Opus 4.7 is better at using file system-based memory. It remembers important notes across long, multi-session work, and uses them to move on to new tasks that, as a result, need less up-front context.
在跨会话记忆和上下文利用上的进步，展示了AI向更持久、更连贯的智能体发展的趋势，这种记忆能力使AI能够进行更复杂、更长期的任务，是向真正自主AI迈进的关键一步。
A 606 MiB model at ~49 tokens/s consumes ~30 GB/s of memory bandwidth, close to the c6i.2xlarge's DRAM limit. No amount of SIMD tricks will help when the CPU is stalled waiting for model weights to arrive from DRAM.
这一数据揭示了现代CPU推理的关键瓶颈：内存带宽限制。代理最初尝试的SIMD微优化无法突破这一根本限制，这表明理解硬件特性和系统瓶颈对于有效优化至关重要。这一发现挑战了传统上认为计算是主要瓶颈的观念，强调了内存效率在AI推理中的核心地位。
The variance is also worth noting: baseline+FA TG has ±19 t/s of noise, while optimized+FA has ±0.59 t/s on x86.
令人惊讶的是：优化后的代码不仅提高了性能，还显著减少了结果方差（从±19 t/s降至±0.59 t/s）。这表明AI代理的优化不仅关注速度，还考虑了内存访问模式的可预测性，这种全面性思维令人印象深刻。
KV Cache 内存占用降低 10.7 倍
令人惊讶的是：KV Cache内存占用降低了惊人的10.7倍，这一数字远超普通技术优化的幅度。KV Cache是大模型推理中的主要内存消耗部分，如此大幅度的减少意味着同样的硬件可以处理更长的上下文，或者同时运行更多模型实例。
Agent harnesses dominate agent building and tie intimately to memory.
令人惊讶的是：代理工具(harnesses)已成为构建AI代理的主导方式，并且与记忆系统紧密相连。这表明AI代理的发展方向已经从单一功能转向了具有记忆能力的复杂系统，这种转变可能彻底改变人机交互模式。
After each round the model generated a memory file, criticized its own results, and fed those observations into the next round.
令人惊讶的是：M2.7模型能够生成自己的记忆文件，批判自己的结果，并将这些观察反馈到下一轮训练中。这种自我反思和持续学习的能力类似于人类的元认知过程，展示了AI系统越来越接近人类的自我评估和改进能力。
Meetings get recorded, transcribed, and stored in a database. That's useful for reference, but meeting notes have a shelf life of about six hours before everyone forgets what they agreed to do.
令人惊讶的是：会议记录的有效期仅有约6小时，这表明人类记忆的短暂性和会议记录转化为行动项的紧迫性。这一发现强调了AI在及时捕捉和转化会议行动项方面的关键价值。
Unlike traditional GPU-centric systems, MegaTrain stores parameters and optimizer states in host memory (CPU memory) and treats GPUs as transient compute engines.
令人惊讶的是：这项研究彻底颠覆了传统GPU训练范式，将百亿参数模型的训练重心从GPU转移到CPU内存，这打破了人们对GPU作为AI训练核心的固有认知。这种'GPU仅作为计算引擎'的理念可能重新定义大模型训练的基础架构。
OpenClaw update gives Claws light, REM, and deep 'sleep' cycles to consolidate short-term memories into long-term ones.
令人惊讶的是：AI助手现在被设计有类似人类的睡眠周期，包括轻度睡眠、REM睡眠和深度睡眠，用于将短期记忆巩固为长期记忆。这一设计模仿了人类记忆形成的过程，展示了AI系统设计中越来越复杂的生物模拟元素。
each new engineer arrives with no memory of what happened on the previous shift
这个比喻极其精准地揭示了长周期Agent的核心困境。上下文窗口的限制使得Agent如同失忆的轮班工程师。因此，设计Agent系统的本质，就是设计一套高效的“交接班”机制，让隐性的经验显性化。
按时间记录不完全合理，还是应该按任务记录。
这一观点挑战了传统时间轴记录的惯性思维。时间轴看似客观，实则碎片化，增加了认知负担。以 Task 为核心组织记忆，实际上是模拟人类大脑的联想记忆机制，将散乱的行为建模为有序的因果关系，极大提升了信息的召回效率和应用价值。
they fuse streaming data construction with a unified model so the memory supports both real-time q&a and long-horizon interaction, which is nontrivial under strict latency constraints
大多数系统设计者可能认为实时问答和长时程交互需要不同的处理架构，但作者通过融合流式数据构建和统一模型，使内存同时支持这两种功能。这一设计挑战了实时系统处理复杂性的常规认知，表明在严格的延迟约束下实现多功能整合是可行的，这为实时AI助手的设计提供了新思路。
memory organized for future control improves delayed retrieval under cue conflict and load
大多数人认为记忆系统的组织应以数据检索效率为核心，但作者认为为未来控制而组织的记忆系统能更好地处理线索冲突和负载，这一观点挑战了传统数据库和记忆系统的设计原则，强调了前瞻性记忆组织的重要性。
the memory module is where this design finally hits a sweet spot, separating persistence from real-time reasoning
大多数人认为记忆和推理应该是紧密结合的，但作者认为将持久性记忆与实时推理分离是设计的关键创新点，这挑战了传统认知中记忆与推理必须紧密结合的观点，因为作者认为这种分离能更好地管理长期记忆。
we have kept the memory modules separate for each pipeline — precisely so that memory can be better isolated and iteratively improved during early development.
大多数人可能认为统一架构应该共享内存模块以提高效率，但作者选择为每个管道保持独立的内存模块，这挑战了系统设计的常规优化思路。这种分离方法虽然可能牺牲一些效率，但为早期开发提供了更大的灵活性和迭代空间。
our framework is still being refined, and the design of the memory module primarily draws from the description in Cambrian-S, implementing core memory expansion and management functions.
大多数人可能认为世界模型的记忆模块应该是全新设计的创新组件，但作者承认他们的记忆模块主要借鉴了现有工作(Cambrian-S)，这挑战了学术界对完全创新方法的期待。这种务实的方法表明，世界模型的发展可能更多依赖于现有技术的整合而非革命性创新。
we propose a Neuro-Symbolic Dual Memory Framework that explicitly decouples semantic progress guidance from logical feasibility verification
大多数AI研究者认为神经网络和符号逻辑应该融合而非分离，但作者提出了一种激进的观点：将语义引导和逻辑验证完全解耦。这种双内存框架与当前AI领域的融合趋势形成鲜明对比，挑战了神经符号计算的主流发展方向。
existing methods typically attempt to address both issues simultaneously using a single paradigm
大多数人认为解决长时程LLM代理问题应该采用统一的方法同时处理全局进度和局部可行性，但作者认为这两种挑战本质上是不同的：一个依赖模糊语义规划，另一个需要严格逻辑约束和状态验证。这种分离的观点挑战了当前AI研究的主流范式。
内置视频和音乐生成 记忆系统学会了"做梦"
大多数人认为AI的记忆系统只是简单的数据存储和检索功能，但作者暗示OpenClaw的记忆系统已经发展出类似人类'做梦'的能力，这是一种具有创造性和联想性的高级认知功能，挑战了人们对AI记忆系统的传统认知。
The Secretary’s Day. 1947. Coronet Instructional Films. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOe0259_OuA (March 7, 2026).
Typewriter desks with top flip functionality shown in operation at 00:32 and 01:45 and closing it up at 10:24.
In addition to storing away the typewriter when not needed, these flip top desks also served as impromptu dust covers to keep dust out of them when not actively in use.
Jean Carroll as secretary and Marge Quinn as stenographer.
Paper sorter file in desk drawer at 00:55
Appointments and diaries
Definition of stenographer: responsible for dictation, transcription, typing, billing, filing, operate office machines like duplicators and calculators, occasional switchboard operation.
Filing here shown as a simple presumably recent correspondence file that is kept on hand in the secretary's desk drawer rather than in a nearby filing cabinet or centralized office filing cabinet. 03:29
"A good secretary doesn't rely on memory." (Instead she makes a permanent note.) timestamp 4:11
Placing a long distance phone call [8:31]
The mind is a processor, not a hard drive.
The Neuroscience: Your brain’s working memory—housed primarily in the prefrontal cortex—is designed to process incoming data, not store it indefinitely. It has a severely limited capacity. When you attempt to hold daily spiritual and emotional coordinates purely in your working memory, you create massive cognitive friction. This forces the brain into "survival mode," where it drops nuanced data (like profound lessons or subtle lies) to conserve energy. By writing the data down, you mechanically offload this burden. Externalisation transfers the information from the volatile "processor" to a permanent physical ledger, freeing the prefrontal cortex to remain regulated and present.
https://pantheon.world/
Even as a boy, in a Navy family that moved around the country, he had an ear for people’s speech patterns and an eye for their mannerisms. “I hang around a guy’s memories,” he once said. Insights that he gleaned were routinely tucked away in his head for potential future use.
forgetting is your brain’s superpower
where is this from?
I made my own memory boards. As I glued each piece to theplywood, I thought about the stories I would tell with this memoryboard. I had spent an afternoon just putting on five pebbles! Howdid my grandmother make it look so easy? Practice. She’d been atthis for a while.
My grandmother picked up a piece of plywood that she had glued pebbles to and said simply, ‘You will remember.’ She then touched each piece as she recounted stories. To my young mind, what she was doing seemed like magic!
Cross reference: https://hypothes.is/a/uWo4NpJrEeui3Vu0XnQidA on Salish artwork
The beautifully carved totem poles, wooden carved ceremonialhats and even the wooden carved rattles. They are more than art.They serve a very practical purpose. Each had places orloci that Ihad used to elaborately encode information.
David Kanosh confirms that totem poles serve as mnemonic devices for Tlingit peoples
There's a mismatch between me and my writing tools. They seem to want something slightly different from what I want. I wonder if anyone else has this feeling? I mean there's plenty of people who are apparently on a life-long quest to find the perfect app, because they still haven't found what they're looking for. What's up with that? Well this article made things a lot clearer for me: Artificial Memory and Orienting Infinity | Kei Kreutler. Kreutler argues we've conflated all memory with computer memory. That's to say we've assumed everything can be stored and retrieved as data. But this misses something crucial, which is that the kind of memory that shapes worlds requires transmission, relationship, and context, and not just storage. And this got me thinking: doesn't this apply to our digital writing tools? They have to store our writing as data, but in doing so they change it in subtle ways we might not even notice, except as the kind of vague unease I've been feeling. Why your note-making tools don’t quite work the way you want them to - and what to do about it. So am I over-thinking it again, or have you too felt a gap between what you want to do and what your writing tools expect you to do?
reply to u/atomicnotes at https://reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/1qjrnp8/why_dont_my_notemaking_tools_work_the_way_i_want/
In older analog offices, the office worker stored things on paper in piles, in folders, in various locations within their office. Because humans have excellent spatial memory, the worker would have an idea of what he might want and would know in which pile on their desk or which filing cabinet it might be filed in. Despite what may look like a messy office, most will know exactly where certain papers are "hiding". This overlaps with older indigenous cultures and artificial memory with structures like songlines, talking rocks, and later techniques from ars memoriae like method of loci or memory palaces. For more on this cross reference Hudson & Thames' First Knowledges series edited by Margo Neale.
Entirely digital-based methods have erased a lot of these sorts of locational affordances.
The king of Kish even sometimes enforced order inSumer. For example, Enannatum’s son, Enmetena, wrote that theborder between Lagash and Umma had been determined by thegreat god Enlil himself and had been confirmed by the king of Kish:“Mesalim, king of Kish, at the command of (the god) Ishtaran,measured the field and set up a (boundary-) stone there.” Theauthority of the king of Kish was therefore acknowledged, at leasttemporarily, by both the king of Umma and the king of Lagash.
There is an interesting example of the mnemonic use of stone here in ancient Sumer. It serves as a boundary/border marker by its physical presence, but apart from any (other local) mnemonic uses, it also carries an inscription as a secondary form of long term written memory.
The kings had, however, begun to realizeits potential for extending communication, in an almost magical way,beyond what could be accomplished with the spoken word. Writingcould perpetually and eternally address an audience on a king’sbehalf; the words were always there, even when the king was notthinking about them. Given that the population was almost entirelyilliterate, such an audience was mostly made up of gods. Thestatuette of the king’s personal god (or sometimes of the kinghimself), inscribed with the same text as the tablet, could thereforepray continuously in a way that a real person could not.
Is there stronger evidence that this form of permanent writing to an audience of gods was being done? Sources?
The investment of time and manpower devoted to the constructionof this complex would have resembled the work on a medievalcathedral. As early as 3600 BCE work had begun on the so-calledLimestone Temple in the Eanna precinct. Quarrymen and masonsremoved limestone from a rocky outcrop around fifty kilometers (31mi) to the southwest. Other men transported the stone to Uruk. Stillothers formed hundreds of thousands of mud bricks and clay cones,and set them out to harden in the sun. Others brought timber fromfar to the north for the roofs. Someone supervised all the workmenwho set the bricks and stones and mosaic cones in place. The menwould have been fed and provided for during the construction. Thebuilders were all probably residents of Uruk, united in their desire tocreate a magnificent home for their beloved divine queen.
Possibility that even with proto-cuneiform (writing) evolving here that such temples were local memory palaces for the culture of the inhabitants who would have been primary orality-based?
It is writtenin a script known as proto-cuneiform, a script that did not representsounds or even language at all; signs served as memory aids.
Robert Lender blogpost about generated fake imagery to manipulate or suggest memories of people around you. A dinner, a Santa visit. Or leaving your (grand)children faked photos without being marked as such (look dad was on Greenland!) Interesting thought experiment. Bc memories are not fixed, and iterated upon with every retelling. Influencing that retelling is a given possibility. Turbocharged gaslighting too.
https://web.archive.org/web/20260105183931/https://moultano.wordpress.com/2025/12/30/children-and-helical-time/ At first glance this graph seems thought provoking. With E we regularly remark to Y that in our heads, our childhood and student years are much bigger than the period aftwards. More firsts. Vgl Gregory Bateson [[Informatie is verschil dat verschil maakt 20230905124229]], information is a difference that makes a difference, i.e. firsts, and make your time perception longer by doing new stuff [[Maak tijd langer met nieuwe dingen 20210418104515]] and Bateson's use of Korzybski's landscape as theory of mind: [[Steps to an Ecology of Mind by Gregory Bateson]] (1972):
Chief Technology Officer of Agentforce, pointed out that when given more than eight instructions, the models begin omitting directives—a serious flaw for precision-dependent business tasks.
Whut? AI-so-human! Vgl 8-bits-schuifregister metafoor. [[Korte termijngeheugen 7 dingen 30 secs 20250630104247]] Is there a chunking style work-around? Where does this originate, token limit, bite sizes?
An aspect of the human use of information that has generally been overlooked in the automation of information services is the human tendency to locate information spatially. Computer-based systems do not necessarily assign any unique role to spatial tags, and so a feature of considerable importance for the organization of the user's memory seems to have been largely overlooked. The spatial dimension of human memory is discussed, and some suggestions are offered for exploiting it more effectively in the context of information retrieval services.
This 1968 paper(!) posits the importance of spatial memory in information use / design.
https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.5090190315
Spatial Memory George Miller Psychology and information in Zotero
The reason for this beingin the Complex classification is, as one will tell youwho has operated a Subject File, because a great dealof care must be exercised in not only laying out theproper plan, but working in and cooperating withthose who send matter to be filed, and are constantlyasking for it. The file clerk may think it goes in oneplace, but unless it is carefully marked as to whereit should be filed and then remembered, and possiblyagain classified by card, it is many times found a dif-ficult matter to handle.
[01:02:30] Memory and permanence<br /> 400,000 books burned; 700,000 books damaged<br /> Susan Orlean book on library fire
As a rule, history rarely remembers the balanced or the cautious. It remembers the ones who were willing to go so far that, in the moment, they looked unhinged.
Perhaps something to do also with the fact that human memory tends to retain information better when a high degree of surprise or emotion is associated with an event. See also the hyper-correction effect.
for - youtube - neuroscience - How the brain remembers and imagines - Donna Rose Addis - memory and imagination have the same basis
summary - Donna Rose Addis is a pioneer in a field that connects past memories to future imagination - Her research has demonstrated that the same brain region, the Default Mode Network is responsible for simulations of past memories as well as future imagination - It is theorirized that episodic memory is reactivated and reorganized for creating future simulations
default mode Network
for - adjacency - memory - imagination - Default Mode Network active in both
in 2007 um we saw the publication of three empirical papers that really kind of galvanized this close relationship between past and future thinking
for - adjacency - memory - imagination critical papers - 2007 - some types of Alzheimer patient cannot imagine the future
autobiographical memory
for - definition - autobiographical memory - how we remember our personal past
Episodic memory provides the raw materials forfuture imagination,
for - adjacency - memory and imagination - episodic memory
growingevidence of the similarities of remembering past and imagining future events, dominant theories stillconceive of these as distinct capacities. I propose that memory and imagination are fundamentally the sameprocess
for - adjacency - memory - imagination - the same - claim - memory - imagination - the same
for - paper - title - Mental Time Travel? A Neurocognitive Model of Event Simulation - author - Donna Rose Addis - adjacency - memory - imagination - the same - from - paper - https://hyp.is/0Fb6NqdjEfCyTTddI20_aQ/www.dovepress.com/memory-sleep-dreams-and-consciousness-a-perspective-based-on-the-memor-peer-reviewed-fulltext-article-NSS
summary - memory and imagination are proposed as fundamentally the same process. - It is the ‘mental’ rendering of experience that is the most fundamental function of this simulation system enabling humans to - re-experience the past, - pre-experience the future, and - comprehend the complexities of the present.
Donna Rose Addis
for - researcher - neuroscience - memory - perception - imagination - to - Mental Time Travel? - Donna Rose Addis - https://hyp.is/wqV4gKdkEfCRZGPrIOjeOA/utoronto.scholaris.ca/server/api/core/bitstreams/3232f1fb-ed19-4614-9dd5-648c4d443629/content
temporally extended, multimodal representations must be integrated within a unified subjectivity for experience to be coherent
for - Memory Theory of Consciousness - MToC - definition - Memory Theory of Consciousness - temporally extended, multimodal representations - must be integrated within a unified subjectivity for experience to be coherent - unapack - MToC - unpack - Memory Theory of Consciousness - temporally extended, multimodal representations - multiple sense inputs associated with an event - We could think about it from the perspective of Thousand Brain Theory and cortical columns integrating sense inputs - Do these create memory structures? - Those memory structures must be salient to goal-seeking activity, especially for fitness and survival of the organism
question - memory - evolution - goal-seeking - Is it possible that consciousness emerged early on in our species evolutionary history in the context of memories of multimodal sensory structures that help us achieve goal-seeking activity? - Then extra affordances of memory and consciousness could have evolved and diversified into a wide variety of non-traditional goal-seeking behaviors.
Deduction of the Categories
for - Kant - memory
for - paper - title - Memory, Sleep, Dreams, and Consciousness: A Perspective Based on the Memory Theory of Consciousness - author - Andrew E. Budson, Ken A Paller - adjacency - memories - sleep - dreams - Memory Theory of Consciousness - MToC
summary - The authors present a theory of dreaming and sleep that I resonate with, that sleep is a time in which the brain performs unconscious processing of memories, consolidating them by taking advantage of consciousnesss down time to perform massive parallel processing to connect memories together. - dreams are seen as a small conscious byproduct of the massive parallel processing task, and their meaning may have value depending on how we interpret them.
memory is critical for jumping around from one simulation to another or back to the context of the present moment, and to do so without disorientation.
for - key insight - memory - memory is critical for - jumping around from one simulation to another or - jumping back to the context of the present moment, and to do so without disorientation.
memory impairment can feel very disoriented
for adjacency - memory - Alzheimer's disease - disorientation
When individuals with middle-stage Alzheimer’s disease travel to a new environment,
for - adjacency - memory - Alzheimer's disease
unpack this memory-consciousness connection
for - adjacency - memory - consciousness -unpacking - memory - consciousness connection - The principal postulate of the MToC is that consciousness is a function of the explicit memory system. - The explicit memory system is not only required for explicit memory - it is also required for our ability to - consciously perceive the world around us, - understand what is happening, and - make conscious decisions that lead to actions. - Thanks to the explicit memory system, - sensory impressions can reach consciousness, and - we can think about what is happening in the world. - In the process of consciously perceiving the world, we rely on - working memory to - maintain and - manipulate the information, on - semantic memory to make sense of it, and on - episodic memory - to relate the current situation - to prior episodes and - to understand the current context.
How do we manage to recover from the interlude of slumber? It is, of course, memory that allows us to experience this feeling of continuity.
for - adjacency - sleep - continuity - memory is the bridge!
MToC suggests that consciousness developed as part of explicit memory, such that the purpose of consciousness aligns with the purpose of explicit memory
for - MToC claim - purpose of consciousness - same as - purpose of memory - understand the present - imagine possible futures - plan accordingly - adjacency - MToC - memory - consciousness
no natural boundary between perception and memory
for - adjacency - memory - perception - no boundary - Hinze Hogendoorn - to - - adjacency - Memory Theory of Consciousness - Donald Hoffman
Hinze Hogendoorn
for - researcher - neuroscience - perception - memory
the synthetic process described in the MToC is similar to an idea from the first edition of Kant’s 1781 Critique of Pure Reason,44
for - adjacency - Memory Theory of Consciousness - author's study of - Kant - Critique of Pure Reason
memory theory of consciousness (MToC).
for - definition - Memory Theory of Consciousness (MToC) - The very awareness we have of sensory analysis, of perception, is based on the operation of this memory system. - In other words, the sensory information that constitutes an event is assembled at encoding and consequently can be remembered later.
From a memory perspective, sleep can be understood as critically important for normal memory function, given the lasting ramifications of consolidation.
for - key insight - paraphrase - adjacency - memory consolidation - sleep - massive unconscious parallel processing - From a memory perspective, - sleep can be understood as critically important for normal memory function, - given the lasting ramifications of consolidation. - Consolidation is the establishment of new connections - anchoring recent memories within relevant knowledge networks - While consolidation happens, some conscious experience (the dream) may be synthesized as the memory processing unfolds - Dreams reflect a storyline generated to make sense of a subset of activated memory fragments. - Consolidation that wires new connections happens across the entire cerebral context, without the constraints that come with conscious experience. - Unconscious processing during sleep takes advantage of massive parallel processing to connect all these thoughts together. - Dreams reflect a small portion of overnight memory consolidation work.
a reasonable speculation (expanded upon further below) is that memory reactivation during sleep is generally unconscious.
for - adjacency - claim - sleep - memory reactivation is - unconscious
dream contents include some memory fragments that are reactivated in the service of consolidation, but additionally, a narrative structure is produced to provide a storyline for the experience.
for - adjacency - memory consolidation - storyline - dreams
we consider dreaming as a by-product of sleep-based consolidation
for - research claim - dreaming - byproduct of sleep-based memory consolidation - adjacency - dreaming - sleep-based consolidation
A central aspect of our position is that sleep-based consolidation occurs unconsciously and in parallel across many cortical regions simultaneously.
for - adjacency - memory consolidation - sleep
However, if your name is spoken within your earshot, the sensory memory sensation enters your working memory as an auditory perception and not only can you hear your name easily but you can generally recall the earlier part of the sentence in which your name was spoken.
for - adjacency - salience landscape - memory
forebrain (Figure 1),
controls thinking, emotions,memory, and decision making
I use the end-pa-pers at the back of the book to makea personal index of the author's pointsin the order of their appearance
The making of a personal index is a first step in building a mesh of knowledge. In just a few years, Vannevar Bush will speak of "associative trails" a phrase he uses twice in "As We May Think" (The Atlantic, July 1945), but of potentially more import is his phrase "associative indexing" which lays way to either juxtaposing or linking two ideas (either similar or disjoint) together. It bears asking the question of of whether it's more valuable to index and juxtapose similar ideas or disjoint ideas which may more frequently lead to better, more useful, and more relevant and rich future ideas.
It affords an immediate step, however, to associative indexing, the basic idea of which is a provision whereby any item may be caused at will to select immediately and automatically another. This is the essential feature of the memex. The process of tying two items together is the important thing. Bush, Vannevar. 1945. “As We May Think.” The Atlantic 176: 101–8. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-may-think/303881/ (October 22, 2022). #
It affords an immediate step, however, to associative indexing, the basic idea of which is a provision whereby any item may be caused at will to select immediately and automatically another. This is the essential feature of the memex. The process of tying two items together is the important thing.
See also the precursor of personal indexing which Mortimer J. Adler mentions in 1940: https://hypothes.is/a/cPcoAqhVEfC0rJOZ0Pm-8Q
a goal is a type of memory because you're always aligning yourself towards that goal you have to remember what you're doing you know as you're moving towards towards the goal
for adjacency - goal - memory
for - neuroscience - how brains store memory - engrams
for - why LLM memory still fails
documentary of its making, Memory: The Origins of Alien;
Tengo que verlo. Necesito verlo.
Reviewing the We R Memory Keepers Typecast Typewriter! - YouTube<br /> by Sarah Everett for [[Just My Typewriter]]<br /> accessed on 2025-08-27T23:14:56
Why I Deleted My Second Brain: A Journey Back to Real Thinking<br /> by [[Westenberg]]
Meh... sounds like someone without any focus for an actual use case.... to each their own.
Whittle, Alasdair. Review of Memory, Myth and Long-Term Landscape Inhabitation, edited by Adrian M. Chadwick and Catriona D. Gibson. Archaeological Journal 172, no. 2 (July 3, 2015): 493–94. https://doi.org/10.1080/00665983.2015.1040685.
Mediocre viewpoint of the overall research, in part because claims are not logically proven.
I'll note that the reviewer is approaching things from a Western perspective and not that of an indigenous person whose culture relies heavily upon or(primary) orality.
We R Memory Maker Typecast Typewriter Review! (Royal Classic, Royal Epoch) by [[Transcendental Airwaves]]
He's got a mention of where to adjust the on-feet/motion adjustment screws are on the carriage at the 6:20 timestamp.
https://reddit.com/r/typewriters/comments/1ll06y7/metal_balls_came_out_of_my_typewriter_and_now_i/
We R Memory Keepers with ball bearings that fell out.
acorns reliably make oak trees kind of like an like an instinctual behavior like every single time stereotypical you know the same thing. But in fact it's not hardwired
for - example - evolutionary hacking of bioelectric memory - oak tree - Michael Levin
he reason I call it a memory is because once you do this once you convert that network to store the the that electric circuit to store a two-headed pattern it's permanent.
for - adjacency - morphological memory - permanent - progress trap - progress trap - programmable morphological memory - Nature has obviously altered the bioelectrical patterns through natural evolution, - while humans now understand the mechanism and can alter it artificially to suit our own wants and needs - Hence, it can become a future progress trap
it has a different representation of what to do if it gets injured in the future. It's a latent memory. It doesn't do anything until it gets injured. It just sits there and you would have no idea that it's there by looking at the at the anatomy. But if it's get if it gets injured, this is what its idea of a correct worm.
for - adjacency - stored latent memory of future morphology - can be altered - Michael Levin - potential progress trap
Reply to Hajo Bakker on LinkedIn
Hajo Bakker Exam vs. Test -- Een examinering moet veel vanafwegen en niet regulier gebeuren.
Een test (toets) mag vaker gebeuren, en moet weinig vanaf hangen... Geen ouders die straffen voor een laag cijfer (of cijfers afschaffen), geen adviezen die daarvanafhangen, etc.
Het doel van een toets is om je aan te geven wat je krachten en minder sterke punten zijn, dus waar je je op moet focussen met toekomst leren. Dit kan alleen op het moment dat je een toets nabespreekt en op individueel niveau. Klassikaal bespreken heeft vaak weinig nut.
Daarbij komt ook dat een student moet snappen WAAROM het helpt om na te bespreken, de wetenschap erachter. Op het moment dat je de waarom achter het hoe niet goed snapt heeft het hoe minder effect. (dit is waarom in het 4C/ID model ze in een scaffold beginnen met de laatste stap, waarin de informatie van voorgaande stappen is gegeven. Dit zodat als je de vorige stap gaat leren, je een beter idee hebt waar het uiteindelijk voor gebruikt gaat worden en je er dus een betere invulling aan kan geven.)
Semantische verschillen zijn vaak uiterst nuttig om complexe stof te begrijpen. Op het moment dat ze exact hetzelfde waren heeft het weinig nut om meerdere termen te hebben en zouden ze synoniem zijn.
"Exam" is geen synoniem van "test".
Genuanceerde verschillen zijn vaak nuttiger dan "umbrella terms" om goed te communiceren, als uiterst subliem wordt beargumenteerd in "Science of Memory: Concepts" van Roediger III et al.
Daarnaast komt uiteraard bij kijken dat neurocognitieve wetenschap een blauwdruk geeft voor hoe onze brein architectuur in elkaar zit (zie bijvoorbeeld John Sweller, Cognitive Load Theory 2011, en The Forgetting Machine, Rodrigo Quian Quiroga, 2017, Science of Memory: Concepts, Roediger et al., 2007, Ten Steps to Complex Learning, van Merriënboer, 2017).
Dit is universeel toepasbaar, afgezien van mensen met een cognitieve aandoening bijvoorbeeld, dit gaat dus over neurotypische breinen.
Leerstijlen zijn een mythe, wel hebben wij leervoorkeuren, maar door alleen in onze leervoorkeur te leren missen wij bepaalde informatie die cruciaal kan zijn voor beter begrip en meesterschap (mastery).
Beter is het om studietechnieken te gebruiken die overeenkomen met brein-architectuur en die onder te knie te krijgen.
Meer cognitieve belasting te gebruiken (zonder cognitieve overbelasting te veroorzaken). Als leren "makkelijk" voelt is het over het algemeen niet uitdagend genoeg en/of de techniek niet nuttig. Herlezen / samenvatten is simpel maar vrij inefficiënt. Het maken van een GRINDEmap voelt moeilijk maar is vele malen effectiever (zie ook the misinterpreted effort hypothesis).
Zoals Dr. Ahrens al zei: "The one who does the effort, does the learning."
Verder heb ik een heleboel ideëen voor een optimaal onderwijs dat zich aanpast aan het individu in plaats van aan het systeem, maar dit is een te complex en groot onderwerp om zo even hier neer te zetten.
The generation effect is a phenomenon whereby information is better remembered if it is generated from one's own mind rather than simply read.
Bunny Watson: I associate many things with many things.
In 2001the Interceltic Congress, held at Rennes, was attended by 200delegates, half from Brittany and the other half from ‘other Celticcountries’. The theme of the conference was ‘History in the CelticCountries Nowadays — People without memory are people with nofuture’.
The 2023 Rover Typewriter: Worst Machine Ever? by [[Typewriter Chicago]]
I know Michaels was carrying the We R Memory Keepers typewriter, but hadn't heard about Home Depot carrying them.
Rover made by Shanghai Weilv Mechanism Company still making typewriters (bad quality control, plastic, poor alignment). These are variously rebadged as: - the Rover - the Royal Epoch - We R Memory Keepers (Michaels, Home Depot) - Royal Classic (metal shell) - Maplefield (Target, Walmart, Michaels) - The Oliver Typewriter Company
Will Davis has determined that they're all based on the Olympia Carina.
this feels like it came from your family line often we know that a baby is an egg inside their mother inside their grandmother so you can begin to feel through the ancestors that will show up in the present
for - body memory - ancestors are alive and living through us - Youtube - Prenatal and Perinatal Healing Happens in Layers - Kate White
https://web.archive.org/web/20241207143328/https://artofmemory.com/ Art of memory community platform.
Cal Newport vs Zettelkasten – SAD! (Clickbait) by [[Sascha Fast]] on 2024-11-28
The difference between what you work out using the Zettelkasten and the memory palace technique is that the memory palace is a pure memory technique. It uses meaningless connections and the way the brain works to gain access to information. For example, if I mentally write the date Rome was founded with the mnemonic “BC 753 Rome came to be” as a number on an egg in the kitchen fridge, the only reason for this link between the egg in the kitchen fridge of my memory palace and the year Rome was founded is that I can remember this number. You make yourself aware of what the brain otherwise does unconsciously.
The difference between what you work out using the Zettelkasten and the memory palace technique is that the memory palace is a pure memory technique. It uses meaningless connections [emphasis added] and the way the brain works to gain access to information. For example, if I mentally write the date Rome was founded with the mnemonic “BC 753 Rome came to be” as a number on an egg in the kitchen fridge, the only reason for this link between the egg in the kitchen fridge of my memory palace and the year Rome was founded is that I can remember this number.
Certainly not an attack against him, but I feel as if Sascha is making an analogistic reference to areas of mnemonics he's heard about, but hasn't actively practiced. As a result, some may come away with a misunderstanding of these practices. Even worse, they may be dissuaded from combining a more specific set of mnemonic practices with their zettelkasten practice which can provide them with even stronger memories of the ideas hiding within their zettelkasten.
There is a mistaken conflation of two different mnemonic techniques being described here. The memory palace portion associates information with well known locations which leverages our brains' ability to more easily remember places and things in them with relation to each other. There is nothing of meaningless connections here. The method works precisely because meaning is created and attributed to the association. It becomes a thing in a specific well known place to the user which provides the necessary association for our memory.
The second mnemonic technique at play is the separate, unmentioned, and misconstrued Major System (or possibly the related Person-Action-Object method) which associates the number with a visualizable object. While there is a seeming meaningless connection here, the underlying connection is all about meaning by design. The number is "translated" from something harder to remember into an object which is far easier to remember. This initial translation is more direct than one from a word in one language to another because it can be logically generated every time and thus gives a specific meaning to an otherwise more-difficult-to-remember number. As part of the practice this object is then given additional attributes (size, smell, taste, touch, etc., or ridiculous proportion or attributes like extreme violence or relationships to sex) which serve to make it even more memorable. Sascha seems break this more standard mnemonic practice by simply writing his number on the egg in the refrigerator rather than associate 753 with a more memorable object like a "golem" which might be incubating inside of my precious egg. As a result, the egg and 753 association IS meaningless to him, and I would posit will be incredibly more difficult for him to remember tomorrow much less next month. If we make the translation of 753 more visible in Sascha's process, we're more likely to see the meaning and the benefit of the mnemonic. (I can only guess that Sascha doesn't practice these techniques, so won't fault him for missing some steps, particularly given the ways in which the memory palace is viewed in the zeitgeist.)
To say that the number and the golem (here, the object which 753 was translated to—the Major System mnemonic portion) have no association is akin to saying that "zettlekasten" has no associated meaning to the words "slip box." In both translations the words/numbers are exactly the same thing. The second mnemonic is associating the golem to the egg in the refrigerator (the memory palace portion). I suspect that if you've been following along and imagining Andy Serkis gestating inside of an egg to become Golem who will go on to fight in the Roman Coliseum in your refrigerator, you're going to see Golem every time you reach for an egg in your refrigerator. Now if you've spent the ten minutes to learn the Major System to do the reverse translation, you'll think about the founding date of Rome every time you go to make an omelette. And if you haven't, then you'll just imagine the most pitiful gladiator loosing in the arena against a vicious tiger.
Naturally one can associate all their thoughts in their ZK to both the associated numbers and their home, work, or neighborhood environments so that they can mentally take their (analog or digital) zettlekasten with them anywhere they go. This is akin to what Thomas Aquinus and Raymond Llull were doing with their "knowledge management systems", though theirs may have had slightly simpler forms. Llull actually created a system which allowed him to more easily meditate on his stored memories and juxtapose them to create new ideas.
For the beginners in these areas who'd like to know more, I recommend the following as a good starting place: <br /> Kelly, Lynne. Memory Craft: Improve Your Memory Using the Most Powerful Methods from around the World. Pegasus Books, 2019.
Gregor von Feinaigle by [[Art of Memory]] wiki
Origin of finagle? Long-standing question for me, but only bookmarking now.
the model collapse paper now suggests that the training data created by well-managed communities could be the new currency of collective intelligence.
Een chunk (letterlijk ‘brok’) is een verzameling elementen die sterke associaties met elkaar hebben. Samen vormen ze een betekenisvolle informatie-eenheid. Die chunks, groot of klein, gebruiken we in ons interne informatieverwerkings- en geheugensysteem. Ons brein houdt namelijk van logica en voorspelbare patronen. Het opdelen van informatie gebeurt automatisch en continu, maar kan ook bewust worden ingezet. Dat heet doel-georiënteerde chunking.Ons brein kan slechts een aantal zaken opslaan in het kortetermijngeheugen. Maar door veel gegevens te groeperen in kleinere brokjes informatie, kunnen we de limieten van ons geheugen uitdagen. En dus meer informatie verwerken en onthouden.
Chapeau! Een Belgische website kaart dit aan in de context gezond leven.
Class 2, Does Memory Matter? Why Are Universities Studying Slavery and Their Pasts? by David Blight for [[YaleCourses]]
The Office S4.E8 The Deposition, Nov 15, 2007<br /> https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1031476/
Michael is put in an awkward position when Jan sues Dunder Mifflin for wrongful termination and he is deposed as a witness.
Jan: Remember, it's not just a pattern. It's a pattern of disrespect and inappropriate behaviors.
Michael "Dis-ray." My friend Dis Ray got new specs. Dis Ray Spect. My friend In-A-Pro drives a Prius with his behind neighbor.
Jan: Does this work for you?
Michael: Yep.
Michael Scott makes up some truly incredible (bad) mnemonics to try to memorize specific phrases for a deposition.
Good Practice for this will be to studyLoisette's System of Memory, e.g. in "How to Remember"(see p. 264) ; in fact Loisette's System might be calledthe Link-System ; and Comparisons and Contrasts willvery often be a great help as Links.
Interesting to see a mention of Alphonse Loisette here!
But also nice to see the concept of linking ideas and association (associative memory) pop up here in the context of note making, writing, and creating card systems.
General Hints on Preparing Essays etc., in Rhyme.
One ought to ask what purpose this Rhyme serves?
In the beginning of the film, a message appears that states the film encompasses historical facts as well as free personal impressions about Muhammad. Accordingly, some of the film's events did not actually take place in real life, but are indeed similar to events in Muhammad's biography.[6] Majidi stated that the objective behind presenting these scenes is to show that the whole existence could feel Muhammad's presence as well as his mercy.
Interesting. This is a general problem with historical movies. There is almost no such thing as objectivity. By making a movie, you make choices, you select what makes the cut and what doesn't. and by doing so, you form a certain image of the prophet, in this case. The free personal impressions of Majid are in fact a way to represent a certain image of Muhammad.
From what I have read, Majid is blamed for putting forward a Shi'ite Muhammed forward in the movie. Perhaps his free personal impressions are expressed in this regard?
The following month Ronaldo signed with the Saudi Arabian club Al Nassr.
6th club
he left Juventus and returned to Manchester United.
fifth club
Ronaldo helped the club capture another league title, and Juventus later won the 2020 Supercoppa Italiana and the 2021 Coppa Italia Final.
juventus awards with ronaldo
fourth career Ballon d’Or for his accomplishments.
fourth ballon dor
helped Real win its record 11th Champions League title
helped madrid win its 11th champions league title
Ronaldo capturing another Ballon d’Or award
ballon dor award
Soon thereafter Ronaldo was sold to Spain’s Real Madrid—a club with which he had long been rumored to want to play—for a then record £80 million (about $131 million) transfer fee.
ronaldos third club and how much he is making
onaldo captured Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) World Player of the Year honors for his stellar 2007–08 season
one of his big awards
His finest season with United came in 2007–08, when he scored 42 League and Cup goals and earned the Golden Shoe award as Europe’s leading scorer, with 31 League goals.
ronaldos best season and awards during that year
Ronaldo signed with English powerhouse Manchester United in 2003.
his next team after sporting
A tall player at 6 feet 1 inch (1.85 meters), Ronaldo was a formidable athlete on the pitch. Originally a right-winger, he developed into a forward with a free-reined attacking style. He was able to mesmerize opponents with a sleight of foot that made sufficient space for openings in opposing defenses.
key details about ronaldo
Originally a right-winger, he developed into a forward with a free-reined attacking style
his football position
He first played for Clube Desportivo Nacional of Madeira and then transferred to Sporting Clube de Portugal (known as Sporting Lisbon), where he played for that club’s various youth teams before making his debut on Sporting’s first team in 2002.
his journey till he made it pro
The name Ronaldo was added to Cristiano’s name in honor of his father’s favorite movie actor, Ronald Reagan, who was U.S. president at the time of Cristiano’s birth.)
fun fact about ronaldo that would be important
Cristiano Ronaldo (born February 5, 1985, Funchal, Madeira, Portugal) is a Portuguese football (soccer) forward who is one of the greatest players of his generation.
important information about ronaldo and some basic details
(Even mild) covid cases are associated with persistent cognitive damage. Empirical data from 2021/2022. Largest diff between measured groups wrt memory and executive functions. No volunteers self-reported cognitive symptoms. Iow covid is associated with cognitive damage, but you won't notice yourself.
Trender et al 2024.
Without memory there is no community; memory is a constitutive element in the making of a community.
If true, this means that the active destruction of memory ought to further splinter the Republican party in the Trump-era (2016- ?).
Method of loci, a memorization technique based on spatial memory
thank goodness I'm not the only one to see this... surely there must be some overlap in scholarship here. But where is it?
A lieu de mémoire (French for "site of memory" or memory space) is a physical place or object which acts as container of memory.[1] They are thus a form of memorialisation related to collective memory, stating that certain places, objects or events can have special significance related to group's remembrance.
This feels like it's tangential to memory palaces, but I'll have to read more of Nora to discern if he had any experience here or if he's simply stumbled upon a related idea, but one which wasn't taken to it's logical extreme.
1984–1992: Les Lieux de mémoire (Gallimard), abridged translation, Realms of Memory, Columbia University Press, 1996–1998
Anyone who says they were here then, and doesn’t mention the smell… well, they’re flat out lying.
Dash is right here. Smell, and in Enschede's case the shockwave too. The shockwave going through your body was the dividing line between those who were there that day and those who weren't. It was and is a clear tell 24 yrs on.
That was the emotional context, but there was also the visceral, sensory experience of being around those days. The most pervasive part was the acrid, searing smell of electrical fire, from the smoldering rubble pile that would keep burning downtown for the better part of a year. It pervaded everything, and you could be almost anywhere in town and the wind would change and then suddenly the smell would catch you off guard and you’d be crying again.
When I stood at ground zero a few weeks after, the smell is what made me cry then. It catapulted me suddenly back to the explosions in my home town a year before. That a smell could so abruptly and vividly surface those emotions took me by suprise.
(~19:20)
According to Huberman, there is a positive causal relationship between caffeine and reduced reaction time, increasing both speed and accuracy of recall. Thus useful to take in a certain amount of caffeine 30-60 minutes before an important exam or test.
is DNA in engram or not yeah I think so yeah okay yeah yeah I think so but now now again that that requires that requires a real shift I think most biologists would say no but I think it is because I think that um all memories are just messages from your past self and that what's happening with DNA is that previous previous basically there's this giant lineage agent that's the scale of an evolutionary lineage and the DNA are its engrams where that information is is being passed on the way that any memory would
for - adjacency - DNA - as an engram - as a memory - Micheal Levin
adjacency - between - DNA - as an engram - as a memory - adjacency relationship - Very interesting n way to see DNA
To be fair, for the picture argument... When you have seen a person only once it's more likely you remember their name, not their face. Additionally, if you have not seen someone for a very very long time the same is true.
I get the sentiment though and I agree.
Nishant Kasibhatla memorizes a 30 digit "random" number at the beginning of the video and recalls it correctly, in reverse, at the end of the video.
He uses number visualization of combinations to do this. (every 2 digit number has an image in his mind that he has practiced substantially in relation)... Similar to Mind Palace.
He did make a few mistakes in the normal recall at the beginning... But it is safe to assume that he did it on purpose (for what reason I do not know), because he has a lot of expertise in it.
Despite – or perhaps because of – all this activity, Samuel only published one sole-authored book in his lifetime, Theatres of Memory (1994), an account of the popular historical imagination in late 20th-century Britain told via case studies, from Laura Ashley fabrics to the touristification of Ironbridge. Since his death from cancer in 1996, however, Samuel has been prolific. A second volume of Theatres of Memory, titled Island Stories: Unravelling Britain, came out in 1998, followed in 2006 by The Lost World of British Communism, a volume of essays combining research and recollections.
Theatres of Memory (1994) sounds like it's taking lots of examples from a zettelkasten and tying them together.
It's also interesting to note that he published several books posthumously. Was this accomplished in part due to his zettelkasten notes the way others like Ludwig Wittgenstein?
Testing culture also discourages deep reading, critics say, because it emphasizes close reading of excerpts, for example, to study a particular literary technique, rather than reading entire works.
Indeed. But testing in general, as it is done currently, in modern formal education, discourages deep learning as opposed to shallow learning.
Why? Because tests with marks implore students to start learning at max 3 days before the test, thus getting knowledge into short-term memory and not long term memory. Rendering the process of learning virtually useless even though they "pass" the curriculum.
I know this because I was such a student, and saw it all around me with virtually every other student I met, and I was in HAVO, a level not considered "low".
It does not help that teachers, or the system, expect students to know how to learn (efficiently) without it ever being taught to them.
My message to the system: start teaching students how to learn the moment they enter high school
Memory is the soul. Memory is identity.
Identity is determined by memory, for without our memory, we become mere husks.
Lawrence Levine’s The Opening of the AmericanMind (1996). Levine’s Culture Wars intervention is part history andpart polemic, as evident in the title’s refutation of Allan Bloom’s 1987sensation. Levine defended the evolution of multicultural college cur-ricula and was also concerned with the “larger struggle over how ourpast should be conserved, how our memory should function, andwhere the focus of our attention should be.”30
Lawrence Levine<br /> The Opening of the American Mind (1996)<br /> note the coverage of "how our memory should function"
first known look at how a living vertebrate’s brain restructures itself as the animal forms a memory
for - neuroscience - zebrafish memory experiment
The world isn't divided up into neatly separated components, and I believe it's good to collide very different types of questions. One moment Anki is asking me a question about the temperature chicken should be cooked to. The next: a question about the JavaScript API. Is this mixing doing me any real good? I'm not sure.
I think context-switching helps a lot as it makes it more challenging to retrieve, thus making stronger neural connections
Of course, instead of using Anki I could have taken conventional notes, using a similar process to build up an understanding of the paper. But using Anki gave me confidence I would retain much of the understanding over the long term.
Short term memory vs Long-term memory
One easy example that comes to my mind is studying for exams vs studying for changing worldview
In my personal memory practice, nearly all the benefit has come from learning how to: better digest material; make better questions and answers; better connect the memory system to my life and creative work
we need: * critical thinking * better analytical skills
Finally, writ-ing helps you remember the thoughtsyou had, or the thoughts the authorexpressed.
Today, we explore whether memory still has a practical place in the world of big data and computing. As a science writer, Lynne has written 18 books including The Memory Code. Her research showed that without writing, people used the most extraordinary suite of memory techniques to memorise massive amounts of practical information. This explains the purpose of monuments like Stonehenge, the Nazca Lines and the statues of Easter Island. Her next book, Unlocking The Memory Code explains the most effective memory methods from around the world and throughout time. Lynne shows how these can be invaluable in modern world.
I need to read this book. And re-review this video with a notecard handy. (I wonder if there's a way to use hypothes.is for notes on video/audio?)
We make notes mentally too,for that is the only way to gather knowledge, and a well trainedmemory is always a great asset,
I appreciate the space for an oral perspective here in a book from1911.
It is best not to trust too much tomemory until the routine vrork is thoroughly mastered.
quote from Schopenhauer’s essay, ‘How to think for oneself’, §268:“the most beautiful thought, if not written down, is in danger of being irretrievably forgotten.”It’s from the passage where he observes that Lichtenberg thought for himself in both senses of the phrase, unlike Herder.The original essay, “Selbstdenken” was part of Schopenhauer’s book Parerga und Paralipomena II. Last authorised edition, Erstausgabe Berlin, A. W. Hayn 1851, online textLooks like Povarnin was a Schopenhauer fan!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWVrz5oCt2w<br /> The meaning of Hand Gestures in Art History<br /> Amuze Art Lectures
Middle and ring fingers together to represent modesty. (He doesn't say it, but it also could stand for "M" as in Medici??)
Finger pointing at viewer may indicate a self portrait.
Woman's hand on abdomen may represent pregnancy, a fertile marriage, or the desire to bear children.
As thehistorian Jean Leclercq, himself a Benedictine monk, puts it, ‘in theMiddle Ages, one generally read by speaking with one’s lips, at leastin a whisper, and consequently hearing the phrases that the eyessee’.6
quoted section from:<br /> [au moyen âge, on lit généralement en pronançant avec les lèvres, au moins à voix basse, par conséquent en entendant les phrases que les yeux voient.] Jean Leclercq, Initiation aux auteurs monastiques du Moyen Âge, 2nd edn (Paris: Cerf, 1963), p. 72.
What connection, if any, is there to the muscle memory of movement while speaking/reading along with sound/hearing to remembering what we read? Is there research on this? Implications for orality and memory?
Virginia Woolf described her childhood at 22 Hyde Park Gate: ‘Ourduties were very plain and our pleasures absolutely appropriate.’ Life wasdivided into two spaces – indoors, in a nursery and a book-lined drawingroom, and outdoors, in Kensington Gardens. ‘There were smells and flowersand dead leaves and chestnuts, by which you distinguished the seasons, andeach had innumerable associations, and power to flood the brain in a second.’
What you are reading is likely cleverer than you (of which reading as Mortimer J. Adler points out we should be doing), which constitutes "Like an intelligent and interesting conversation partner."
While Adler may say that a text could be cleverer than you are (is this a direct quote? reference if so), there is an associative nature to our thinking by which one can read further into a text than anything which is actually present. Did the author really mean to "say" the additional associative material? Was it in their lived experience to make such tangential references which associate things in your mind as well?
One ought to be careful that an author can only mean something so far, unless one has much more experience with their additional works and context. If it's not there, does it really exist? Did they mean it?
These associative tricks are what can make texts much richer and deeper than they may have claim to be. Though this doesn't mean that they aren't good "conversation partners."
compare this with doubletalk and https://boffosocko.com/2016/09/30/complexity-isnt-a-vice-10-word-answers-and-doubletalk-in-election-2016/
ZK II note 9/8b 9/8b On the general structure of memories, see Ashby 1967, p. 103 . It is then important that you do not have to rely on a huge number of point-by-point accesses , but rather that you can rely on relationships between notes, i.e. references , that make more available at once than you would with a search impulse or with one thought - has fixation in mind.
This underlies the ideas of songlines and oral mnemonic practices and is related to Vannevar Bush's "associative trails" in As We May Think.
Luhmann, Niklas. “ZK II Zettel 9/8b.” Niklas Luhmann-Archiv, undated. https://niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_2_NB_9-8b_V.
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
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?
And everything that I learn, I learn for a particular task, and once it’s done, I immediately forget it, so that if ten years later, I have to – and this gives me great joy — if I have to get involved with something close to or directly within the same subject, I would have to start again from zero, except in certain very rare cases, for example Spinoza, whom I don’t forget, who is in my heart and in my mind.
https://deleuze.cla.purdue.edu/lecture/lecture-recording-1-f/
Gilles Deleuze: The ABC Primer / Recording 1 - A to F<br /> DECEMBER 15, 1988
Everything that I learn, I learn for a particular task, and once it’s done, I immediately forget it, so that if ten years later, I have to—and this gives me great joy—if I have to get involved with something close to or directly within the same subject, I would have to start again from zero, except in certain very rare cases... (The ABC Primer)
I'm definitely not like this and suspect that most people are not either.
Wells attempts in this essay to help mankind "pull it's mind together" for the betterment of people and the planet. How is this supposed to happen in a modern media environment which is designed to pull our minds apart as rapidly as possible?
How might the strength of capitalism be leveraged to push people back toward a common middle rather than split them apart?
Chess titans have anywhere from 20,000 to 100,000 configurations of pieces, or patterns, committed to memory. They are able to quickly pull relevant information from this mammoth database. With a mere glance, a grandmaster can then figure out how the configuration in front of him is likely to play itself out.
is this from Ognjen Amidzic's research on chess and memory?
Ted Nelson felt visible connections between text were the most important part of his Xanadu project.
There are close parallels between these in digital spaces and songlines and related orality based mnemonic techniques.
New member here, is Zettelkasten the right method for my need? .t3_18fjaya._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #edeeef; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #6f7071; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #6f7071; } questionI have difficulting remembering important facts and numbers at work. I work in a strategic role for a large logistics firm. There are so many KPIs, initiatives, savings, people plans, etc.My biggest opportunity is recall in meetings to answer questions and further conversations. I can feel it holding me back and I am desperate to address it. I stumbled upon Zettelkasten, is this the right tool for me?
reply to u/chiefkeif at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/18fjaya/new_member_here_is_zettelkasten_the_right_method/
Some of your root issues may be addressed directly by engaging with by spaced repetition systems (for improving memory recall: try Anki, Mnemosyne, et al.) as well as mnemonic systems (memory palaces, the major system, etc.). Given that a Zettelkasten can be an instantiation of both of these simultaneously, you may find benefits for using it in such a setting. This being said, you may be better off with either one or both of the more proximal solutions with a zettelkasten being somewhat more distal for your specific needs.
Die erste Neuerung besteht darin, dass Harrison’s Karteikasten so aufgebaut ist, dass er als ein ech-tes Zweitgedächtnis fungiert.
Cevolini seems to be saying that it was an innovation of Harrison's Ark of Studies that it served as a second memory.
Surely my translation is "off" as the use of a variety of notes and writing long prior to this were used in this way.
[[Jorge Arango]] interviews Veronica Erb on Annotating Books
Anecdotal evidence that dyslexia has an overlap with creating links to see a "bigger picture"
this is a cancer uh approach that we work on which is to not to kill those cells but to force them to re reconnect to their neighbors and when they reconnect to the 00:31:24 neighbors they once again become part of the collective that's working on making nice skin nice muscle they stop being metastatic and they they go back
for: quote - Michael Levin, quote - MET of individuality, quote - memory wipe, quote - cancer therapy - MET of individuality
quote: Michael Levin
comment
Take Alter's treatment of the cycle of stories in which the first two matriarchs, Sarah and Rebekah, conspire against elder sons for the benefit of younger ones. Sarah insists that Abraham drive Ishmael, his firstborn, and Ishmael's mother, Hagar, into the desert to die, to protect the inheritance of Sarah's son, Isaac. Rebekah tells her son Jacob to trick his father, the now elderly Isaac, into giving him a blessing rightfully owed to Esau, Jacob's ever-so-slightly older twin brother. The matriarchs' behavior is indefensible, yet God defends it. He instructs Abraham to do as Sarah says, and after Jacob takes flight from an enraged Esau God comes to Jacob in a dream, blesses him, and tells him that he, too, like Abraham and Isaac before him, will father a great nation.Alter doesn't try to explain away the paradox of a moral God sanctioning immoral acts. Instead he lets the Bible convey the seriousness of the problem. When Abraham balks at abandoning Ishmael and Hagar, God commands, "Whatever Sarah says to you, listen to her voice." Rebekah, while instructing Jacob on how to dress like Esau so as to steal his blessing, echoes God's phrase -- listen to my voice" -- not once but twice in an effort to reassure him. As we read on in Alter's translation, we realize that the word "voice" ("kol" in Hebrew) is one of his "key words," that if we could only manage to keep track of all the ways it is used it would unlock new worlds of meaning. In the story of Hagar and Ishmael, God's messenger will tell Hagar that God will save them because he has heard the voice of the crying boy. And the all but blind Isaac will recognize the sound of Jacob's voice, so that although his younger son stands before him with his arms covered in goatskin (to make them as hairy as Esau's), and has even put on his brother's clothes (to smell more like a hunter), Isaac nearly grasps the deceit being perpetrated against him.
Something fascinating here with respect to orality and associative memory in ancient texts at the border of literacy.
What do others have to say about the use of "key words" with respect to storytelling and orality with respect to associative memory.
The highlighted portion is an interesting example.
What do other examples look like? How common might they be? What ought we call them?
Alter's translation puts into practice his belief that the rules of biblical style require it to reiterate, artfully, within scenes and from scene to scene, a set of "key words," a term Alter derives from Buber and Franz Rosenzweig, who in an epic labor that took nearly 40 years to complete, rendered the Hebrew Bible into a beautifully Hebraicized German. Key words, as Alter has explained elsewhere, clue the reader in to what's at stake in a particular story, serving either as "the chief means of thematic exposition" within episodes or as connective tissue between them.
Links are made by readers as well as writers. A stunning thing that we forget, but the link here is not part of the author’s intent, but of the reader’s analysis. The majority of links in the memex are made by readers, not writers. On the world wide web of course, only an author gets to determine links. And links inside the document say that there can only be one set of associations for the document, at least going forward.
So much to unpack here...
What is the full list of types of links?
There are (associative) links created by the author (of an HTML document) as well as associative (and sometimes unwritten) mental links which may be suggested by either the context of a piece and the author's memory.
There are the links made by the reader as they think or actively analyze the piece they're reading. They may make these explicit in their own note taking or even more strongly explicit with tools like Hypothes.is which make these links visible to others.
tacit/explicit<br /> suggested mentally / directly written or made<br /> made by writer / made by reader<br /> others?
lay these out in a grid by type, creator, modality (paper, online, written/spoken and read/heard, other)
Why Make Memories?
Multiple-choice questions test nothing but passive-recognition knowledge, not active usable knowledge.
More toward the notes in the video themselves (I'm more in media studies and far less conversant in theater studies): from my own zettelkasten on the live nature/immediacy of performance subject, I've seen how some older cultures (ancient Greeks and all sorts of Indigenous peoples, including modern Australian indigenous) use(d) their associative memories in ways we don't generally today, and as such would have been able to "re-live" performances which have occurred in the past without modern recording tools. Perhaps it's been explored previously, but if it's of interest to you and your current work or perhaps post-Ph.D., Lynne Kelly's Knowledge & Power in Prehistoric Societies: Orality, Memory and the Transmission of Culture (Cambridge, 2015) may be helpful along with the supporting works of Milman Parry, Albert Lord, and Walter J. Ong (esp. Orality and Literacy; Methuen, 1982). If you really want to spelunk this area, there are some additional explorations of these in the overlap of Frances Yates' (1966) discussion of memory theaters in Western culture.
Robert Kanigel's "Hearing Homer's Song: The Brief Life and Big Idea of Milman Parry (Knopf, 2021), may provide a quick/fun (audiobook available) non-technical introduction into Milman's work on Homer for those who haven't come across it before and are interested in early performance techniques. It provides an intriguing and entertaining detective story on multiple fronts.
As ever, thanks for sharing your notes and the fascinating references within them... 🗃❤
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrN0kaE6DkY<br /> Is The Zettelkasten Method Really The Best Personal Knowledge Management System? by Anthony Metivier
meh...
During the establishment of the covenant between Yahweh and Israel, the people were commanded to destroy the sacred stones of the Canaanites, “You must demolish them and break their sacred stones (masseboth) to pieces” (Exodus 23:24).
In neighboring cultures in which both have oral practices relating to massebah, one is not just destroying "sacred stones" to stamp out their religion, but it's also destroying their culture and cultural memory as well as likely their laws and other valuable memories for the function of their society.
View this in light also of the people of Israel keeping their own sacred stones (Hosea 10:1) as well as the destruction of pillars dedicated to Baal in 2 Kings 18:4 and 2 Kings 23:14.
(Link and) Compare this to the British fencing off the land in Australia and thereby destroying Songlines and access to them and the impact this had on Indigenous Australians.
It's also somewhat similar to the colonialization activity of stamping out of Indigenous Americans and First Nations' language in North America, though the decimation of their language wasn't viewed in as reciprocal way as it might be viewed now. (Did colonizers of the time know about the tremendous damage of language destruction, or was it just a power over function?)
Absalom set up a massebah for himself as a memorial for he said, “‘I have no son to keep my name in remembrance’; he called the massebah by his own name” (2 Samuel 18:18).
Use of massebah for remembrance of a name...
Potentially used for other factors? translation? context?
See also: https://hypothes.is/a/oqgH4mx9Ee68_dMgihgD0A (Rachel's massebah in Genesis 35:19-20)
Israel was forbidden to set up sacred stones, pillars: “you shall not set up a pillar (massebah), which the LORD your God hates” (Deuteronomy 16:22).
Relationship to the first two commandments against worshiping other gods and the use of idols?
How does this relate to the standing stone found in the room at Khirbet Qeiyafa from the time of David?
Dates of this text with respect to Khirbet Keiyafa?
A special use of the word “stone” = ʼben was to designate a name of the God of Israel: Yahweh is “The Stone of Israel” (Genesis 49:24).
When the people of Israel crossed the Jordan, Joshua commanded the people to set up twelve stones which were taken from the Jordan River as a memorial celebrating that defining moment in the life of Israel, the entrance of the people into the land God had promised to their ancestors (Joshua 4:20). The purpose of those memorial stones was to remind future generations of how the people “crossed the Jordan River on dry ground” (Joshua 4:22).
Description of the arrangement? Circle? Further or suggested usage?
Link to Genesis 28:18: https://hypothes.is/a/NF5p8Gx6Ee65Rg_J4tfaMQ
When Jacob had a vision of God, he used a stone as a pillow, but after he woke up from his sleep, “he took the stone (ʼben) that he had put under his head and set it up for a pillar (massebah) and poured oil on the top of it” (Genesis 28:18). That stone became a memorial of Jacob’s encounter with God.
Because these religions are old, though, and they’vebeen fiddled with, possibly, I feel some of the original keys from themasters have been lost.
Metropolitan State University of Denver. “Writing as a Thinking Tool,” June 17, 2021. https://www.msudenver.edu/writing-center/faculty-resources/writing-as-a-thinking-tool/.
The Glass Bead Game is "a kind of synthesis of human learning"[11] in which themes, such as a musical phrase or a philosophical thought, are stated. As the Game progresses, associations between the themes become deeper and more varied.[11] Although the Glass Bead Game is described lucidly, the rules and mechanics are not explained in detail.
Jerry Michalski says that The Brain provides him with a "neighborhood perspective" of ideas when he reduces the external link number for his graph down to 1.
This is similar to Nicholas Luhmann's zettelkasten which provided neighborhoods of related notes based on distance from any particular note.
Also similar to oral cultures who relied on movement through their environment for encoding memories and later remembering them. [I'll use the tag "environmental memory" to track this until a better name comes along.]
Hamacher, Duane, Patrick Nunn, Michelle Gantevoort, Rebe Taylor, Greg Lehman, Ka Hei Andrew Law, and Mel Miles. “The Archaeology of Orality: Dating Tasmanian Aboriginal Oral Traditions to the Late Pleistocene.” Journal of Archaeological Science, August 10, 2023, 45pp.
Pre-print.
See also: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305440323000997
Annotation url: urn:x-pdf:d4ccd0952073ac59932f4638381e6b69
Popular press coverage: https://www.unimelb.edu.au/newsroom/news/2023/august/tasmanian-aboriginal-oral-traditions-among-the-oldest-recorded-narratives
This paper supports arguments that the longevity of orality can exceed ten millennia,providing critical information essential to the further development of theoretical frameworksregarding the archaeology of orality.
Luhmann also described his system as his secondary memory (Zweitgedächtnis), alter ego, or his reading memory or (Lesegedächtnis).
Zweitgedächtnis, the German Word for secondary memory, might also have been translated as "second brain" and thus the root of this word in the note taking space.
ref: https://hyp.is/hV9LKm71Eeq9s_f_oWRkEg/takingnotenow.blogspot.com/2007/12/luhmanns-zettelkasten.html
Originally 2021-12-31 at https://hypothes.is/a/3tjzWGqjEeyDSae3OLOEWw
Your success in reading it is determined by the extent to which you receive everything the writer intended to communicate.
The difficult thing to pick apart here is the writer's intention and the reader's reception and base of knowledge.
In particular a lot of imaginative literature is based on having a common level of shared context to get a potentially wider set of references and implied meanings which are almost never apparent in a surface reading. As a result literature may use phrases from other unmentioned sources which the author has read/knows, but which the reader is unaware. Those who read Western literature without any grounding in the stories within the Bible will often obviously be left out of the conversation which is happening, but which they won't know exists.
Indigenous knowledge bases have this same feature despite the fact that they're based on orality instead of literacy.
The skill inspectional reader does more than classify a book in his mental card catalogue, and achieve a superficial knowledge of its contents.
a second use of "mental card catalogue", though somehow he doesn't seem to realize the inherent value for building knowledge... ?
lets you to control the sampling rate of the CPU profiler
better to use Go1.18 versions to avoid these limitations
The example above is highly simplified and omits many details around return values, frame pointers, return addresses and function inlining. In fact, as of Go 1.17, the program above may not even need any space on the stack as the small amount of data can be managed using CPU registers by the compiler
interesting so if data is small, it is managed by the cpu registers by the compiler, stack is not used
https://www.magneticmemorymethod.com/zettelkasten/
I'd found this page through general search and then a few days later someone from Metivier's "team" (an SEO hire likely) emailed me to link to it from a random zk page on my own site (not a great one).
Metivier seems to have come to ZK from the PKM space (via a podcast I listened to perhaps?). This page isn't horrible, but seems to benefit greatly from details I've added to the Wikipedia page over the past few years.
oddly, deprived him of his ability to memorize texts, as if he had traded in rotememorization for deep understanding
Taixu seems to have claimed that, on awakening (if we describe his experiences as such), his capacity for memorization deteriorated?
(But maybe he just lost interest in memorization/didn't dedicate as much time to it afterwards?)
They now have the chance to understandthemselves through understanding their tradition.
It feels odd that people wouldn't understand their own traditions, but it obviously happens. Information overload can obviously heavily afflict societies toward forgetting their traditions and the formation of new traditions, particularly in non-oral traditions which focus more on written texts which can more easily be ignored (not read) and then later replaced with seemingly newer traditions.
Take for example the resurgence of note taking ideas circa 2014-2020 which completely disregarded the prior histories, particularly in lieu of new technologies for doing them.
As a means of focusing on Western Culture, the editors here have highlighted some of the most important thoughts for encapsulating and influencing their current and future cultures.
How do oral traditions embrace the idea of the "Great Conversation"?
Inserting a maincards with lack of memory .t3_14ot4na._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; } Lihmann's system of inserting a maincard is fundamentally based on a person's ability to remember there are other maincards already inserted that would be related to the card you want to insert.What if you have very poor memory like many people do, what is your process of inserting maincards?In my Antinet I handled it in an enhanced method from what I did in my 27 yrs of research notebooks which is very different then Lihmann's method.
reply to u/drogers8 at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/14ot4na/inserting_a_maincards_with_lack_of_memory/
I would submit that your first sentence is wildly false.
What topic(s) cover your newly made cards? Look those up in your index and find where those potentially related cards are (whether you remember them or not). Go to that top level card listed in your index and see what's there or in the section of cards that come after it. Find the best card in that branch and file your new card(s) as appropriate. If necessary, cross-index them with sub-topics in your index to make them more findable in the future. If you don't find one or more of those topics in your index, then create a new branch and start an index entry for one or more of those terms. (You'll find yourself making lots of index entries to start, but it will eventually slow down—though it shouldn't stop—as your collection grows.)
Ideally, with regular use, you'll likely remember more and more, especially for active areas you're really interested in. However, take comfort that the system is designed to let you forget everything! This forgetting will actually help create future surprise as well as serendipity that will actually be beneficial for potentially generating new ideas as you use (and review) your notes.
And if you don't believe me, consider that Alberto Cevolini edited an entire book, broadly about these techniques—including an entire chapter on Luhmann—, which he aptly named Forgetting Machines!
That’s easy. You can’t learn without thinking. Thinking is cognition. It’s the ability to recognize, and reason something out. It is observation with some understanding. Learning occurs when memory is added to thinking. The toddler touches hot stove. It thinks, “ouch, there’s pain.” That is observation, and is thinking. But you can’t say it learned, until the toddler remembers that the sensation of heat gradient when approaching a stove will end in a burn, when the stove is touched
Learning happens when we add memory to thinking. So, thinking precedes learning, and is fundamental to learning.
note to self: is thinking required for memory?
Self-reference effects are especially relevant for episodicmemory
Information related to the self tends to be better rememberedthan other information
Reference to self, other, and object as levels of processing in recognition memory
Mini memory course
How to learn the art of memory (quick)
“The old order changeth, yielding place to new.” This phrase is repeated by Arthur throughout the work. Tennyson's use of the phrase in both the first and last Idyll, and throughout the work, is indicative of the change in Britain's, and Arthur's, fortunes. At this point, the phrase indicates the passing of Rome and the Heathens; In The Passing of Arthur, it indicates the downfall of Arthur's kingdom.
This seems to represent the cycle of life, that the old will make place for the new, and will be forgotten or remembered. The new comes, trying to make inroads, and tries to be remembered? (work on this further...)
L’alto mare aperto: Pikolo ha viaggiato per mare e sa cosa vuol dire, è quando l’orizzonte si chiude su se stesso, libero diritto e semplice, e non c’è ormai che odore di mare: dolci cose ferocemente lontane.
The high sea opens up new possibilities of connecting. This passage of the chapter follows a moment of solid and fixed textual memory. After managing the recitation of two terzine from Inferno 26 that initiate the encounter with Ulysses, Levi indicates his frustration at his inability to translate, but also points to Jean’s ability to connect from afar, from a cultural and linguistic remove. Then a gap in memory, a struggle to recall. Half phrases finally crystallise in a well-remembered line, ‘Ma misi me per l’alto mare aperto’ (Inf. 26, 110). This line first prompts Levi to play the role of teacher, explaining to Jean how ‘misi me’ is not the same as the French ‘je me mis,’ but rather something bolder (see also this annotation). In doing so, in envisioning the liberatory potential of breaking a boundary, a chain, putting oneself beyond a barrier, Levi sees a precious and telling connection between himself and Pikolo: ‘noi conosciamo bene questo impulso’. There is a flattening of difference here, a forging of a bond between two men that stretches across the Mediterranean, across a linguistic and poetic divide. Levi is no longer explaining, translating, teaching; instead, they have found a connection in seeking to go beyond, to break out and be free.
Importantly, this oceanic connection privileges Jean’s experience over Primo’s technical knowledge. It is by no means the same as the disdain for intellectuals shown by Alex at the beginning of the chapter. Rather, this emphasis on Pikolo’s experience - ‘Pikolo ha viaggiato per mare e sa cosa vuol dire…’ - is a way to privilege what might be gained through the perspective of the cultural outsider. Jean has been on the sea; he apparently knows what Primo describes as that feeling of freedom when there is nothing left but the aroma of the ocean. Has Primo not had that? (Perhaps only in the pages of books, by Salgari, Conrad?) Is he thus able to have a wholly different, more potent experience of Inferno 26 as a result of this ‘non-native’ reading? Earlier in the chapter, the ‘leggero odore’ of paint and tar have - strangely, almost paradoxically - brought to Levi’s mind ‘qualche spiaggia estiva della mia infanzia’, but this is of another order. Primo’s experience seems to have been shore-bound; Jean has truly sailed.
Because Pikolo knows (and the use of ‘sapere’ is telling here, in contrast to the ‘canoscenza’ of Ulysses’ dictum to follow), Primo can convey with both precision and lyricism that mode of apprehension and feeling of emancipation: ‘è quando l’orizzonte si chiude su se stesso, libero diritto e semplice, e non c’è ormai che odore di mare’. He is envisioning and embodying the possibilities of freedom, of being unbound and certainly not being inundated by odours of a very different kind, such as the paint and tar evoked earlier. The image of the horizon closing in on itself stands in stark contrast to the end of both Dante’s Inferno 26 and the end of this chapter, when it is the sea that closes over Ulysses and his companions, and - by implication and association - over Primo and Jean once more as well. The use of the verb ‘rinchiudere’ in that final moment is also striking, almost as if to imply that there are moments such as this one that open out to the world at large but there is the inevitable return to the horror of the camp that once more closes over them. Here, though, the sea is freedom: it is a simple, straight line of the horizon that connects these individuals together in their desire to escape.
In that exquisite, bittersweet phrase ‘dolci cose ferocemente lontane,’ there is something not just Ulyssean (‘né dolcezza di figlio…’), not just hybrid (‘dulcis’ and ‘ferox’ together, which also resonates with the ‘viver come bruti’ to come), but also a channeling of Purgatorio. One might think in particular of the opening of Purgatorio 8: ‘Era già l’ora che volge il disio | ai navicanti e ’ntenerisce il core | lo dì c’han detto ai dolci amici addio…’. Here, too, the sweet memory of things left behind is made bitter by their absence and separation across the sea. Such a way of thinking Ulysses and the ocean voyage across the Commedia is almost a banality; it nonetheless serves to give us some impetus to thinking about Levi as a reader of not just Inferno, but of other parts of the poem as well.
And it serves to have us perhaps think about this powerful moment of Mediterranean connectivity a little differently, to take that insight of valorising Jean’s non-native perspective out to the world at large. In his 1990 work Poetics of Relation, Martinican philosopher and poet Édouard Glissant espouses Relation as a means to connect globally and valorise the multilingual, multicultural nature of the Caribbean as a model for global culture that is rhizomatic and not tied to a single, Western line of becoming. Glissant sees the Mediterranean as an enclosed sea, ‘a sea that concentrates’, while the Caribbean is ‘a sea that explodes the scattered lands into an arc. A sea that diffracts’. In this moment of SQ, I wonder if we might find the Caribbean model as one that resonates more with the Primo-Jean dynamic, as Jean’s experience of the open sea asks us to see Dante’s text as one that is not enclosed but rather must be opened up to the global reader. Indeed, Glissant himself characterises Dante’s Commedia as a work that is committed to cultural mixing, dwelling on how ‘one of the greatest monuments of Christian universalisation stresses the filiation shared by ancient myths and the new religion linking both to the creation of the world’. Perhaps this moment of connection, of seeing the liberatory possibilities in the open sea that beckons, is not just a way to palpably feel the strength of Primo and Jean’s new bond, but also to urge us as global readers to embrace the diffractive, rhizomatic potential of a decolonised Dante.
AK
Considerate
My reflections here build on Lino Pertile’s 2010 essay, ‘L’inferno, il lager, la poesia’. Pertile notes the profound correspondence between the opening poem of the book (OC I, 139) and this chapter. He points out how the main theme of Levi’s book, the dehumanising experience in the Lager, based on the annihilation of people’s identity, is expressed in the poem and resurfaces explicitly again in the chapter dedicated to Dante’s Ulysses. The key term revealing the correspondence of themes and intentions is ‘Considerate [consider]’, used twice in Levi’s poem (‘Consider if this is a man | … | Consider if this is a woman’) and rooted in the memory of Dante’s famous tercet where Ulysses addresses his crew as they sail towards the horizon of their last journey beyond the pillars of Hercules: ‘Considerate la vostra semenza: | fatti non foste a viver come bruti, | ma per seguir virtute e canoscenza’ (Inf. 26, 118-20 and OC I, 228).
There are many other correspondences between the chapter of Ulysses and the opening poem, besides the ‘Considerate’, and that they are profound and filtered through the theme of memory, an eminently Dantean theme: the urgency to fix in the memory itself what is or will be necessary to tell, or the urgency to express and recount what is deposited in memory. Indeed, for Levi, the memory of each individual person contains that person’s humanity.
Memory is immediately activated as Primo and Jean exit the underground gas tank (‘He [Jean] climbed out and I followed him, blinking in the brightness of the day. It was warm [tiepido] outside; the sun drew a faint smell of paint and tar from the greasy earth that made me think of [mi ricordava] a summer beach of my childhood'). Temporarily escaping hell by means of a ladder (a sort of Dantesque ‘natural burella’), it is the tiepido sun and a characteristic smell that evoke the childhood memory and that at the same time the reader cannot avoid connecting to the tiepide case of the initial poem (‘You who live safe | in your heated houses [tiepide case]’ [my emphasis]). It is then around the memory ‘of our homes, of Strasbourg and Turin, of the books we had read, of what we had studied, of our mothers’ that another theme in the chapter coalesces, the theme of friendship (‘He and I had been friends for a week’), a theme that had already emerged in a more general connotation in the opening poem (‘visi amici’). Warmth, friendship (visi amici…Jean), the kitchens as destination for Primo and Jean’s walk (the walk from the tank with the empty pot is ‘the ever welcomed opportunity of getting near the kitchens’, not for that hot food [cibo caldo] evoked in the poem, but for the soup of the camp, an alienating incarnation of Dantesque ‘pane altrui’ whose various names are dissonant). During the respite of the one hour walk from the tank to the kitchens, the intermittent memory of Dante’s canto emerges as if from an underground consciousness, the memory of Inferno as a partial and imperfect mirror of the human condition in the Lager, Ulysses as poetic memory, a sudden epiphany of a semenza, a seed, of humanity that the Lager is made to suppress, and Primo’s wondering in the face of this sudden internal revelation of still possessing an intact humanity. Primo’s memory of his home resurfaces as if springing from the memory of Dante’s text: the ‘montagna bruna’ of Purgatory is reflected in the memory of ‘my mountains, which would appear in the evening dusk [nel bruno della sera] when I returned from Milan to Turin!' But the real, familiar landscape is too heartbreaking a memory of ‘sweet things cruelly distant’, one of those hurtful thoughts, ‘things one thinks but does not say’. There is an epiphanic memory then, the poetic memory that surfaces during the walk and that reveals to Primo that he still is a man, a memory to which he clings despite the sense of his own audacity (‘us two, who dare to talk about these things with the soup poles on our shoulders’); there is also a more intimate memory, equally pulsating with life and humanity - but dangerous, because it makes Primo vulnerable to despair, threatening his own survival in the camp.
The urgent need to remember Dante’s verses in this chapter develops the theme of memory, which has been central from the opening poem. In Levi’s poem, though, memory is perceived from a different angle: the readers (who live safe…) must honour that memory and transmit it as an imperative testimony of what happened in the concentration camp from generation to generation, testifying to the suffering of the man and the woman ‘considered’ in the poem. This is a memory to be carved in one’s heart, which must accompany those who receive it in every action and in every moment of each day like a prayer. Not coincidentally the poem follows the text of the most fundamental prayer of Judaism, the Shemà Israel, which is read twice a day, a memory to be passed on to one’s own children, a responsibility which is a sign of one’s humanity. The commandment to remember of the opening poem (‘I consign these words to you. | Carve them into your hearts') issues a potential curse to the reader, threatening the destruction of what most fundamentally characterises their humanity - home, health, children: ‘Or may your house fall down, | May illness make you helpless, | And your children turn their eyes from you’. Finally, Primo’s act of remembering during the walk to the kitchens is submerged by the Babelic soup (‘Kraut und Rüben…cavoli e rape…Choux et navets…Kàposzta és répak…Until the sea again closed – over us’) and yet the memory of it becomes part of his testimony in such a central chapter of the book written after surviving the Shoah. If the memory of Dante’s verses contributed to Primo’s faith in his own humanity and his psychological and physical survival in the camp, he then accomplishes the commandment of memory and his responsibility as a man through his own writing.
CS
Un buco nella memoria
Despite this and other gaps in his recall, Levi actually succeeds in reconstructing just under half of Dante’s narrative of the encounter with Ulysses in Inferno 26, wholly or almost wholly recalling (a notable) 26 out of 58 verses (24 complete verses, two partial) - and with remarkable accuracy.
The verses shown in bold below from Inferno 26 (85-142) are the ones Levi remembers. To explore this comparison for yourself, jump to the Dante tab.
KP
