Quotations are easier to collect than writing things out in one's own words, not only because it requires no work, but we may be afraid of changing the original meaning by changing the original words or by collapsing the context and divorcing the words from their original environment.

Perhaps some may be afraid that the words sound "right" and they have a sense of understanding of them, but they don't quite have a full grasp of the situation. Of course this may be remedied by the reader or listener not only by putting heard stories into their own words and providing additional concrete illustrative examples of the concepts. These exercises are meant to ensure that one has properly heard/read and understood a concept. Psychologists call this paraphrasing or repetition the "echo effect" (others might say parroting or mirroring) and have found that it can help to build understanding, connection, and likeability between people. Great leaders who do this will be sure to make sure that credit for the original ideas goes to the originator and not to themselves simply because they repeated it, especially in group settings where their words may have more primacy amidst their underlings.

(I can't find it at the moment, but there's a name/tag for this in my notes? looping?)

Beyond this, can one place the idea into a more clear language than the original? Add some poetry perhaps? Make the concept into a concrete meme to make it more memorable?

Journalists like to quote because it gives primacy of voice to the speaker and provides the reader with the sense that they're getting the original from which they might make up their own minds. It also provides a veneer of vérité to their reportage.

Link this back to Terrence's comedy: https://hypothes.is/a/xe15ZKPGEe6NJkeL77Ji4Q

Kaiser says that "description and illustration are complementary, they give together a more complete picture than either without the other" and this sentiment is similar to Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren's pedagogy of restatement and providing concrete examples a means of testing understanding.

See: - https://hypothes.is/a/RgUa-mOcEe6PChv_seYXZA - https://hypothes.is/a/B3sDhlm5Ee6wF0fRYO0OQg

Read this text with emphasis on "any". I.e. the term "MAC-48" also includes locally administered MAC addresses (U/L bit set to 1), EUI-48 doesn't.

Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a term like "MAC-64" to refer to same for a EUI-64.

Couldn't the personal firewall just respond with the same ICMP messagt to unsolicited packets? Although it would still decrease the hop count by one. But the sender (the personal firewall) can just increase the hop limit by that number.

Isn't the address deleted in an event of a network disconnect anyway? Hmm, Linux has keep_addr_on_down sysctl option.

Choosing an external system for knowledge keeping and production forces the learner into a deliberate practice and confronts them with their lack of understanding. This is a large part of the underlying value not only of the zettelkasten, but of the use of a commonplace book which Benjamin Franklin was getting at when recommending that one "read with a pen in your hand". The external system also creates a modality shift from reading to writing by way of thinking which further underlines the value.

What other building blocks are present in addition to: - modality shift - deliberate practice - confrontation of lack of understanding

Are there other systems that do all of these as well as others simultaneously?

link to Franklin quote: https://hypothes.is/a/HZeDKI3YEeyj9GcNWKX4iA

Sounds similar to Umberto Eco's admonition about photocopying: https://hypothes.is/a/U3Sg_r0ZEe25T2tD3U-nmw

Amen!

Adler/Van Doren use the statement of unity of a work as an example of testing one's understanding of a work and its contents.

(Again, did this exist in the 1940 edition?)

Who do McDaniel and Donnelly 1996 cite in their work as predecessors of their idea as certainly it existed?

Examples in the literature of this same idea/method after this: - https://hypothes.is/a/TclhyMfqEeyTkQdZl43ZyA (Feynman Technique in ZK; relationship to Ahrens) - explain it to me like I'm a 5th grader - https://hypothes.is/a/BKhfvuIyEeyZj_v7eMiYcg ("People talk" in Algebra Project) - https://hypothes.is/a/m0KQSDlZEeyYFLulG9z0vw (Intellectual Life version) - https://hypothes.is/a/OyAAflm5Ee6GStMjUMCKbw (earlier version of statement in this same work) - https://hypothes.is/a/iV5MwjivEe23zyebtBagfw (Ahrens' version of elaboration citing McDaniel and Donnelly 1996, this uses both restatement and application to a situation as a means of testing understanding) - https://hypothes.is/a/B3sDhlm5Ee6wF0fRYO0OQg (Adler's version for testing understanding from his video) - https://hypothes.is/a/rh1M5vdEEeut4pOOF7OYNA (Manfred Kuenh and Luhmann's reformulating writing)

08:00 True mastery lies in flow, where action is not forced (Musashi on flow)

09:00 harmonising mind, body, and universe, as way to reach flow & detachment

• see zk on following natural interest, our following the quickening of the spirit, as a process of understanding and harmony

Many mnemonists often recommend that one should understand an idea fully before committing it to memory, usually because it is much easier to memorize if it's fully understood first.

suggested by: https://hypothes.is/a/Jme3bFmlEe6_VYfaZGQf9Q

Does this idea exist in the 1940 edition of the book?

Very similar to the advice inherent in the Feynman technique or that suggested by the research summarized by Sonke Ahrens in How to Take Smart Notes.

cross reference: - https://hypothes.is/a/iV5MwjivEe23zyebtBagfw - https://hypothes.is/a/B3sDhlm5Ee6wF0fRYO0OQg (Adler testing using statement in own words and a concrete example.)

Quote for "reformulating writing"? Date? Does it predate the so-called Feynman technique?

Mortimer Adler gave oral examinations at St. Johns in which he would often ask a student to restate the ideas of writers in their own words and then ask for a concrete example of that idea. Being able to do these two things is a solid way of indicating that one fully understands an idea.

Adler and Van Doren querying each other demonstrate this once or twice in the video.

related: - https://hypothes.is/a/rh1M5vdEEeut4pOOF7OYNA - https://hypothes.is/a/iV5MwjivEe23zyebtBagfw

Where does this method sit with respect to the Feynman Technique? Does this appear in the 1940 edition of Adler's book and thus predate it all?

The data of the past is congruent with the current psychological trends that face the education system of today. Developmentalists have charted how children construct and revise intuitive theories. In turn, a variety of theories have developed because of the greater use of statistical information that supports probabilistic contingencies that help to better inform us of causal models and their distinctive cognitive functions. These studies investigate the physical, psychological, and social domains. In the case of intuitive psychology, or "theory of mind," developmentalism has traced a progression from an early understanding of emotion and action to an understanding of intentions and simple aspects of perception, to an understanding of knowledge vs. ignorance, and finally to a representational and then an interpretive theory of mind.

The mechanisms by which life evolved—from chemical beginnings to cognizing human beings—are central to understanding the psychological basis of learning. We are the product of an evolutionary process and it is the mechanisms inherent in this process that offer the most probable explanations to how we think and learn.

Bada, & Olusegun, S. (2015). Constructivism Learning Theory : A Paradigm for Teaching and Learning.

proof of effort: How can teachers know that students have done the work?

Hypothes.is is an example of a tool which shows reading effort.

Purpose of the Great Books of the Western World

via https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/11/30/salary/

Some underlying tension for the question of identity/misinformation and personal politics vis-a-vis work and one's identity generated via work.

so this passage explicitly mentions "external beauty", BUT if we're to consider beauty in its truest essence, then i wonder if this statement is a bad thing. after all, beauty is essentially harmony and balance (which explains why individuals with symmetrical features are considered attractive). all of us strive for beauty, but in doing so, we may lose what makes us unique because beauty favors uniformity.

this is fascinating to me because uniformity adheres to a standard, which is important for regulating randomness (opposite of this is pattern and we LOVE patterns because it is discernible which means it is safer), and fostering a shared understanding of the world. and this shared understanding of our world is really important to us as humanity. this is how we evolve together. this collective perception only happens through that concept of beauty (or form and structure, harmony and balance).

nowadays, we shifted and value individualism more. this excessive individualism has promoted different perspectives on the world which contributes to conflicts. ultimately, extremes on both ends of the spectrum (uniformity or individualism) are detrimental, so striking this balance between them is crucial for progress and unity among people.

Within the pantheon of types of notes there are: - paraphrasing notes, which one can use to summarize ideas for later recall and review as well as to check one's own knowledge and understanding of what an author has said. - commentary notes, which take the text and create a commentary on them, often as part of having a conversation with the text. These can be seen historically in the Midrashim tradition of commenting on Torah.

[23:12 - 24:47]

separately also: - productivity notes - to do lists, reminders of work to be done, often within or as part of a larger complex project

https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/comment/17617#Comment_17617

There is definitely something here from a usability (and reusability) perspective when notes are broken down into smaller pieces the way that is encouraged by Hypothes.is or by writing on index cards.

Compare: - ://www.evernote.com/shard/s170/sh/d69cf793-1f14-48f4-bd48-43f41bd88678/DapavVTQh954eMRGKOVeEPHm7FxEqxBKvaKLfKWaSV1yuOmjREsMkSHvmQ - https://via.hypothes.is/https://www.otherlife.co/pkm/

The first may be most useful for a note taker who is personally trying to make sense of material, but it becomes a massive wall of text that one is unlikely to re-read or attempt to reuse at a later date. If they do attempt to reuse it at a later date, it's not clear which parts are excerpts of the original and which are the author's own words. (This page also looks like it's the sort of notes, highlighting, and underlining recommended by Tiago Forte's Building a Second Brain text using progressive summarization.)

The second set, are more concrete, more atomic, more understandable, and also as a result much more usable.

An article about contemporary philosopher Agnes Callard

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

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

Too many in the productivity porn space focus on the apps and the potential workflows without looking at the question "why" at all. It's rare that any focus on understanding or actual output.

reply to u/sscheper at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/10o4jnl/comment/j6ii64d/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

Is this about as close as Scott Scheper comes to recommending taking Cornell Notes?!? 😂

Let's be honest that this is roughly what this (and Bibcards) ultimately is. You take some general notes on a lecture (book or other material) as a sense making tool to help you better understand the material. You write down some bits you want to remember and use for some brief spaced repetition perhaps. You write down some pointed questions to help review for a test later. The subtle difference is that Cornell notes were designed to do the sense making, summary, and repetition portions well for students and learners, but didn't focus as much on the longer tail of knowledge creation using analysis, and synthesis. To fill in the last mile for your card index, take the best idea(s) (maybe one or two at most) and flesh it out to create a useful maincard.

If it's useful try some 8 x 12" paper for your lecture notes, and take them Bibcard or Cornell Notes style. Once you've excerpted your main card notes, you can fold your sheet in half twice and file it with your Bibcards, naturally taking care to have the paper's spine face up to prevent other slips from becoming lost in between. (This obviously works best for those using 4 x 6" index cards though if you're in the 3 x 5" camp, then use 6" x 10" sheets for folding.) For those with middle grades or high school students, this may be a more profitable method for introducing these methods to their study, learning, and creation patterns.

Summary: Cornell Notes can be an excellent method for capturing session-based fleeting notes and distilling them down into permanent notes. Cornell Notes focus on the lower levels of Bloom's Taxonomy rather than the broader spectrum that a zettelkasten method might.

Henry David Thoreau repeated himself frequently in his journals. Damion Searls who edited an edition of his journals suggested that some of this repetition was for the beauty and pleasure of the act, but that in many examples his repetition was an act of drafting, revising, and constructing.

Scott Scheper has recommended finding the place in one's zettelkasten where one wants to install a card before writing it out. I believe (check this) that he does this in part to prevent one from repeating themselves, but one could use the opportunity and the new context that brings them to an idea again to rewrite or rework and expand on their ideas while they're so inspired.

Thoreau's repetition may have also served the idea of spaced repetition: reminding him of his thoughts as he also revised them. We'll need examples of this through his writing to support such a claim. As the editor of this volume indicates that he removed some of the repetition, it may be better to go back to original sources than to look for these examples here.

(This last paragraph on repetition was inspired by attempting to type a tag for repetition and seeing "spaced repetition" pop up. This is an example in my own writing practice where the serendipity of a previously tagged word auto-populating/auto-completing in my interface helps to trigger new thoughts and ideas from a combinatorial creativity perspective.)

Verbatim notes are not the goal.

The idea of note taking as a means of sensemaking and understanding is underlined in an 1892 article in a shorthand magazine whose general purpose was to encourage shorthand and increasing one's writing speed, often to create verbatim records:

To be useful, the notes taken at medical lectures should be a summary only; no attempt should be made to take a verbatim report.

There's an interesting parallel between this example and that of the character of Socrates in Plato with respect to writing and memory.

Some take notes to increase understanding, while others might suggest that note taking decreases understanding. The answer to remedying the discrepancy is in using the proper process.

"current PKM theory"? There is such a thing beyond zeitgeist?!

Verstehen seems to have a similar semantic meaning for an "outsider" making an attempt to understand different (indigenous) ways of knowing.

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

and hard to get along with, since they are not wise, but only appear wise." pp 563-564

Again note taking is the wrong tool for fact-based acquisition. Apparently this is not advice given in most sources. Spaced repetition and mnemonic methods are far better suited for memorizing and remembering basic facts.

Take notes on the surprising and unique. Take notes as writing you'll reuse later. Take notes to understand.

https://youtu.be/r9idbh-U2kM?t=3544

Stefan Zweig (reference? his memoir?) apparently suggested that students translate authors as a means of becoming more intimately acquainted with their work. This is similar to restating an author in one's own words as a means of improving one's understanding. It's a lower level of processing that osculates on the idea of having a conversation with a text.

tk: track this reference down. appropriate context?

Yet another new name for a sub-type of notes, here he uses reformulation notes as a shorthand for the old advice to rewrite ideas you find in your own words. This advice is often suggested to accomplish two things: - avoid plagiarism - restatement of ideas in your own words is related to the Feynman Technique and assists one in learning and ensuring they understand the concepts

This could be clearer and "growth state" and "contribution state" feel like jargon which muddles:

two of the broad benefits/affordances of having a zettelkasten: - learning and scaffolding knowledge (writing for understanding) - collecting and arranging material for general output

see also: https://boffosocko.com/2022/04/01/the-zettelkasten-method-of-note-taking-mirrors-most-of-the-levels-of-blooms-taxonomy/

How do Bransford, Brown, & Cocking (2000) define schemas? (Metiri Group, Cisco Sytems, 2008) As chunks of multiple individual units of memory that are linked into a system of understanding

What term is defined by Bransford, Brown, & Cocking (2000) to be "chunks of multiple individual units of memory that are linked into a system of understanding"? (Metiri Group, Cisco Sytems, 2008) Schemas.

17 betty roGerS, wiLL roGerS 294 (1941; new ed. 1979) (quoting Rogers).

https://www.cold-takes.com/learning-by-writing/

Meh... generic process. Nothing broadly new here. The extended example is flawed because it's a broad thesis by a top level aggregator who doesn't have their own expert level experience (seemingly). Better to start from there, but delving more deeply into the primary literature of people who may have that experience.

Adler and Van Doren indicate that outlining the arguments and structure of a book on its endpapers is a better and higher measurement of one's ownership of a text compared to a bookplate which only indicates the lower level of "financial" ownership.

Active reading is thinking, and thinking requires expression which can come in many forms including both spoken and written ones.

I like that he acknowledges that expression (and thus thinking) can be done in both oral or written forms.

another in a long line of using analogizing thinking to food digestion.... I saw another just earlier today.

It's quite likely that one will take a large number of notes with no immediate goal or plan for use and this is completely acceptable. Often these notes go towards the more immediate goal of forming one's own understanding and setting of a broader tableau for material one will write in the future.

relatable to: https://hypothes.is/a/wIyvtm0oEeyNypNtc--Clw

Sounds much like the Feynman technique and is quite similar to the advice of Sonke Ahrens.

https://web.archive.org/web/20161201164608/http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6286/adam-phillips-the-art-of-nonfiction-no-7-adam-phillips

Another example to link to: https://hypothes.is/a/yEFMHoCkEeyl34fItJe__w

https://www.wired.com/2013/01/code-bugs-programming-why-we-need-specs/

apparently quoted from Guindon: Michigan So Far<br /> see: https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/3403680-guindon-michigan-so-far#:~:text=%E2%80%9CWriting%20is%20nature's%20way%20of,how%20sloppy%20your%20thinking%20is.%E2%80%9D

Link to: https://hypothes.is/a/yEFMHoCkEeyl34fItJe__w along with the commentary there. This quote is another example of this fallacy.

There are three goals of most reading: education, information, and understanding.

Are there others we're missing here?

Barbara Tuchman recommended using the smallest sized index cards possible to force one only to "extract the strictly relevant" because copying by hand can be both "a chore and a bore".

In the same address in 1963, she encourages "distill[ing] from the very beginning, to pass the material through the grinder of one's own mind, so to speak." This practice is similar to modern day pedagogues who encourage this practice, but with the benefit of psychology research to back up the practice.

This advice is two-fold in terms of filtering out the useless material for an author, but the grinder metaphor indicates placing multiple types of material in to to a processor to see what new combinations of products come out the other end. This touches more subtly on the idea of combinatorial creativity encouraged by Raymond Llull, Matt Ridley, et al. or the serendipity described by Niklas Luhmann and others.

When did the writing for understanding idea begin within the tradition? Was it through experience in part and then underlined with psychology research? Visit Ahrens' references on this for particular papers to read.

Link to modality shift research.

We write to understand, to learn, to make knowledge our own.

Elaboration has been shown to be the most successful learning approach. (See McDaniel and Donnelly 1996) It is a two step process of being able to write about it and to use it in alternate contexts.

How is the Feynman Technique similar to/different from elaboration? It would seem to be missing the second portion.

This is one of the first times I've come across another word for part of the Feynman technique I've been looking for.

Because Hermann Ebbinghaus' early studies on memory, retrieval, and spaced repetition focused on meaningless random letter combinations that ha no natural associations, he started a field of learning theories that separated the ideas of understanding and learning. Learning is creating connections between ideas we already know (contextualization).

'History of stuff' not being seen is a recurring pattern. e.g. wrt Luhmann vs commonplacing, in the Roam/Obsidian wave e.g. wrt open data around 2010 when there was little realisation of efforts by re-users to get to the PSI Directive, only the new wave of coders using the fact it existed.

It's also a repeating pattern in generations. Open Space and unconferencing e.g. needs to be retaught with every new wave of people. The open web of two decades ago needs to be explained to those now starting their professional work using online tools.

Spaced repetition for groups/society?

In order to expand understanding what one is actually doing / building on.

Doet me denken aan die '90s exchange student die me ooit vroeg of ik geschiedenis studeerde ipv elektro: ik legde bij alles ook het ontwikkelingspad uit.

What is it that was tiring about the practice? Did they do it properly, or was the focus placed on tremendous output driving the feeling of a need for commensurate tremendous input on a daily basis? Most lifetime productive users only made a few cards a day, but I get the feeling that many who start, think they should be creating 20 cards a day and that is definitely a road to burn out. This feeling is compounded by digital tools that make it easier to quickly capture ideas by quoting or cut and pasting, but which don't really facilitate the ownership of ideas (internalization) by the note taker. The work of writing helps to facilitate this. Apparently the framing of literature note vs. permanent note also was a hurdle in the collection of ideas moving toward the filtering down and refining of one's ideas. These naming ideas seem to be a general hurdle for many people, particularly if they're working without particular goals in mind.

Only practicing zettelkasten for a month is certainly no way to build real insight or to truly begin developing anything useful. Even at two cards a day and a minimum of 500-1000 total cards to see some serendipity and creativity emerge, one would need to be practicing for just over a year to begin seeing interesting results.

Writing and refining one's note about an idea can be key to helping one's basic understanding of that idea, but this understanding is dramatically increased by linking it into the rest of one's framework of understanding of that idea. A useful side benefit of creating this basic understanding and extending it is that one can also reuse one's (better understood) ideas to create new papers for expanding other's reading and subsequent understanding.

This welcome point is not often seen in the broader literature on this subject! Thanks Dan!

One of the best methods for technical reading is to create progressive summarizations of what one has read.

5.12 Be cautious about trusting AI without having deep understanding.

5.5 Logic, reason, and common sense are your best tools for synthesizing reality and understanding what to do about it.

.

Many people treat their blogging practice as an experimental thought space. They try out new ideas, explore a small space, attempt to come to understanding, connect new ideas to their existing ideas.

Ton Zylstra coins/uses the phrase "metablogging" to think about his blogging practice as an evolving thought space.

How can we better distill down these sorts of longer ideas and use them to create more collisions between ideas to create new an innovative ideas? What forms might this take?

The personal zettelkasten is a more concentrated form of this and blogging is certainly within the space as are the somewhat more nascent digital gardens. What would some intermediary "idea crucible" between these forms look like in public that has a simple but compelling interface. How much storytelling and contextualization is needed or not needed to make such points?

Is there a better space for progressive summarization here so that an idea can be more fully laid out and explored? Then once the actual structure is built, the scaffolding can be pulled down and only the idea remains.

Reminiscences of scaffolding can be helpful for creating context.

Consider the pyramids of Giza and the need to reverse engineer how they were built. Once the scaffolding has been taken down and history forgets the methods, it's not always obvious what the original context for objects were, how they were made, what they were used for. Progressive summarization may potentially fall prey to these effects as well.

How might we create a "contextual medium" which is more permanently attached to ideas or objects to help prevent context collapse?

How would this be applied in reverse to better understand sites like Stonehenge or the hundreds of other stone circles, wood circles, and standing stones we see throughout history.

The way that Tiago Forte overlaps the idea of C.O.D.E. (capture/collect, organize, distill, express) with the divergence/convergence model points out some primary differences of his system and that of some of the more refined methods of maintaining a zettelkasten.

<small>Overlapping ideas of C.O.D.E. and divergence/convergence from Tiago Forte's book Building a Second Brain (Atria Books, 2022) </small>

Forte's focus on organizing is dedicated solely on to putting things into folders, which is a light touch way of indexing them. However it only indexes them on one axis—that of the folder into which they're being placed. This precludes them from being indexed on a variety of other axes from the start to other places where they might also be used in the future. His method requires more additional work and effort to revisit and re-arrange (move them into other folders) or index them later.

Most historical commonplacing and zettelkasten techniques place a heavier emphasis on indexing pieces as they're collected.

Commonplacing creates more work on the user between organizing and distilling because they're more dependent on their memory of the user or depending on the regular re-reading and revisiting of pieces one may have a memory of existence. Most commonplacing methods (particularly the older historic forms of collecting and excerpting sententiae) also doesn't focus or rely on one writing out their own ideas in larger form as one goes along, so generally here there is a larger amount of work at the expression stage.

Zettelkasten techniques as imagined by Luhmann and Ahrens smooth the process between organization and distillation by creating tacit links between ideas. This additional piece of the process makes distillation far easier because the linking work has been done along the way, so one only need edit out ideas that don't add to the overall argument or piece. All that remains is light editing.

Ahrens' instantiation of the method also focuses on writing out and summarizing other's ideas in one's own words for later convenient reuse. This idea is also seen in Bruce Ballenger's The Curious Researcher as a means of both sensemaking and reuse, though none of the organizational indexing or idea linking seem to be found there.

This also fits into the diamond shape that Forte provides as the height along the vertical can stand in as a proxy for the equivalent amount of work that is required during the overall process.

This shape could be reframed for a refined zettelkasten method as an indication of work

Forte's diamond shape provided gives a visual representation of the overall process of the divergence and convergence.

But what if we change that shape to indicate the amount of work that is required along the steps of the process?!

Here, we might expect the diamond to relatively accurately reflect the amounts of work along the path.

If this is the case, then what might the relative workload look like for a refined zettelkasten? First we'll need to move the express portion between capture and organize where it more naturally sits, at least in Ahren's instantiation of the method. While this does take a discrete small amount of work and time for the note taker, it pays off in the long run as one intends from the start to reuse this work. It also pays further dividends as it dramatically increases one's understanding of the material that is being collected, particularly when conjoined to the organization portion which actively links this knowledge into one's broader world view based on their notes. For the moment, we'll neglect the benefits of comparison of conjoined ideas which may reveal flaws in our thinking and reasoning or the benefits of new questions and ideas which may arise from this juxtaposition.

This sketch could be refined a bit, but overall it shows that frontloading the work has the effect of dramatically increasing the efficiency and productivity for a particular piece of work.

Note that when compounded over a lifetime's work, this diagram also neglects the productivity increase over being able to revisit old work and re-using it for multiple different types of work or projects where there is potential overlap, not to mention the combinatorial possibilities.

--

It could be useful to better and more carefully plot out the amounts of time, work/effort for these methods (based on practical experience) and then regraph the resulting power inputs against each other to come up with a better picture of the efficiency gains.

Is some of the reason that people are against zettelkasten methods that they don't see the immediate gains in return for the upfront work, and thus abandon the process? Is this a form of misinterpreted-effort hypothesis at work? It can also be compounded at not being able to see the compounding effects of the upfront work.

What does research indicate about how people are able to predict compounding effects over time in areas like money/finance? What might this indicate here? Humans definitely have issues seeing and reacting to probabilities in this same manner, so one might expect the same intellectual blindness based on system 1 vs. system 2.

Given that indexing things, especially digitally, requires so little work and effort upfront, it should be done at the time of collection.

I'll admit that it only took a moment to read this highlighted sentence and look at the related diagram, but the amount of material I was able to draw out of it by reframing it, thinking about it, having my own thoughts and ideas against it, and then innovating based upon it was incredibly fruitful in terms of better differentiating amongst a variety of note taking and sense making frameworks.

For me, this is a great example of what reading with a pen in hand, rephrasing, extending, and linking to other ideas can accomplish.

To test one's own understanding of a topic one has read about and studied, it can be useful to discuss it or describe one's understanding to friends or colleagues in conversations. This will help you discover where the holes are based on the person's understanding and comprehension of what you've said. Can you fill in all the holes where they have questions? Are their questions your new questions which have exposed holes that need to be filled in your understanding or in the space itself.

I do this regularly in conversations with people. It makes the topics of conversation more varied and interesting and helps out your thinking at the same time. In particular I've been doing this method in Dan Allosso's book club. It's almost like trying on a new idea the way one might try on a piece of clothing to see how it fits or how one likes it for potential purchase. If an idea "fits" then continue refining it and add it to your knowledge base. These conversations also help to better link ideas in my thought space to those of what we're reading. (I wonder if others are doing these same patterns, Dan seems to, but I don't have as good a grasp on this with other participants).

Link to :<br /> - Ahren's idea of writing to expose understanding<br /> - Feynman technique<br /> - Socratic method (this is sort of side or tangential method to this) <- define this better/refine

Zachary A. Rosner et al., “The Generation Effect: Activating Broad Neural Circuits During Memory Encoding,” Cortex 49, no. 7 (July–August 2013), 1901–1909, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2012.09.009. #wanttoread

How does the "Generation Effect" tie into the Feynman technique for understanding, modality shifting for memory and understanding, and even a mild form of spaced repetition for memory?

from Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

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

Christine Moskell talks about a professor's final exam design prompting students to go back to annotations and add new commentary (or links to other related knowledge) that they've gained during the length of a course.

Link to:

This is very similar to the sort of sensemaking and interlinking of information that Sönke Ahrens outlines in his book How to Take Smart Notes though his broader note taking thesis goes a few additional steps for more broadly synthesizing ideas into longer papers, articles, theses, and books.

Dr. Moskell also outlined a similar tactic at the [[Hypothesis Social Learning Summit - Spotlight on Social Reading & Social Annotation]] earlier today, though that video may not be accessible for a bit.

Cross reference: https://web.hypothes.is/event/social-learning-summit-spotlight-on-social-reading-social-annotation/

How can we better center and model these educational practices in our pedagogies?

Barzun analogies notes as "old friends". He, like many others, encourages note takers to put ideas into their own words.

The five step philosophy of the Algebra Project: - physical experience - pictorial representation - people talk (explain it in your own words) - feature talk (put it into proper English) - symbolic representation

"people talk" within the Algebra project is an example of the Feynman technique at work

Link this to Sonke Ahrens' method for improving understanding. Are there research links to this within their work?

The typical student note taking method of transcribing, using (or often not using at all), and keeping notes is doomed to failure.

Many students make the mistake of not making their own actual notes. By this I don't mean they're not writing information down. In fact many are writing information down, but we can't really call these notes. Notes by definition ought to transform something seen or heard into one's own words. Without the transformation, these students think that they're taking notes, but in reality they're focusing their efforts on being transcriptionists. They're attempting to capture something for later consumption. This is a deadly trap! By only transcribing, they're not taking advantage of transforming information by putting ideas down in their own words to test their understanding. Often worse, even if they do transcribe notes, they don't revisit them. If they do revisit them, they're simply re-reading them and not actively working with them. Only re-reading them will lead to the illusion that they're learning something when in fact they're falling into the mere-exposure effect.

Students who are acting as transcriptionists would be better off simply reading a textbook and taking notes directly from that.

A note that isn't revisited or revised, may as well be a note not taken. If we were to consider a spectrum of useful, valuable, and worthwhile notes, these notes would be at the lowest end of the spectrum.

link to: https://hypothes.is/a/QgkL6IkIEeym7OeN9v9New

https://fieldnotesbrand.com/apparel/remember-it-now-tee

Field Notes, a manufacturer of notebooks, uses the credo "I'm not writing it down to remember it later, I'm writing it down to remember it now." This is an fun restatement of the idea behind the power of the Feynman technique.

Link to Ahrens' version of this idea.

Sönke Ahrens outlines this broad idea of how one practices the Feynman technique for understanding using one's notes in How to Take Smart Notes, but he doesn't use the name Feynman technique. Certainly the idea of writing things down to test one's understanding predated Feynman, does anyone know of historical examples of this pattern/technique prior to Feynman? Does it have other names in the literature?

The creation of literature notes for one's zettelkasten are atomic instances of the use of the Feynman technique to test one's understanding.

ReconfigBehSci [@SciBeh]. (2021, October 13). transparent public discourse is not easy, nor automatic. We need better tools, better community norms, and, generally, a better understanding of online discourse http://SciBeh.org [Tweet]. Twitter. https://twitter.com/SciBeh/status/1448305801446105088

Blockchain Info from BuiltIn https://builtin.com/blockchain

This quote is worth looking up and checking its context. Particularly I'm interested to know if the purpose of summarizing the source is to check one's understanding of the ideas as is done in the Feynman technique, or if the purpose is a reminder summary of the piece itself?

Link to Ahrens mentions of this technique for checking understanding. (Did he use the phrase Feynman in his text?)

Sönke Ahrens apparently missed this bit of advice.

link to the Arthur C. Clarke quote “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." which appeared in his 1962 book “Profiles of the Future: An Inquiry into the Limits of the Possible”.

While students apparently have ignored the instructions in the past resulting in breaches of academic integrity, teachers can prompt active learning even during exams by prompting students to write answers to questions on open book/open notes in their own words.

What someone might hear if they fall within the category for those who would be most affected by COVID-19.

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.

Understanding the sorts of questions an author is looking at and attempting to answer are often more important than going through a checklist of biases which may come into play.

ReconfigBehSci on Twitter: ‘RT @CT_Bergstrom: I also dislike the choice of axis scales. I don’t mind line graphs with axes that don’t go to zero (https://t.co/EpPNR9Lx…’ / Twitter. (n.d.). Retrieved 22 March 2022, from https://twitter.com/SciBeh/status/1477181158425251840

Concentrating on the shape, motion, and placement of hand gestures dramatically help a learner to more concretely understand material and understanding in others.

Link this to the use of movement in dance with respect to memory in Lynne Kelly's work.

Gesturing supplies a visual scaffolding which allows one to affix their budding understanding of new concepts into a more permanent structure.

Ahrens goes through a variety of research on teaching and learning as they relate to active reading, escaping cognitive biases, creating understanding, progressive summarization, elaboration, revision, etc. as a means of showing and summarizing how these all dovetail nicely into a fruitful long term practice of using a slip box as a note taking method. This makes the zettelkasten not only a great conversation partner but an active teaching and learning partner as well. (Though he doesn't mention the first part in this chapter or make this last part explicit.)

What methods of studying actually make us learn something versus make us feel as if we've learned something?

Active reading, progressive summarization may be on this list while highlighting and underlining might not. Or perhaps there's a spectrum of poor to good, and if this is the case, what does it look like? Is it the same for everyone or are factors like neurodivergence part of the equation which might change this spectrum of learning methods and techniques?

What is the relationship between understanding and learning? Is it true that learning is understanding? Is the relationship bi-directional?

The mere-exposure effect can make us feel as if we've learned something, but without testing ourselves or being able to reframe and recompose an idea we haven't really learned it.

In modern literate contexts, it is easier to establish doubletalk in oral contexts than it is in written contexts as the written is more easily reviewed for clarity and concreteness. Verbal ticks like "you know what I mean", "it's easy to see/show", and other versions of similar hand-waving arguments that indicate gaps in thinking and arguments are far easier to identify in writing than they are in speech where social pressure may cause the audience to agree without actually following the thread of the argument. Writing certainly allows for timeshiting, but it explicitly also expands time frames for grasping and understanding a full argument in a way not commonly seen in oral settings.

Note that this may not be the case in primarily oral cultures which may take specific steps to mitigate these patterns.

Link this to the anthropology example from Scott M. Lacy of the (Malian?) tribe that made group decisions by repeating a statement from the lowest to the highest and back again to ensure understanding and agreement.

This difference in communication between oral and literate is one which leaders can take advantage of in leading their followers astray. An example is Donald Trump who actively eschewed written communication or even reading in general in favor of oral and highly emotional speech. This generally freed him from the need to make coherent and useful arguments.

Mueller and Oppenheimer 2014 indicate that students that took lecture notes (rather than typing them on a laptop) were able to understand the content of a lecture better and that this effect extended the span of a week. It did not show a difference in the number of facts they were able to remember.

Literature notes could also be considered progressive summaries of what one has read. They are also a form of practicing the Feynman technique where one explains what one knows as a means of embracing an idea and better understanding it.

ReconfigBehSci on Twitter: ‘T cell immunologist getting very upset at people arguing that high levels of transmission are a good thing’ / Twitter. (n.d.). Retrieved 12 January 2022, from https://twitter.com/SciBeh/status/1481178244678402048

Fischer, O., Jeitziner, L., & Wulff, D. U. (2021). Affect in science communication: A data-driven analysis of TED talks. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/28yc5

Liu, C., Yang, Y., Chen, B., Cui, T., Shang, F., & Li, R. (2022). Revealing spatio-temporal interaction patterns behind complex cities. ArXiv:2201.02117 [Physics]. http://arxiv.org/abs/2201.02117