441 Matching Annotations
  1. Jan 2022
  2. anagora.org anagora.org
    1. I missed [[flancia meet]] this morning. I was too tired and was sleeping lol. At least I had some good sleep. I suffer from pretty bad [[insomnia]] and I'll go days without sleeping. It looks like [[esperanto]] came up which is an interesting throwback. I used to study esperanto back in the day with friends and I'm somewhat fluent.

      Sleeping is great :) We need it! We should set a second slot for people in Pacific time? Perhaps alternating?

    2. There was a lot of nuance from the chat yesterday, but I think the conclusion was along the lines of: sometimes it's useful to have one-directional links, and this is what tags are. You can do that with wikilinks fine, but having a specific syntax for them enables filtering them out of other views (e.g. graph views).

      go, #push, #pull are now supported -- and #foo now links to [[foo]] by default :)

      no extra logic although there was also discussion about using hashtags for expressing personal positions (vs positions defaulting to assertions about the [[commons]]?)

    3. Season 2 of [[node club]] has begun! This week I took a little look at [[Agroecology]]. Some notes from [[Jayu]] on it helped me to form an initial gut feeling that [[I like agroecology]].

      This is amazing, thank you so much!

      I'll try to think of something for the upcoming week, but first I'll try to highlight/annotate your writings.

    4. We've been having great conversations at [[agora discuss]] lately.

      I agree, it's been great! I'll try to get a [[matrix bot]] running soon to complement and interlink all that activity.

    5. I've finished [[read]]ing [[Clarice Lispector]]'s [[Uma aprendizagem ou o livro dos prazeres]].

      This reminds me that I only learnt 1-2w ago that Clarice Lispector wrote in Portuguese -- my partner told me. I've never read anything by her, but I was surprised about how little I know about her. I intend to correct this -- what's a good place to start, if you have one off the top of your head?

    6. Mikhail Bakhtin]]'s [[polyphony]] and [[dialogism]]

      now that's a name I haven't read in a long time :)

      ❤️

    7. Below is a draft of the [[thought process]] that led me to decide adopting the practice of [[inserting wikilinks into quotes]].

      Very interesting, thank you! I enjoyed the format of exposition as well.

      I am biased though as I've been doing this so I'd naturally tend to want to justify it :) I somehow didn't realize it had these ramifications.

    8. So I was thinking about the brief conversation we'd had about [[effective altruism]], and I started writing, and I wrote a lot, so my preamble is that I mean here to put words to a seed of a heuristic I'm working with, not just criticize. But I don't really have a clean phrase for the topic... so I'm tossing this in my daily note, and maybe it'll make sense to move later?

      Thank you so much, this is awesome [[maya]]!

    9. I've finally visited [[Maggie Appleton]]'s [[digital garden]] again after a long time. The "[[Neologism]]" [[budding note]] caught my attention. Some of the [[neologism]]s she has collected there are really funny.

      I really need to read more of her, thank you!

    10. The Pattern Language of Project XanaduLink to Maggie's GithubLink to Maggie's LinkedInLink to Maggie's DribbbleLink to Maggie's Twitter (Created using [[markdown-link-expander]])

      This doesn't seem to have worked very well? :)

    11. I continue to want a lefty equivalent to the work of [[robert putnam]], looking at his new book. building little communities that aren't toxic seems so, so important but I don't trust the man

      I have a book I've been meaning to read :) [[building successful online communities]]. This reminded me of it and its position on my reading queue.

    12. what do people do instead of leggings that's not [[polyester]]?

      I want to say [[silk]] but I just made that up :)

    13. hope I have time to paint this evening.

      Would love to see your artwork, will look in your site!

    14. today is a day for best effort and gentle improvement. writing a self-review for work always makes me want to unalive myself (even when I think I'm doing well???) so we're not being real ambitious outside of getting that done (well, besides all the normal work nonsense).

      Same here :) I should really start writing perf before end of the month... I procrastinate a lot on it usually, even when I know it's silly.

    15. I think it sounds kinda [[cute]] and slightly [[quirky]]. At least, that's the [[tone]] I wanted to achieve. At the very least that's how I want myself to be: kinda cute and slightly quirky.

      I like it, thank you for writing it!

      I'll fix the pulls :)

    16. Gordon Brander]]

      want to read more from him/learn more about him

    17. On the flip side, too much variety leads to a [[cacophony of voices]].

      That seems like a failure mode but I wonder if it's strictly due to variety -- you can have variety that adds up to [[harmony]] or [[melody]]?

    18. Maya]] has an article related to [[Oblique Strategies]] and [[tarot for thought]] - introducing randomness into chaos: culture, oblique strategies, and tarot for… (shared by Maya in hypothesis annotation to my journal from yesterday, thanks Maya!)

      Very nice!

      I don't know much about [[tarot]] but I'm interested in learning. I guess it could work in the same way as the [[i ching]], as an engine for creativity?

    19. Elza Soares]], one of the biggest names of [[Brazilian music]], has suffered a [[death by natural causes]] today at [[home]].

      thank you so much for the pointer! I didn't know her.

      do you know [[cartola]]? I love him

    1. You can learn more about this [[garden]] through its [[index]] [[element]]; and more about me through the "[[Jayu]]" [[element]]. For [[Agora]] [[user]]s' convenience, I've [[pull]]ed both below, and you'll be able to see them somewhere on the "[[README]]" [[node]].

      interesting -- apologies, this doesn't work currently (pulls don't work in special pages like user pages currently), but will fix this!

  3. dev.anagora.org dev.anagora.org
    1. messing with [[gitea]] integration with the [[agora]]

      this is really going to pay off, thank you!

    1. And as with ActivityPub, where it's kind of absent, I'd want for there to be a 'group' concept that isn't based on infrastructure, just on interest groups.

      how do you think we could track this in the Agora?

      I've been thinking of [[troupes]] or [[parties]] as a term for directed groups

    2. Increasingly convinced that the distributed/federated digital garden approach is the way to go for knowledge commoning. I say this because I've been doing it for a while and it is working well in practice.

      💌

    1. Maya]] has an article related to [[Oblique Strategies]] and [[tarot for thought]] - introducing randomness into chaos: culture, oblique strategies, and tarot for… (shared by Maya in hypothesis annotation to my journal from yesterday, thanks Maya!)

      Awesome, thank you for pointing!

      I am so happy about [[hypothesis]] existing. /latest shows hypothesis from all over the Agora; I can add annotations for each node inline, I have the code for it I think but commented out, would you be interested?

    1. Interestingly, as anti-Marxist as our society often is, this idea has been pretty much absorbed by culture writ large.

      This is what I often find so surprising about the overt anti-marxism in, say, mainstream US media. What do these people that reject marxism completely have in place of these core historical materialism tenets in their system of beliefs?

    2. Materialism sees history is as having distinct time periods that are determined by the material and technological conditions of the times

      🎉

    3. Indeed, if you are, say, Marx, you might that capitalism

      you might think?

  4. Dec 2021
    1. Knowledge commons is a misnomer bcos there is no such thing as knowledge. (!!)

      Unsure about this :) need to read the context.

  5. Oct 2021
    1. I do like the phrase 'digital garden' but I still don't feel comfortable enough to not put it in quotes.

      Interesting! I sometimes wonder if I should just use 'personal wiki' instead. What do you use?

    2. Follow people wherever they are (including the big silos). This is with a [[social reader]]. Write locally, in my [[personal wiki]], first. This is with [[org-roam]]. Publish on my own site, my '[[digital garden]]'. I for sure own the data this way. This is via [[Micropub]] (stream), and [[org-publish]] (garden). Syndicate things elsewhere, wherever the community best fits for my post. But don't feed the big tech beasts. This is via [[Webmentions]], [[brid.gy]]. Interact with people wherever they are, but still via my own site if possible. Some combo of [[social reader]], [[Micropub]], [[brid.gy]]. At present, a combo of [[org-mode]], [[IndieWeb]], [[Fediverse]], [[Agora]] make this possible for me.

      Beautiful!

    1. Without a strategy that stems from common political agreement, revolutionary organizations are bound to be an affair of reactivism against the continual manifestations of oppression and injustice and a cycle of fruitless actions to be repeated over and over

      I don't disagree with the assertion this has been the case, but it sounds like a fixable thing to me. Then again, especifismo might be one way to fix it.

    2. Active involvement in and building of autonomous and popular social movements, which is described as the process of “social insertion.”

      Nice!

    1. In response to [[expectations]], we often attempt to incorporate something (passion in Buddhism), reject something (aggression in Buddhism), or ignore it all.

      Nice, thank you!

    2. Art]] is creating anything you can [[play]] with that is wealthy.

      I didn't get this, could you explain?

    1. When envious, comparing, and jealous, let your actions be fulfilled.

      I didn't get this, could you explain? If you see this :)

  6. Aug 2021
    1. Though the poem kind of has it backwards - a kind of [[accelerationism]] of the technology, rather than maybe a [[degrowth]] to natural boundaries.

      Interesting! [[degrowth]] sounds sensible to me, and cautious, but I'm not sure it feels "proven" -- I know at least some people make a reasonable case for sustainability at the cost of technological progress to sometimes not be a good idea, e.g. David Deutsch seems to believe that advancing our knowledge is on the whole, and over longer periods of time, a safer bet than "trying to live within our means".

      I'd probably hedge and bet on both, if that makes sense.

    2. creepy

      Indeed - Brautigan seems to be willing to toy with "creepy", makes one explicit reference to creepyness in this collection (see my subnode).

    1. the extraordinary degree of agreement in people’s feelings about patterns.

      It seems like an interesting direction of research; I wonder what studies from psychology and neuroscience have taken place in this field since this was written.

    2. (I wonder if there is a mathematical proof written somewhere that the system will eventually reach an "all off" state; I'm guessing that Alexander did consider this as a rigorous mathematical statement and I wonder how it was formalized precisely).

      Good question -- I seem to remember there are proofs for cellular automata. But the proofs tend to depend on all the rules of the system; similar rules yield very different behaviour (another example of emergent complexity) and in some cases knowing whether a grid will go dark is probably equivalent to the halting problem.

    3. If a bulb is on, it has a 50% chance that it will turn off in the next time step. If a bulb is off, it has a 50% chance of turning on in the next time step if it is directly connected to a bulb which is currently on; otherwise it stays off in the next time step.

      This whole bit reminded me of celullar automata and Conway's game of life.

    4. what it is that prevents adaptation from taking place in the selfconcious culture, which is what we want to know most urgently

      Good quote. I didn't find it convincing back then and I don't find it now :) I don't quite see how he fails to see adaptation taking place in selfconscious design processes, particularly after adjusting for the shorter timeframes.

  7. Jul 2021
  8. arxiv.org arxiv.org
    ()
    26
    1. For a formal treatment of the rules governing string diagrams, try the original papers by Joyal and Street [55]and the book by Yetter [101

      [[string diagrams]] [[joyal and street]] [[yetter]]

    2. Definition 7Amonoidal categoryconsists of:

      [[monoidal category]]

    3. In physics, it is often useful to think of two systems sittingside by side as forming a single system. In topology,the disjoint union of two manifolds is again a manifold in itsown right. In logic, the conjunction of two statementis again a statement. In programming we can combine two data types into a single ‘product type’. The conceptof ‘monoidal category’ unifies all these examples in a singleframework

      [[monoidal category]]

    4. It is difficult to do much with categories without discussing the maps between them. A map between cate-gories is called a ‘functor’

      [[functor]] == a [[map]] between [[categories]]

    5. Feynman’s idea that antiparticlesare particles going backwards in time

      [[antiparticles]] == [[particles]] going backwards in time according to [[feynman]]

    6. Tangk: the category where morphisms arek-codimensional tangles
    7. Traditionally, mathematics has been founded on the category Set, where the objects aresetsand the mor-phisms arefunctions. So, when we study systems and processes in physics, it is tempting to specify a system bygiving its set of states, and a process by giving a function from states of one system to states of another

      This is literally how I kept trying to read the above shown string diagrams by default.

    8. the idea is that objects ofour category label ‘strings’ or ‘wires’:
    9. A category is the simplest framework where we can talk about systems (objects) and processes (morphisms).

      [[category]]

    10. for every pair of objects(X,Y),a sethom(X,Y)ofmorphismsfrom X to Y. We call this sethom(X,Y)ahomset. If f∈hom(X,Y),then we write f:X→Y.

      [[homset]]

    11. a Feynman diagram. This is a 1-dimensional graph going between 0-dimensional collections of points, withedges and vertices labelled in certain ways. Feynman diagrams are topological entities, but they describe linearoperators.

      [[feynman diagram]]

    12. categorynCob

      [[nCob]] == [[n-1 dimensional manifolds]] and [[n dimensional cobordisms]]

    13. a basic ingredient of quantum theory: the category Hilb whose objects are Hilbert spaces, usedto describe physicalsystems, and whose morphisms are linear operators, used to describephysicalprocesses

      [[hilb]] == [[hilbert spaces]] + [[linear operators]]

    14. Table 1: The Rosetta Stone (pocket version)

      table

    15. a general science of systems and processes. Building this science will be very difficult. There are good reasonsfor this, but also bad ones. One bad reason is that different fields use different terminology and notation

      motivation

    16. a general science of systems and processes

      canonical link missing?

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_science does not mention category theory. Perhaps this paper could be added as a reference and the page could be enriched?

    17. it is only in the 1990sthat the logicians and computer scientists bumpedinto the physicists and topologists. One reason is the rise of interest in quantum cryptography and quantumcomputation [28]. With this, people began to think of quantum processes as forms of information processing,and apply ideas from computer science. It was then realized that the loose analogy between flow charts andFeynman diagrams could be made more precise and powerful with the aid of category theory [

      (logicians + computer scientists) + (physicists + topologists) -> (quantum computing + category theory).

    18. Curry–Howardcorrespondence

      [[curry howard correspondence]] -> proofs are programs -> logic ~ computation

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curry%E2%80%93Howard_correspondence

    19. cobordism

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

      "Cobordism is a much coarser equivalence relation than diffeomorphism or homeomorphism of manifolds, and is significantly easier to study and compute."

    20. linearoperators

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

      "the morphism of vector spaces" in category theory

    21. Hilbert spaces

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

      "The mathematical concept of a Hilbert space, named after David Hilbert, generalizes the notion of Euclidean space. It extends the methods of vector algebra and calculus from the two-dimensional Euclidean plane and three-dimensional space to spaces with any finite or infinite number of dimensions. A Hilbert space is a vector space equipped with an inner product, an operation that allows lengths and angles to be defined. Furthermore, Hilbert spaces are complete, which means that there are enough limits in the space to allow the techniques of calculus to be used."

    22. n physics, the objects are oftenphysical systems,and the morphisms areprocessesturning a state of one physical system into a state of anothersystem

      Right off the bat you can see a link to computation at this level (as we're talking state and transformations).

    23. A category hasobjectsandmor-phisms, which representthingsandways to go between things.
    24. closed symmetric monoidal category
    25. Feynman diagrams

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

      I've always found them interesting as I've read about their usefulness and I'm generally into diagrams but never understood them; if I can grok them after this paper is done I'll be happy.

    26. cobordism
    1. Candidates for still-live infohazards include the collected essays of Nick Land.

      wow, I had heard of him but was unaware of the extent of his work-and-downturn: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Land

    1. FMEA
    2. Insafe

      typo, report

    3. Providing the control action leads to a hazard

      Nice generic examples/generators.

    4. These four categories are provably complete—there is no other category of unsafe control action.

      Nice.

    5. Now let’s consider an alternative situation: the BSCU Autobrake provides two separate discrete control actions to Start Braking andto Stop Braking

      A priori this seems superior (or just simpler?) to me. Perhaps worth asking a clarifying question in class: why would you prefer continuous vs discrete actions in different scenarios?

    6. V1 point

      [[v speeds]]

    7. It can also be helpful to realize that mistakes about who controls whom in the control structure usually do not have a significant impact on the results of the analysis.

      Nice reliability assurance :)

    8. Chapter 5 contains further discussion about control structures and control relationships as they relate to organizational and social analysis.

      Promising!

    9. Controller A could represent pilots that normally use automation in Controller B to actuate the brakes. However, in an emergency the pilots may be able to bypass Controller B and directly (manually) actuate the brakes

      Seems like an interesting and likely recurring pattern: that of a human overriding automation.

    10. it can behelpful to first apply STPA at a higher abstract level first to provide quicker results and identify broader issues

      It could be argued that because STPA can be applied recursively the cost of abstraction is lowered.

    11. the most efficient way to apply STPA is to begin before those design decisions have been made and before such details are known.

      About potential of application at the design stage.

    12. needed enforce

      omission, report

    13. sent

      typo, report

    14. Common Points of Confusion

      Love this. I think this handbook is very well written.

    15. n some cases, simply drawing a control structure diagram can make previously undiscovered flaws painfully obvious.

      Pattern recognition, spatial reasoning.

    16. For humans, the process model is usually called a mental model and the control algorithms may be called operating procedures or decision-making rules, but the basic concept is the same

      Sounds redundant, will probably skip differentiating :)

    17. an aircraft that is uncontrolledor that is too close to other aircraftwould be unsafe.

      On my first reading I thought that the system being analyzed here was the place, but on closer inspection that wouldn't work: referring to other planes would be referring to the environment of the system. It seems the implicit system here is actually that of all planes flying; traffic control.

    18. Common mistakes

      Love this.

    19. There are three basic criteria for defining system-level hazards:-Hazards are systemstates or conditions (not component-level causes or environmental states)-Hazards willlead to a loss in some worst-case environment-Hazards must describe states or conditions to be prevented

      [[hazards]] are [[system level]].

    20. This is the primary reason for distinguishing between hazards and losses—losses may involve aspects of the environment over which the system designer or operator has only partial control or no control at all.

      hazards are system states -> losses are a possible result of such system state

    21. A system is an abstraction conceived by the analyst.

      [[abstraction]]

    22. A systemis a set of components that act together as a whole to achieve some common goal, objective, or end. A system may contain subsystems and may also be part of a larger system.

      [[system]]

    23. A hazardis a system state or set of conditions that, together with a particular set of worst-case environmental conditions, will lead to a loss

      [[hazard]]

    24. Losses should not reference individual components or specific causes like “human error” and “brake failure”

      [[losses]]

    25. tips to prevent common mistakes when identifyinglosses

      [[tips]]

    26. customers

      'users' or 'citizens' or just 'everybody affected by the outcome of the process' would be better than 'customers' here IMHO.

    27. Because every STPA result will be traceable to one or more losses, the analysis results can be easily ranked and prioritized based on the losses to which they refer.

      Very nice, makes the importance of traceability clear.

    28. : Overview of defining the analysis purpose

      Meta: being that STPA is diagram-driven, it'd be nice to know what is the formalism for this [[diagram]].

    29. Defining the purpose of the analysis has four parts:1.Identify losses2.Identify system-level hazards3.Identify system-level constraints4.Refine hazards (optional

      Purpose of the analysis.

    30. Nancy Leveson
    31. STAMP

      Systems Theoretic Accident Model and Processes

    32. STPA

      Systems Theoretic Process Analysis

    33. TABLE OF CONTENTS

      The canonical URL for this free PDF is: https://psas.scripts.mit.edu/home/get_file.php?name=STPA_handbook.pdf

      https://anagora.org/go/stpa-handbook/annotate links to the IPFS version instead because via.hypothes.is did not work the canonical version.

    1. hey, it's been a while. it's like, i forgot about this almost but it was in the back of my mind. today i thought, "maybe i should pick this back up." so, here i am. hopefully i can get back on track for daily entries.

      I don't know if you'll see this, but: welcome back! :)

      Yours was the single journal entry in the Agora on July 1st actually. It was great reading you.

    1. Many use Markdown, a system with no standard,never mind support for footnotes.†

      Footnotes are a common Markdown extension.

    2. aformto facilitate making the choices

      Obvious now that it's mentioned -- command line tools seem to be amenable to form filling flows. But we barely have argument/parameter autocomplete currently.

  9. Jun 2021
    1. maybe sticking to a todo list despire a lack of motivation is very helpful for keeping my priorities straight, maybe it isn't. enthusiasm is hard to measure, track, and maintain, especially when working on projects with long time scales. it's often hard for me to see what the right decision, level of dedication or measure of effort is to invest into a task, so i will go all or nothing. i think most of this is a result of being overstimulated - overexposed to loads of information i can't absorb at my own pace, because social networks set the pace instead. i should write more about how unhealthy social networks are but i feel like i've leveraged instagram very well - though what real connections has it lead to? regardless, i'll keep up my posting regimen to ensure that i'm holding myself accountable in terms of my creative goals - three posts a week no matter what.

      I can relate to this :)

      In general my todo list is always growing as I keep adding items to it faster than I cross items off the list. I've grown sort of OK with it; I try to be mindful of completion bias and focus more often on things I have done.

      @jakeisnt

    1. [[flancian]] asked if I was noting today. I guess this answer's that question lol

      Oh, just realized we have a small issue -- we might leave comments in /journals that don't show up in the page for the day. Hmm.

  10. dev.anagora.org dev.anagora.org
    1. [[flancian]] asked if I was noting today. I guess this answer's that question lol

      Haha, glad to see you back here :)

    1. grandkids

      I'm so-so on the grandkids thing; makes me think too much of "think of the children". Solid though.

    2. that’s a job best left to well-governed robots

      :D

    3. Since the 1970s, thousands of companies have become employee-owned through Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs)

      [[esop]]

    4. Lately, my collaborators and I have been working to advance the possibility of a new option: “exit to community,” or E2C for short.

      [[e2c]]

    5. “In the E2C vision, successful startups would aim toward becoming owned not by a new round of speculative investors but by the people who love and rely on them.”

      [[users as owners]]

    6. All of us, no matter what we contribute, should benefit because a truly distributed web should be a commons for everyone.

      In Flancia, this happens.

    7. $400,000.

      This made me wonder -- I expected this to be higher. $400k in stock is definitely within reach of a tech worker; so I was tempted to say that Amazon employees did own that. But I think this needs to be read in the context of what comes next: the fact that tech workers are immensely privileged and outliers post digital revolution.

    8. Decentralized Web Principles.

      [[dweb]]

  11. May 2021
    1. tag format e.g. #go #push

      IMHO #go == [[go]]. In that sense we should probably support all conventions that clearly demonstrate an [[intent]] to trigger an action, I'm fine adding support for these.

    2. action:{{action name}}

      I think this is too cumbersome, at least if you require the action: prefix. I did consider {{go}} (for example) a few times; this would also make the parsing of actions actually easier perhaps, although it could conflict with jinja templates -- need to check, it wouldn't be a no-go in any case.

      If we had {{go}} we could by default activate the go link on click instead of visiting the [[go]] node. I'd be happy to support the two.

    1. ‘This morphological law can always be expressed in the same general form: X—>r (A,B, ... 3, which means: Within a context of type X, the parts A, B, . .. are related by the relationship r.
  12. Apr 2021
  13. stoa.anagora.org stoa.anagora.org
    1. A woman can often see these moments in us, better than a man, better than we ourselves even.

      what

    2. our person, and the hkes and dishkes winch are part of you, are themselves forces in your garden, and it reflects the othe + forces which make leaves grow and birds sing. your garden must reflect those forces just as 1

      [[garden]]

    3. The word which we most often use io talk about the quality without a name is the word “alive.”

      It is interesting to me that this is being offered as a quasi-definition. Since reading [[notsof]] I've started to see spaces around the city (I love walking in cities) as "dead" or "alive" -- even without having a formal definition for those terms.

    4. his is the slow emer gence of the quality without a name, as if from nothing.

      the "quality without a name" is an emergent quality.

    5. Once the buildings are conceived like this, they can be built, divectly, from a few simple marks made in the ground-—again within a common language, but directly, and without the use of drawings,

      building from "marks made in the ground"

    6. Por once we have a common paitern language i in our town, we shall all have the power to make our streets and buildings live, through our most ordinary acts. The language, like a seed, is the genetic system whith gives our millions of small acts the power to form 4 whole.

      [[seed]]

    7. But in our time the languages have broken down. imce they are no longer shared, the processes 1 whic keep them deep have bro ken down;

      [[pattern repositories]]

    8. he people can shape buildings for themselves, and have done it for centuries, by using languages which I cail pattern languages.

      This conjecture (thesis?) seems to have matured since [[notsof]]. This phrasing is much more succinct and feels stronger.

    9. it cannot be attained, bui it will happen of its own accord, if we will only let it,

      ~ unselfconscious process in [[notsof]] terms?

    10. A building or a town will only be alive to the ex- tent that it is governed by the timeless way.

      [[the timeless way]]

    1. The organization of any complex physical object is hier­archical. It is true that, if we wish, we may dismiss this observation as an hallucination caused by the way the human brain, being disposed to see in terms of articulations and hierarchies, perceives the world. On the whole, though, there are good reasons to believe in the hierarchical subdivision of the world as an objective feature of reality.

      [[hierarchy]] as a feature of reality

    2. They must be chosen (1) to be of equal scope, (2) to be as independent of one another as is reasonably possible, and (3) to be as small in scope and hence as specific and detailed and numerous as possible.24

      Yep, this is much more reasonable than the previous statement of the properties -- and, IMHO, markedly different :)

    3. It demands that p(x; = 0) should be the same for all i, or that the proportion of all thinkable forms which satisfy a requirement should be about the same for each requirement. What this amounts to, in common-sense language, is that all the variables should be roughly comparable in their scope and significance.

      Here we move from "the same" to "roughly the same" and I don't see how that worked.

    4. It demands that p(x; = 0) should be the same for all i.21 Again, if this is not so, the analysis will be invalid.

      Interesting; at this point I don't see how this is a reasonable requirement.

    5. The simplest corre­lation coefficient is that for two variables:
    6. We shall call the proportion of forms in D which do not satisfy requirement Xi the probability of the misfit xi occurring.

      FINALLY

      Probabilities just seem to make sense for this precisely.

    7. By leaving the designer to work out the relative importance of different requirements at his own dis­cretion during the diagram phase of the design process, it is therefore possible for designers to agree about the contents of the set M, whether or not they agree about their relative importance, because mere inclusion of a requirement in M, as such, attaches no weight to it.

      Weights bring the model back into the realm of the continuous, though. We go back and forth between boolean and continuous it seems; perhaps it'd be good to model all variables as continuous until the point of evaluating for fit, at which point they get reduced to booleans.

    8. And each of these subsets of M, because it contains fewer requirements than M itself, and less interaction between them, is simpler to diagram than M.

      [[graph partitioning]]

    9. Le Corbusier's ville radieuse is a diagram, which expresses the physical consequences of two very simple basic require­ments: that people should be housed at high overall density, and that they should yet all have equal and maximum access to sunlight and air.3
    1. Author:: [[Richard O'Connor]] Full Title:: Undoing Depression Category:: [[books]] [[depression]] Highlights first synced by [[readwise]] [[September 2nd, 2020]]

      Great summary, thank you [[bbchase]]!

  14. Mar 2021
    1. topologicall-complex

      [[topological 1-complex]] == [[linear graph]]

    2. The way to improve this is to make a further abstract picture of our first picture of the problem, which eradicates 7 7

      Further abstraction of the mental processes -> [[meta cognition]]?

    3. There is at present no prospect of introducing these principles mechani­cally, either into science or into design. Again, they require invention.

      Fast forward to the 21st century and machine learning is solving some of these problems in this way, perhaps.

    4. Vitruvius

      [[vitruvius]], a military engineer

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

    5. But once these concrete influences are represented symbolically in verbal terms, and these symbolic representations or names subsumed under larger and still more abstract categories to make them amenable to thought, they begin seriously to im­pair our ability to see beyond them.20

      Perhaps words encode traditions.

    6. Take the concept "safety," for example. Its existence as a common word is convenient and helps hammer home the very general importance of keeping designs danger­free. But it is used in the statement of such dissimilar problems as the design of a tea kettle and the design of a highway interchange. As far as its meaning is concerned it is relevant to both. But as far as the individual structure of the two

      Language is [[dimensionality reduction]].

    7. We define a concept in extension when we specify all the elements of the class it refers to. And we define a concept in intension when we try to explain its meaning analytically in terms of other concepts at the same level.15

      Definitions in [[extension]] vs [[intension]].

    8. Similarly, the principle of the "neighborhood," one of the old chestnuts of city-planning theory, has been shown to be an inadequate mental component of the residential planning problem.1

      [[neighborhood]] as inadequate.

    9. The constant burden of decision which he comes across, once freed from tradition, is a tiring one. So he avoids it where he can by using rules (or general principles), which he formulates in terms of his invented concepts. These principles are at the root of all so-called "theories" of archi­tectural design.12

      We invent theories to alleviate the burden of freedom from tradition.

    10. o put it in the language of psy­chology, there are limits on the number of distinct concepts which we can manipulate cognitively at any one time, and we. are therefore forced, if we wish to get a view of the whole problem, to re-encode these items.1
    11. It must pour cleanly.
    12. The selfconscious process is different. The artist's self­conscious recognition of his individuality has deep effect on the process of form-making. Each form is now seen as the work of a single man, and its success is his achievement only. Selfconsciousness brings with it the desire to break loose, the taste for individual expression, the escape from tradition and taboo, the will to self-determination. But the wildness of the desire is tempered by man's limited invention. To achieve in a few hours at the drawing board what once took centuries of adaptation and development, to invent a form suddenly which clearly fits its context-the extent of the invention neces­sary is beyond the average designer.
    13. One example, of an early kind, of developing selfcon­sciousness is found in Samoa. Although ordinary Samoan houses are built by their inhabitants-to-be, custom demands that guest houses be built exclusively by carpenters.2 Since these carpenters need to find clients, they are in business as artists; and they begin to make personal innovations and changes for no reason except that prospective clients will judge their work for its inventiveness.3

      Competition -> market dynamics -> development of individuality (local mutations).

    14. high temperature of selfconsciousness.

      Interesting choice of phrase considering the use of 'temperature' in AI.

    15. change for its own sake becomes acceptable

      Willful mutations.

    16. The reaction to failure, once so direct, now becomes less and less direct. Materials are no longer close to hand. Build­ings are more permanent, frequent repair and readjustment less common, than they used to be. Construction is no longer in the hands of the inhabitants; failures, when they occur, have to be several times reported and described before the speciali st will recognize them and make some permanent adjustment. Each of these changes blunts the hair-fine sensi­tivity of the unselfconscious process' response to failure, so that failures now need to be quite considerable before they will induce correction.

      Reminds me of the increase of friction sometimes noticed when introducing higher level abstractions + specialization in the maintenance of computer systems (think platforms).

    17. The man who makes the form is an agent simply, and very little is required of him during the form's development.

      I wonder if this doesn't apply to all.

    18. minor changes

      This seems worth defining further.

    19. And though words may accompany his action, they play no essential part in it.

      I wonder if he's setting this up as a contrast with selfconscious cultures; if so, we may end up debating the nature of language and free will :)

    20. Again the gravity of the rituals, and their rigidity, make it impos­sible that the form of the hogan should be lightly changed

      I wonder if the rigidity of ritual is correlated with the lack of stable writing systems; cultures might evolve ritual as a way to codify useful knowledge.

    21. hogans of the Navaho
    22. lack houses of the Outer Hebrides
    23. trulli of Apulia
    24. capanne of Anzio
    25. If the light always flashes just once, and then goes off again and stays off, we deduce that the lights are able to adapt independently, and hence that there are no interconnections between lights. If the light activates a few other lights, and they flash together 44

      Deduction of rules by observation after the introduction of a perturbation.

    26. Whether a form-making process is selfconscious or unself­conscious, these misfit variables are always present, lingering in the background of the process, as thoughts in a designer's mind, or as actions, criticisms, failures, doubts

      This is a kind of synthesis and it feels suddenly like we're back on track after a disastrous detour :)

    27. adaptation

      So anti-Darwinist but rather [[Lamarckian]] :)

    28. But this explanation is vague hand-waving.25 It doesn't tell us what it is that prevents such adaptation from taking place successfully in the selfconscious culture, which is what we want to know most urgently

      A bit harsh perhaps :) Also the extra assumption (it isn't taking place successfully in "our" culture) is doing a lot of work.

    29. The teacher cannot refer ex­plicitly to each single mistake which can be made, for even if there were time to do so, such a list could not be learned.

      This is an interesting (perhaps) opposition to the earlier statement about listing misfits instead of fit.

      Underlying either is the problem of encoding information about useful models efficiently.

    30. specialization of any sort is rare, there are no archi­tects, and each man builds his own house.

      I wonder, then, why "specialized" and "unspecialized" aren't better terms.

    31. there are no general principles comparable to Alberti's treatises or Le Corbusier's.

      TODO: look up and link.

    32. we may distinguish between our own culture, which is very selfconscious about its architecture, art, and engineer­ing, and certain specimen cultures which are rather unself­conscious about theirs

      This seems to contradict the earlier statements about "the average developer", perhaps?

    33. The form has a dual co­herence. It is coherently related to its context. And it is physically coherent.

      Unsure how coherency is defined here, in particular in the second case.

    34. Mousgoum hut,
    35. Instead of orienting the house carefully for sun and wind, the builder conceives its organization without concern for orientation, and light, heat, and ventilation are taken care of by fans, lamps, and other kinds of peripheral devices.

      Reminds me of the cruft that arises around, and within, less well designed software libraries.

      Simple models vs epicycles.

    36. dymaxion house
    37. Mies Vander Rohe's Farnsworth house
    38. It is only through the form that we can create order in the ensemble.

      Unsure why/how the context is considered strictly unchangeable.

    39. We may summarize the state of each potential misfit by means of a binary variable.

      Not specified:

      1. How many variables there are. Can this be an infinite list?
      2. How do we model variables in conflict with each other.
      3. How do we model partial solutions? Are they interesting? Requiring strictly all zeroes seems to oppose this.
    40. such a list of require­ments is potentially endless

      Reminds me of requirements and tests; and the asymmetry between correct behavior and bugs.

      Also the problem of "inductive proofs".

    41. impossible

      Unclear to me this is the case.

    42. The context is that part of the world which puts demands on this form; anything in the world that makes demands of the form is context

      Context and form make demands of each other.

    43. D' Arcy Thompson

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%27Arcy_Wentworth_Thompson

      "Thompson is remembered as the author of the 1917 book On Growth and Form, which led the way for the scientific explanation of morphogenesis, the process by which patterns and body structures are formed in plants and animals."

    44. Francesco Algarotti

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

      "a Venetian polymath, philosopher, poet, essayist, anglophile, art critic and art collector."

    1. I gave a talk back in Oct 2019 about #opensource licensing evolution.A good time to reflect about what you want from your software and your licenses.

      the style [[entity]]: url could help to make the reader aware of the canonical entity for the talk. this makes it easier to remember/share. That's what I'm thinking of using more often when linking general urls.

    1. I got [[roller skates]] the other day. I'm stoked, they're white and have light up wheels

      I'm so glad for you! I've never used roller skates but I can imagine that feeling awesome.

    2. I'm sad that [[obsidian]] mobile has decided to go for a for-pay model for their beta android client. Oh well. I might end up buying a subscription, we'll see

      or we could develop etherpad-based agora node editing! ;)

      https://merveilles.town/web/statuses/105949849924261734

    3. Been playing with [[kde]] also known as [[plasma desktop]] nowadays. I've been using [[linux]] for over 20 years and never really gave it a proper chance, but with the right tweaks, I have faith it will work well

      same here! last time I used kde was around 2001. I liked many of the tools but back then kde felt very heavy; I settled on fluxbox and mostly gtk tools.

      have you tried wayland? I keep meaning to.

    4. Finally making a new note!

      welcome back, my friend! :D