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Henry David Thoreau from 1852

The function of memory served by having written notes is what allows the serious researcher or thinker to have greater confidence in their work, potentially more free from cognitive bias as one idea can be directly compared and contrasted with another by direct juxtaposition.

The trending topics on Twitter can be used as a form of juxtaposition of random ideas which could be brought together to make new and interesting things.

Here's but one example of someone practicing just this:

Y’all, imagine Spielberg’s Sailor Moon pic.twitter.com/xZ1DEsbLTy

— Matty Illustration (@MN_illustration) June 30, 2022

cc: https://twitter.com/marshallk

Feynman’s approach encouraged him to follow his interests wherever they might lead. He posed questions and constantly

Creating strong and clever connections between disparate areas of knowledge can appear to others to be a flash of genius, in part because they didn't have the prior knowledges nor did they put in the work of collecting, remembering, or juxtaposition.

This method may be one of the primary (only) underpinnings supporting the lone genius myth. This is particularly the case when the underlying ideas were not ones fully developed by the originator. As an example if Einstein had fully developed the ideas of space and time by himself and then put the two together as spacetime, then he's independently built two separate layers, but in reality, he's cleverly juxtaposed two broadly pre-existing ideas and combined them in an intriguing new framing to come up with something new. Because he did this a few times over his life, he's viewed as an even bigger genius, but when we think about what he's done and how, is it really genius or simply an underlying method that may have shaken out anyway by means of statistical thermodynamics of people thinking, reading, communicating, and writing?

Are there other techniques that also masquerade as genius like this, or is this one of the few/only?

Link this to Feynman's mention that his writing is the actual thinking that appears on the pages of his notes. "It's the actual thinking."

Forte cleverly combines a story about Feynman from Genius with a quote about Feynman's 12 favorite problems from a piece by Rota. Did they both appear in Gleick's Genius together and Forte quoted them separately, or did he actively use his commonplace to do the juxtaposition for him and thus create a nice juxtaposition himself or was it Gleick's juxtaposition?

The answer will reveal whether Forte is actively using his system for creative and productive work or if the practice is Gleick's.

Most writing systems and forms force a beginning and an end, they force a particular structure that is both finite and limiting. The card index (zettelkasten) may have a beginning—there's always a first note or card, but it never has to have an end unless one's ownership is so absolute it ends with the life of its author. There are an ever-increasing number of ways to order a card index, though some try to get around this to create some artificial stability by numbering or specifically ordering their cards. New ideas can be accepted into the index at a multitude of places and are always internally mobile and re-orderable.

link to Luhmann's works on describing this sort of rhizomatic behavior of his zettelkasten

Within a network model framing for a zettelkasten, one might define thinking as traversing a graph of idea nodes in a particular order. Alternately it might also include randomly juxtaposing cards and creating links between ones which have similarities. Which of these modes of thinking has a higher order? Which creates more value? Which requires more work?

Google translation:

9/8g The Zettelkasten technique is based on experience: You can't think without writing—at least not in contexts that require selective access to memory.

That also means: you can't think without notching differences.

There's something interesting about the translation here of "notching" occurring on an index card about ideas which can be linked to the early computer science version of edge-notched cards. Could this have been a subtle and tangential reference to just this sort of computing?

The idea isn't new to me, but in the last phrase Luhmann tangentially highlights the value of the zettelkasten for more easily and directly comparing and contrasting the ideas on two different cards which might be either linked or juxtaposed.

Link to:

• Graeber and Wengrow ideas of storytelling

• Shield of Achilles and ekphrasis thesis

• https://hypothes.is/a/I-VY-HyfEeyjIC_pm7NF7Q With the further context of the full quote including "with selective access to memory" Luhmann seemed to at least to make space (if not give a tacit nod?) to oral traditions which had methods for access to memories in ways that modern literates don't typically give any credit at all. Johannes F.K .Schmidt certainly didn't and actively erased it in Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: The Fabrication of Serendipity.

At what point could digital tools be said to be thinking? Do they need to be generative? It certainly needs to be on the other side of serendipitously juxtaposing two interesting ideas. One can juxtapose millions of ideas, it's the selection of a tiny subset of these as "better" or more interesting than the others and then building off of that that constitutes this sort of generative thought.

The capitalization of "Person" along with "Thing" leads me to believe that Rosanna may be a key character, especially as Betteredge describes her in great detail compared to the other characters he has introduced thus far. It's interesting that he quips it is "common politeness" to "put the Person before the Thing", when looking at the narrative as a whole, it is the "Thing" which comes before all else. This juxtaposition sets up a dichotomy of the personal versus the objective, which given the format of multiple narrators makes sense.

Also establishes Betteredge as someone who values social etiquette while subtly hinting that those who are obsessed with the Diamond are somehow indecent. Could that be a jab at the audience as well?

Why do their opinions differ? Personal ties? Foreign education? Guilt being found, or rather, not found out?

Another juxtaposition showing difference in attitudes based on national custom and belief. Again, foreignness is deemed as more open minded while nativeness is deemed as more traditional (or closed minded)

Not a list of countries you often see listed together.

Striking juxtaposition here... "wonderful" and "poisonous"

represents happiness, juxtaposes with "rain" mentioned in the first stanza. Summer could also represent her true love that made her the happiest, while the ghosts in the rain represent all of the other unimportant people she was with.

Shakespeare has employed the upper classes’ fear of Caesar (Namely Flavius and Murellus) and Caesar’s overwhelming support with the plebeians to build up Caesar into a deity; An indestructible and perpetual force. However, in the second scene of the play, this image of Caesar is completely reversed, with all of Caesar’s imperfections placed starkly in the spotlight.

When Cassius attempts to convince Brutus of the danger that Julius Caesar poses, he juxtaposes the public image of Caesar with the reality. The truth that Cassius tells is of a Caesar that nearly drowned, and cried to Cassius “Help me, Cassius, or I sink!” Though Cassius may be exaggerating or spinning tales in an attempt to convince Brutus to their cause, this scene still sharply contrasts with the figure of Caesar built up so far in the play.

While Caesar is talking to Antony, he commands him to “Come on my right hand, for this ear is deaf”, indicating that Caesar is deaf in his left ear. Shakespeare goes to extreme lengths to let the audience know of Caesar’s many physical and mental flaws in an attempt to show how even the seemingly most perfect people have their imperfections, and that in the end, everyone is as much of a human as one another, and that no human can ever become a god.

Rat and crept softly are not exactly things I see in the same sentence. The juxtaposition of a rat (a sewer living, garbage eating, bottom of the food chain, disease infested animal) and creeping softly.