for - progress trap - Prometheus complex - Dan Carlin - Gaston Bachelard - philosopher

summary - This short article brings up an interesting connection between - the Prometheus complex, - a term coined by the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard and - progress traps, - the unintended consequences of progress - The key insight is that human beings may have an Achilles Heel - the desire to know, even at the cost of harm - could be such a powerful impulsive urge - that we throw caution to the wind and - Icarus mythology may be a self-fulfilling prophecy - This also echos the views of my colleague Gyuri Lajos, - that invention for invention sake possesses this very dark side. - This is an important adjacency - as it questions the ethics of knowledge for knowledge sake - As we know from - the history of - progress and its shadowy counterpart, - the progress trap - our impulsive urge to invent has harmful impacts on everyone, - and these continually compound with time

Muybridge, was then hired as the photographer to test out Stanfords' theory. Using 12 cameras, they were able to capture the photo of the horse as it galloped and all four hooves left the ground. Muybridge later become well known for inventing "series photography".

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?

Harry Lorayne recognized the use of mnemonics as a form of entertainment and parlayed it into a career. Others before him, primarily magicians like David Roth had paved the way for some of this practice.

see: Markoff, John. “Where and When Was Democracy Invented?” Comparative Studies in Society and History 41, no. 4 (October 1999): 660–90. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0010417599003096.

Reply to Andy https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/comment/16865#Comment_16865

Andy, I'll take you at your word. You're right that none of it requires extraordinary genius--though many who seem to exhibit extraordinary genius do have variations of these practices in their lives, and the largest proportion of them either read about them or were explicitly taught them.

With these patterns and practices being so deeply rooted in our educational systems for so long (not to mention the heavy influences of our orality and evolved thinking apparatus even prior to literacy), it's a bit difficult for many to truly guarantee that they've done these things independently without heavy cultural and societal influence. As a result, it's not a far stretch for people to evolve their own practices to what works for them and then think that they've invented something new. The common person may not be aware of the old ideas of scala naturae or scholasticism, but they certainly feel them in their daily lives. Commonplacing is not much different.

By analogy, Elon Musk might say he created the Tesla, but it's a far bigger stretch for him to say that he invented a new means of transportation, or a car, or the wheel when we know he's swimming in a culture rife with these items. Humans are historically far better at imitation than innovation. If people truly independently developed systems like these so many times, then in the evolutionary record of these practices we should expect to see more diversity than we do in practice. We might expect to see more innovation than just the plain vanilla adjacent possible. Given Margolin's age, time period, educational background, and areas of expertise, there is statistically very little chance that he hadn't seen or talked about versions of this practice with several dozens of his peers through his lifetime after which he took that tacit knowledge and created his own explicit version which worked for him.

Historian Keith Thomas talks about some of these traditions which he absorbed himself without having read some of the common advice (see London Review of Books https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v32/n11/keith-thomas/diary). He also indicates that he slowly evolved to some of the often advised practices like writing only on one side of a slip, though, like many, he completely omits to state the reason why this is good advice. We can all ignore these rich histories, but we'll probably do so at our own peril and at the expense of wasting some of our time to re-evolve the benefits.

Why are so many here (and in other fora on these topics) showing up regularly to read and talk about their experiences? They're trying to glean some wisdom from the crowds of experimenters to make improvements. In addition to the slow wait for realtime results, I've "cheated" a lot and looked at a much richer historical record of wins and losses to gain more context of our shared intellectual history. I'm reminded of one of Goethe's aphorisms from Maxims and Reflections "Inexperienced people raise questions which were answered by the wise thousands of years ago."

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.

Arrangement and organization definitely have their place and can be helpful. However they may also tend to become too rigid to the point that one's thinking begins to lack creativity and invention. Where is the space for the Llullist arts of combinatorial thought here?

Another example of someone misattributing the invention of the zettelkasten to Niklas Luhmann. At least Soren Bjornstad modifies the attribution to say modern form, but I suspect that this is more of a verbal hedge more than being backed up with actual evidence, though perhaps the video will bear out more detail?

The availability heuristic is so strong in Luhmann's case, that he is attributed the invention. I find that few people can point to or ever mention any others who used the method.

Derrida's definition of invention

Ben Collins. (2022, February 28). Quick thread: I want you all to meet Vladimir Bondarenko. He’s a blogger from Kiev who really hates the Ukrainian government. He also doesn’t exist, according to Facebook. He’s an invention of a Russian troll farm targeting Ukraine. His face was made by AI. https://t.co/uWslj1Xnx3 [Tweet]. @oneunderscore__. https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__/status/1498349668522201099

73 Cf. Götz Müller, Jean Pauls Exzerpte (Würzburg, 1988), 321–22

I'm not quite sure I understand what the mechanism of this is specifically. Revisit it later. Sounds like it's using the set up the system not only to discover the adjacent possible but the remote improbable.

I don't like the common framing I see in posts like this that want to credit a particular person for "inventing" a pattern like these that goes back centuries. The fact that we've lost these patterns is a terrible travesty.

I'll definitely grant this and admit that there may be independent invention or re-discovery of ideas.

However, I'll also mention that it's far, far less likely that any of these people truly invented very much novel along the way, particularly since Western culture has been swimming in the proverbial waters of writing, rhetoric, and the commonplace book tradition for so long that we too often forget that we're actually swimming in water.

It's incredibly easy to reinvent the wheel when everything around you is made of circles, hubs, and axles.

Too often, this seems to me to be a missing piece that few talk about now. Those posting to the Art of Memory forum are usually talking about the need to memorize for memorization's sake. Rarely are they talking about or noticing the second or third level order changes as the result of an improved memory.

I can agree with this.

The Alchemy of Us: How Humans and Matter Transformed One Another | IndieBound.org. (n.d.). Retrieved August 26, 2020, from https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780262043809

This seems to continue the theme that I commented on from readings last week about invention. In rhetoric, invention becomes much more than finding a topic; it's about how rhetoric invents us. And again, a contrast with Cixous. If bodies and writing are multiple, then you don't forego one identity but sort of add on to identity, or realize all of the identities which make up each person.

Even though this was originally French, I think use of the word "invention" is interesting. In rhetoric, invention is more along the lines of coming up with a topic, but the type of invention here is creating a new type of writing which would in turn disrupt hierarchies.

Shouldn't the answer be when humans began to write and speak? Or am I just a naive sophomore?

So language here is also a create source (invention).

a nice summation of work on chora and choric invention. I wonder, though, how mobility might be added to this list. Thomas Rickert makes an interesting case for the ongoing attunement to ambient environments via a choric mode of thinking.

the stimulus for progress inventiveness

If language originally evolved as a tool of preservation, its roots are naturally based in self-interest for purposes of survival. That hasn't changed, we still rely on language and its conventions for survival. The point being, that we tend to forget that definitions and conventions are based in, derived from, arbitrary inventions.

The definitions of invention and arrangement.

Quintilian's five parts of rhetoric.

Pay attention to what is about to be said is a never ending task.