        • James Gien Wong
        • Stop Reset Go
  9. Jul 2023
    1. Ludwig firebach has this idea that religion is a place where human 00:12:22 beings sort of um alienate their intrinsic superpowers right they they turn them inside out and they push them into some kind of Heaven which is basically the future
      • for: transformation, inner/outer transformation, rapid whole system change, religious alienation, poverty mentality
      • key insight
        • Ludwig Feuerbach
          • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Feuerbach
          • quote
            • "In the consciousness of the infinite, the conscious subject has for his object the infinity of his own nature."
            • "If man is to find contentment in God, he must find himself in God."
          • Thus God is nothing else than human: he is, so to speak, the outward projection of a human's inward nature.
          • This projection is dubbed as a chimera by Feuerbach, that God and the idea of a higher being is dependent upon the aspect of benevolence.
          • Feuerbach states that "a God who is not benevolent, not just, not wise, is no God",

      -quote - religion is a place where human beings alienate their intrinsic superpowers - author - Timotny Morton, quoting Ludwig Feuerbach

    1. if we want to end up with a world that is shaped by the best of us, rather than very often the worst of us, we have to think carefully, we have to engineer a system.
      • key insight
      • quote
        • if we want to end up with a world that is shaped by the best of us, rather than very often the worst of us,
          • we have to think carefully, we have to engineer a system.
          • think of the worst person for the job position you are hiring for
          • design the system to
            • screen that person out
            • if they do manage to get in, have oversight that can eliminate them from the post
            • have a system in place that looks upwards to the top position to scrutinize them and hold them accountable
  10. bafybeihzua2lldmlutkxlie7jfppxheow6my62x2qmywif2wukoswo5hqi.ipfs.w3s.link bafybeihzua2lldmlutkxlie7jfppxheow6my62x2qmywif2wukoswo5hqi.ipfs.w3s.link
    1. in any case, the mental world is di¤erent from the physicalworld and constitutes an important part of our reality.
      • insight
        • regardless of attempts to explain the relationships between these two,
          • everyone on all sides of the debate can agree that these two worlds coexist
    1. what is 00:02:17 history it's many parallel streams of events which meet at certain points so why not create them as parallel structures
      • comment
      • key insight
  11. Jun 2023
    1. Not all favorites are problems! I don’t phrase everything as a problem. For example, I am writing a collection of short stories set in a prison valley. It is also part of my list of favorites. I think Feynman has 12 favorite problems because as a physicist, you mainly solve problems. But as a writer, you don’t only solve problems, you write texts. There are different types of opportunities, not just problems.

      Not everything has to be a problem in the literal sense of the word; it's a tool for generating creative insight by means of prompting and relational thinking.

  12. May 2023
  13. Apr 2023
    1. Without variation on given ideas, there are no possibilities of scrutiny and selection of innovations. Therefore, the actual challenge becomes generating incidents with sufficiently high chances of selection.

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

  14. Mar 2023
    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.

    1. // Insight Maker is used to model system dynamics and create agent based models by creating causal loop diagrams and allowing users to run simulations on those

  15. Feb 2023
    1. Perhaps the best piece of advice I ever got from Jeff Bezos was this: Invest in things that don't change. His example was that customers won't wake up one day and wish shipping was slower or the selection of goods poorer. So investing in logistics and warehousing was investing in things that don't change, and will continue to pay dividends for decades.

      This was also discussed at length in one of the Acquired's episode on AWS/Amazon.

  16. Jan 2023
    1. While structural injustice and inequality do impede autonomy by fostering force and fraud, oppression and exploitation, these structural conditions also undermine autonomous self-recognition by impeding the psycho-social development integral to fulfilling the capability to be an autonomous self and agent. This is one convergence of symbiotic theorizing and the recognitional practice of autonomy. Through symbiotic practices, the assistance or “affordances” of the material and social worlds can be drawn on to actualize the inherent potential for autonomous action that resides in each human being.[16]

      !- key insight : autonomy and symbiosis

    1. What is abrogated here is our right to the future tense, which is the essence of free will, the idea that I can project myself into the future and thus make it a meaningful aspect of my present. This is the essence of autonomy and human agency. Surveillance capitalism’s “means of behavioral modification” at scale erodes democracy from within because, without autonomy in action and in thought, we have little capacity for the moral judgment and critical thinking necessary for a democratic society.

      !- surveillance capitalism : key insight -mass behavioral modification takes away autonomy

  17. Dec 2022
    1. InSight has also been useful because it has a camera attached, allowing it to take some very nice photos of the surface of Mars.

      Very cool.

    1. Although some of them took a lot of time to create (I literally wrote whole book summaries for a while), their value was negligible in hindsight.

      What was the purpose of these summaries? Were they of areas which weren't readily apparent in hindsight? Often most people's long summaries are really just encapsulalizations of what is apparent from the book jacket. Why bother with this? If they're just summaries of the obvious, then they're usually useless for review specifically because they're obvious. This is must make-work.

      You want to pull out the specific hard-core insights that weren't obvious to you from the jump.

      Most self-help books can be motivating while reading them and the motivation can be helpful, but generally they will only contain one or two useful ideas

  18. Nov 2022
    1. For example, if I've left myself a note like #pkm/xref this reminds me of something the Carthage expert I like said, but I can't remember her name I will search my notes to figure out the name of the Carthage expert I like, cross-reference the highlight with things she said, and add links and update notes as appropriate. If I said something like This reminds me of the article about the guy a crane is in love with when I was taking notes on something without access to my notes, I will go find the article and link to my notes about it so that my backlinks and graph are updated.

      I'm not sure how frequent this pattern is within fleeting notes, but it's something I do myself to create at least a temporary shorthand context of how things interrelate and which can easily be cleaned up later in the longer form permanent notes.

      The tougher thing is to always capture these sorts of things which one won't remember, but which quite often create better and stronger insights down the road.

    1. And this is the art-the skill or craftthat we are talking about here.

      We don't talk about the art of reading or the art of note making often enough as a goal to which students might aspire. It's too often framed as a set of rules and an mechanical process rather than a road to producing interesting, inspiring, or insightful content that can change humanity.

    1. Against all odds, NASA's Mars lander has, somehow, continued truckin' along — but its inevitable death seems to finally be at hand.

      Sad.

    1. Randall Stutman, an executive advisor and prolific note-taker, says, “collecting insights is just the preamble to what really matters: reviewing, with some level of consistency, those insights. You have to routinely make those insights available to yourself.” “Wisdom is only wisdom if you can act on it,” Randall says. “In the review process, you’re making those insights available for your mind to act on.”

      Regular review through one's note cards is important for the memory portion of directly remembering your insights and received wisdom, but they're also important for helping to allow you to grow them into new ideas as well as combining them with other ideas to allow dramatic innovation.

  19. Jul 2022
    1. Can they reshape the contours and boundaries of their socialsituations instead of being shaped by them?

      !- key insight : can an individual reshape the contours of their social situations instead of being shaped by them? * This realization would open up the door to authentic inner transformation * This is an important way to describe the discovery of personal empowerment and agency via realization of the bare human spirit, the "thought sans image"

  20. Jun 2022
    1. Here are four criteria I suggest to help you decide exactly whichnuggets of knowledge are worth keeping

      Four broad criteria for collecting notes: - Is it surprising? - Is it useful? - Is it personal? - Does it inspire me?

      Forte places these in the exact reverse order, but I would prefer to place them in order of importance to me, based on experience. I don't use the inspiration portion as often, but it may be more valuable for fiction writers, artists, and other creatives.

  21. May 2022
    1. Studying, done properly, is research,because it is about gaining insight that cannot be anticipated and willbe shared within the scientific community under public scrutiny.

    Tags

    Annotators

    1. The most important thing about writing is discovering novel and non-trivial truths, and determining which of your truths is most important—then imposing order, hierarchy, and linearity—through judgment, decisiveness, and will.

      I can be on board with this. Lovely quote.

    2. Apps and courses that help you make these pretty pictures are not helping you to advance your knowledge or to write increasingly insightful works.

      Based on my preliminary reading of Tiago Forte's forthcoming book, this seems broadly true.

    3. The point of writing—and what the greatest authors have always done—is to cut through the knowledge graph with a bold and forceful line.

      While the truly greatest authors may have "cut through the knowledge graph with a bold and forceful line", the vast majority of them are just re-tracing the same lines over again in crayon.

      Rarely do articles or books contain more than one or two insights, new or otherwise.

    4. All you have to do is take cute little notes all the time, and the hard work is magically done for you!

      This sounds clever, but it belies the amount of work that can go into such systems on the font end instead of on the back end. It also sounds as if the author hasn't used such a system to even a low level of critical mass to begin discovering any serendipity or finding any insight in their links.

  22. Apr 2022
    1. We have to endlessly scroll and parse a ton of images and headlines before we can find something interesting to read.

      The randomness of interesting tidbits in a social media scroll help to put us in a state of flow. We get small hits of dopamine from finding interesting posts to fill in the gaps of the boring bits in between and suddenly find we've lost the day. As a result an endless scroll of varying quality might have the effect of making one feel productive when in fact a reasonably large proportion of your time is spent on useless and uninteresting content.

      This effect may be put even further out when it's done algorithmically and the dopamine hits become more frequent. Potentially worse than this, the depth of the insight found in most social feeds is very shallow and rarely ever deep. One is almost never invited to delve further to find new insights.


      How might a social media stream of content be leveraged to help people read more interesting and complex content? Could putting Jacques Derrida's texts into a social media-like framing create this? Then one could reply to the text by sentence or paragraph with their own notes. This is similar to the user interface of Hypothes.is, but Hypothes.is has a more traditional reading interface compared to the social media space. What if one interspersed multiple authors in short threads? What other methods might work to "trick" the human mind into having more fun and finding flow in their deeper and more engaged reading states?

      Link this to the idea of fun in Sönke Ahrens' How to Take Smart Notes.

    1. Krapp argues that, despite its ‘respectablelineage’, the card index generally ‘figures only as an anonymous,furtive factor in text generation, acknowledged – all the way into thetwentieth century – merely as a memory crutch’ (361).2 A keyreason for this is due to the fact that the ‘enlightened scholar isexpected to produce innovative thought’ (361); knowledgeproduction, and any prostheses involved in it, ‘became and remaineda private matter’ (361).

      'Memory crutch' implies a physical human failing that needs assistance rather than a phrase like aide-mémoire that doesn't draw that same attention.

  23. Mar 2022
    1. sometimes it's 00:55:43 not the actual information bit but in a combined order that this is what it's all about and that often makes a difference between yeah you understand it and 00:56:00 you really understand it and um so maybe that's a good reminder that when we write it's it's not so much about new information and yeah don't have to 00:56:15 be too worried about not having the new information but about making this difference to really understanding it as something that 00:56:28 a significant or makes a difference

      For overall understanding and creating new writing output from it, the immediate focus shouldn't be about revealing new information or simple facts so much as it's about being able to place that new information into your own context. Once this has been done then the focus can shift to later being able to potentially use that new knowledge and understanding in other novel and enlightening contexts to create new insights.

    2. give the text your reading the opportunity to tell you something new and something 00:49:02 you have not expected so i'm worried a little bit of having fixed [Music] categories to look through 00:49:16 text because it might turn every text into something that is um already fitting your categories instead of expanding them 00:49:26 or adding to them

      Coming to a text with too rigid a set of questions or preconceived categories may cause you to be blinded by what you expect to get out of it rather than allowing the text to surprise you with new and interesting insights you may not have anticipated.

  24. Feb 2022
    1. A related project that explores the use of statistical and semantic analysis is The Insight Engine. [11]

      IE als Projekt, dass sich mit der Nutzung statistischer und semantischer Analyseverfahren auseinandersetzt.

    2. Seaman’s Insight Engine project enables searches across disciplines to bring textual and media materials into proximity via the linguistic analysis of meta-tags, stored and scraped texts.

      Insight Engine; Wissensartefakte werden durch eine anhand von Meta-Tags, gespeicherten und gescrapten Texten einer linguistischen Analyse unterzogen.

    3. By bringing these different kinds of functionalities together in a holistic system, the new technology might enable exploratory relational approaches to differing forms of contemporary and historical data

      IE als explorativer, relationaler Ansatz für unterschiedliche Formen von aktuellen und historischen Daten

    Tags

    Annotators

    1. I think they are a significant pedagogical idea because they help people understand how these sorts of thing work.

      thought vectors in understanding

    1. Insight engines are an evolution of search technologies that provide on-demand and proactiveknowledge discovery and exploration augmented by semantic and machine learning (ML)technologies.

      Definition als ein Typ einer Suchtechnologie Zweck: Wissensentdeckung und -exploration.

    1. That ‘taste’ is a very personal thing, and I don’t think I can really explain it. But I’m pretty sure it means that, for me, note-taking is a very long-term, gradual process of finding my way towards something; I just can’t quite articulate what that something is.

      I like the idea of taking notes as a means of finding one's way towards something which can't be articulated.

      This is an interesting way that one could define insight.

    1. you can’t force insight into a preconceiveddirection

      By its own definition, insight cannot be forced, much less forced in a particular direction.

    2. And the best ideas are usually the ones we haven’t anticipatedanyway.

      If the best ideas are the ones we haven't anticipated, how are we defining "best"? Most surprising from an information theoretic perspective? One which creates new frontiers of change? One which subsumes or abstracts prior ideas within it? Others?

    3. Just followyour interest and always take the path that promises the mostinsight.

      What specific factors does one evaluate for determining what particular paths will provide actual (measurable) insight?

      Most people have a personal gut reaction about which directions to go in heuristically, but can these heuristics be broken down explicitly to enable better evaluating them? How can they be used to avoid cognitive biases?

    1. Most writing is chasing clout, rather than insight

      As the result of online business models and SEO, most writing becomes about chasing clout and audience eyeballs rather than providing thought provoking insight and razor sharp analysis. The audience reaction has weakened with the anger reaction machines like Twitter.

      We need better business models that aren't built on hype.

  25. Jan 2022
    1. https://words.jamoe.org/highlight-question-and-answer/

      A somewhat disingenuous reframing of the Cornell notes method. They've given it a different name potentially for marketing purposes to sell in a book. At least HQ&A is a reasonable mnemonic for what the process is.

      They do highlight the value of modality shift from reading to thinking about how to formulate a question and answer as a means of learning. They don't seem to know the name or broader value of the technique however.

      This question technique is also highlighted in the work of Andy Matuschak and Michael Nielsen. Cross reference: https://andymatuschak.org/prompts/ and their quantum mechanics course experiments.

  26. Jul 2021
  27. Jun 2021
  28. May 2021
  29. Apr 2021
    1. Mathematical explanations are fundamentally different because no part of a mathematical system can be otherwise than it is given without changing the entire system as a whole.

      Why mathematics statement is not causalL

  30. Mar 2021
    1. Studies of great ape behavior show that they are good at cooperating in situations where there is no potential of deception, but behave egotistically in situations where there are motives for deception, suggesting that their "lack of cooperativeness" is not a lack of a cognitive ability at all, but rather a necessary adaptation to a society full of deception.[citation needed] This suggests that human cooperativeness began when proto-humans began to successfully avoid competition, which is also supported by the fact that the oldest evidence of care for the long-term sick and disabled are from shortly after the first emigration of hominins out of Africa about 1.8 million years ago

      successfully avoiding competition was key to humans doing super well vs the egotistical, competitive, & deceiving ways of apes

      being able to cooperate and get around deception/defection was key to humans doing so well

      .. and you can see how we evolved white sclera so others can better follow our gaze, hence work with us

      wow! (ape sclera is dark)

  31. Feb 2021
  32. Oct 2020
    1. The solution to imposter syndrome is to see that you are one. When I first wrote about how useful it is to remember that everyone is totally just winging it, all the time, we hadn’t yet entered the current era of leaderly incompetence (Brexit, Trump, coronavirus). Now, it’s harder to ignore. But the lesson to be drawn isn’t that we’re doomed to chaos. It’s that you – unconfident, self-conscious, all-too-aware-of-your-flaws – potentially have as much to contribute to your field, or the world, as anyone else.
  33. Aug 2020
  34. Jul 2020
  35. Jun 2020
    1. In contrast, theorems in Abstract Cryptography can be provedat a (high) level of abstraction without the instantiation ofthe lower levels. The lower levels inherit these theorems ifthey satisfy the postulated axioms of the higher level. Eachabstraction level can thus focus on specific aspects, such ascomposability or efficiency.

    Tags

    Annotators

  36. May 2020
    1. Insight through making suggests that you’ll need to make simultaneous progress in theory-space and system-space to spot the new implications in their conjoined space. Effective system design requires insights drawn from serious contexts of use: you must constantly instantiate new theoretical ideas in new systems, then observe their impact in some serious context of use.

      Very powerful way of wording the implications of Insights through making and the need for serious contexts of use.

      You need to advance in theory-space as well as in system-space to spot the implications for their conjoined space.

      Pragmatically, you must constantly instantiate new theoretical ideas in the system, then observe the effects in some serious context of use.

  37. Apr 2020
  38. Dec 2016
    1. I do sometimes get a lot of value out of my math or hardware skills, but I suspect I could teach someone the actually applicable math and hardware skills I have in less than a year. Spending five years in a school and a decade in industry to pick up those skills was a circuitous route to getting where I am.

      Wrong. If you just explained your skills to other people, like a textbook does, no one would understand, unless they have accumulated personal experience similar to yours -- which they would call, after the fact, "a circuitous route" to learning the textbook content.

  39. Oct 2016
    1. Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives, Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see

      Tiresias is a hermaphrodite; possession of female/male body parts gives him more insight and is the "true prophet".

  40. Sep 2016
    1. Now you have the extension up and

      Important concpet wprth noting

  41. Jul 2016
    1. The study reveals—“boredom,” “experimentation,” and “insight”—are reasons for use related to increased and decreased risk of use of other drugs.

      This study shows that teens use drugs for three reasons: BOREDOM: meaning people use drugs because they are bored. EXPERIMENTATION: people use drugs to experiment about it. INSIGHT: it makes teens understand more.

      I think this is important because when teens are bored some teens use drugs. I agree and this connects to me because marijuana does make me want to experiment more and actually make me understand or have a argument in things i do. although when boredom strikes it helps motivates more.

  42. Jun 2016
  43. Nov 2013
    1. The drive toward the formation of metaphors is the fundamental human drive, which one cannot for a single instant dispense with in thought, for one would thereby dispense with man himself. This drive is not truly vanquished and scarcely subdued by the fact that a regular and rigid new world is constructed as its prison from its own ephemeral products, the concepts. It seeks a new realm and another channel for its activity, and it finds this in myth and in art generally.

      Incredible writing talent and perceptivity.