18,749 Matching Annotations
  1. Feb 2023
    1. Many authors noted that generations tended to fall into clichés, especially when the system was confronted with scenarios less likely to be found in the model's training data. For example, Nelly Garcia noted the difficulty in writing about a lesbian romance — the model kept suggesting that she insert a male character or that she have the female protagonists talk about friendship. Yudhanjaya Wijeratne attempted to deviate from standard fantasy tropes (e.g. heroes as cartographers and builders, not warriors), but Wordcraft insisted on pushing the story toward the well-worn trope of a warrior hero fighting back enemy invaders.

      Examples of artificial intelligence pushing toward pre-existing biases based on training data sets.

    2. novel is not the same as interesting
    3. Wordcraft tended to produce only average writing.

      How to improve on this state of the art?

    4. “[It's] an amazing tool for brainstorming or rubber-ducking. Its conversational quality is perfect to talk about plot, characters and worldbuilding.”- Nelly Garcia

      Presumably the use of rubber-ducking here is an indicator of Nelly Garcia's background with programming and prior AI tool use?

      The rubber duck as a writing partner?

    5. We've also integrated a chatbot feature into the app to enable unstructured conversation about the story being written.

      Presumably being used for rubber ducking?

      Was it also used as research feedback for the program itself?

    6. “...it can be very useful for coming up with ideas out of thin air, essentially. All you need is a little bit of seed text, maybe some notes on a story you've been thinking about or random bits of inspiration and you can hit a button that gives you nearly infinite story ideas.”- Eugenia Triantafyllou

      Eugenia Triantafyllou is talking about crutches for creativity and inspiration, but seems to miss the value of collecting interesting tidbits along the road of life that one can use later. Instead, the emphasis here becomes one of relying on an artificial intelligence doing it for you at the "hit of a button". If this is the case, then why not just let the artificial intelligence do all the work for you?

      This is the area where the cultural loss of mnemonics used in orality or even the simple commonplace book will make us easier prey for (over-)reliance on technology.


      Is serendipity really serendipity if it's programmed for you?

    7. The authors agreed that the ability to conjure ideas "out of thin air" was one of the most compelling parts of co-writing with an AI model.

      Again note the reference to magic with respect to the artificial intelligence: "the ability to conjure ideas 'out of thin air'".

    8. language models are incredible "yes, and" machines, allowing writers to quickly explore seemingly unlimited variations on their ideas.
    9. Wordcraft shined the most as a brainstorming partner and source of inspiration. Writers found it particularly useful for coming up with novel ideas and elaborating on them. AI-powered creative tools seem particularly well suited to sparking creativity and addressing the dreaded writer's block.

      Just as using a text for writing generative annotations (having a conversation with a text) is a useful exercise for writers and thinkers, creative writers can stand to have similar textual creativity prompts.

      Compare Wordcraft affordances with tools like Nabokov's card index (zettelkasten) method, Twyla Tharp's boxes, MadLibs, cadavre exquis, et al.

      The key is to have some sort of creativity catalyst so that one isn't working in a vacuum or facing the dreaded blank page.

    10. The workshop cohort consisted of 13 professional writers, who were given 8 weeks to use Wordcraft. Unlike more constrained user studies run in the past, we gave writers freedom to write anything they wanted using any workflow they could devise. We share below some of the insights we learned through this process.

      How much training did they get with the tool prior to use, particularly those without any experience?

    11. In addition to specific operations such as rewriting, there are also controls for elaboration and continutation. The user can even ask Wordcraft to perform arbitrary tasks, such as "describe the gold earring" or "tell me why the dog was trying to climb the tree", a control we call freeform prompting. And, because sometimes knowing what to ask is the hardest part, the user can ask Wordcraft to generate these freeform prompts and then use them to generate text. We've also integrated a chatbot feature into the app to enable unstructured conversation about the story being written. This way, Wordcraft becomes both an editor and creative partner for the writer, opening up new and exciting creative workflows.

      The interface of Wordcraft sounds like some of that interface that note takers and thinkers in the tools for thought space would appreciate in their

      Rather than pairing it with artificial intelligence and prompts for specific writing tasks, one might pair tools for though interfaces with specific thinking tasks related to elaboration and continuation. Examples of these might be gleaned from lists like Project Zero's thinking routines: https://pz.harvard.edu/thinking-routines

    12. In addition to specific operations such as rewriting, there are also controls for elaboration and continutation. The user can even ask Wordcraft to perform arbitrary tasks, such as "describe the gold earring" or "tell me why the dog was trying to climb the tree", a control we call freeform prompting. And, because sometimes knowing what to ask is the hardest part, the user can ask Wordcraft to generate these freeform prompts and then use them to generate text. We've also integrated a chatbot feature into the app to enable unstructured conversation about the story being written. This way, Wordcraft becomes both an editor and creative partner for the writer, opening up new and exciting creative workflows.

      The sense of writing partner here is similar to that mentioned by Niklas Luhmann in Communicating with Slip Boxes: An Empirical Account (1981), though in his case his writing partner was a carefully constructed database archive of his past notes.

      see: Luhmann, Niklas. “Kommunikation mit Zettelkästen: Ein Erfahrungsbericht.” In Öffentliche Meinung und sozialer Wandel / Public Opinion and Social Change, edited by Horst Baier, Hans Mathias Kepplinger, and Kurt Reumann, 222–28. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 1981. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-322-87749-9_19.<br /> translation at https://web.archive.org/web/20150825031821/http://scriptogr.am/kuehnm.

    13. For instance, if the user selects a phrase, a button to "Rewrite this phrase" is revealed along with a text input in which the user can describe how they would like the phrase to be rewritten. The user might type "to be funnier" or "to be more melancholy", and the Wordcraft application uses LaMDA and in-context learning to perform the task.
    14. We like to describe Wordcraft as a "magic text editor". It's a familiar web-based word processor, but under the hood it has a number of LaMDA-powered writing features that reveal themselves depending on the user's activity.

      The engineers behind Wordcraft refer to it "as a 'magic text editor'". This is a cop-out for many versus a more concrete description of what is actually happening under the hood of the machine.

      It's also similar, thought subtly different to the idea of the "magic of note taking" by which writers are taking about ideas of emergent creativity and combinatorial creativity which occur in that space.

    15. The application is powered by LaMDA, one of the latest generation of large language models. At its core, LaMDA is a simple machine — it's trained to predict the most likely next word given a textual prompt. But because the model is so large and has been trained on a massive amount of text, it's able to learn higher-level concepts.

      Is LaMDA really able to "learn higher-level concepts" or is it just a large, straight-forward information theoretic-based prediction engine?

    16. Our team at Google Research built Wordcraft, an AI-powered text editor centered on story writing, to see how far we could push the limits of this technology.
    1. https://pair.withgoogle.com/

      People + AI Research (PAIR) is a multidisciplinary team at Google that explores the human side of AI by doing fundamental research, building tools, creating design frameworks, and working with diverse communities.

    1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZgMpjjgCRA

      Combining sketchnotes with Cornell Notes in a fairly straightforward manner.

      He mentions anecdotally that teachers who have used custom icons for their subjects see students drawing some of them on their exam papers as mental associative tags. This is the same sort of use that drolleries had in medieval manuscripts.

    1. Author's note by Robin Sloan<br /> November 2022

    2. But a good short story is always basically a memento mori.

      An interesting theory...

      An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce comes to mind as an excellent example.

    3. I have to report that the AI did not make a useful or pleasant writing partner. Even a state-of-the-art language model cannot presently “understand” what a fiction writer is trying to accomplish in an evolving draft. That’s not unreasonable; often, the writer doesn’t know exactly what they’re trying to accom­plish! Often, they are writing to find out.
    4. First, I’m impressed as hell by the Wordcraft team. Daphne Ippolito, Ann Yuan, Andy Coenen, Sehmon Burnam, and their colleagues engi­neered an impres­sive, provoca­tive writing tool, but/and, more importantly, they inves­ti­gated its use with sensi­tivity and courage.
    5. Approaching this project, I felt committed to writing a story that could stand on its own; a story that achieved the same things I want ANY of my stories to achieve; a story to which the response might be not, “I see what you did there”, but: “I loved this!”

      "I see what you did there" as a genre of writing is interesting for its cleverness, but many authors will prefer readers to love their work instead of admiring their cleverness in one part.

    1. Moran said the codes themselves may end up limiting the reach of misinformation. As they get more cryptic, they become harder to understand. If people are baffled by a unicorn emoji in a post about COVID-19, they might miss or dismiss the misinformation.
    2. "The coded language is effective in that it creates this sense of community," said Rachel Moran, a researcher who studies COVID-19 misinformation at the University of Washington. People who grasp that a unicorn emoji means "vaccination" and that "swimmers" are vaccinated people are part of an "in" group. They might identify with or trust misinformation more, said Moran, because it’s coming from someone who is also in that "in" group.

      A shared language and even more specifically a coded shared language can be used to create a sense of community or define an in group identity.

    1. Arbeiten mit Zettelkästen<br /> by Daniel Lüdecke

      at this time in 2013-08-29, Christian Tietze was hosting zettelkasten.de on his personal domain before it moved later that year to its ultimate site, thus the reason that the Twitter link here resolves to Christian's site https://christiantietze.de/ now.

      At the time, Daniel was obviously aware of both Christian and Manfred Kuehn's Taking Note blog.

      He was also aware of Kuehn's original translation of Luhmann's essay in it's original location at http://scriptogr.am/kuehnm/post/2012-12-22-111621 before it moved. (I remember spending ages puzzling out the original location via the Internet Archive).

    1. A Luhmann web article from 2001-06-30!

      Berzbach, Frank. “Künstliche Intelligenz aus Holz.” Online magazine. Magazin für junge Forschung, June 30, 2001. https://sciencegarden.net/kunstliche-intelligenz-aus-holz/.


      Interesting to see the stark contrast in zettelkasten method here in an article about Luhmann versus the discussions within the blogosphere, social media, and other online spaces circa 2018-2022.


      ᔥ[[Daniel Lüdecke]] in Arbeiten mit (elektronischen) Zettelkästen at 2013-08-30 (accessed:: 2023-02-10 06:15:58)

    2. Wer sich also solch einen hölzernen Lebenspartner aufzieht, wird nach einigen Jahren immer interessantere Antworten auf seine Fragen bekommen …

      google translate:

      So if you raise such a wooden life partner, you will get more and more interesting answers to your questions after a few years...

      I love the idea of rearing a zettelkasten as a "wooden life partner".

    3. Der Zettelkasten weiß tendenziell immer weniger als man selbst, aber immer soviel, wie wir auf Karten geschrieben haben.

      google translate:

      The Zettelkasten always tends to know less than you do, but always as much as we have written on cards.

    4. Neben den Methoden herkömmlicher Recherche werden daher normalerweise Zettelkästen angelegt, in denen auf Karteikarten notiert ist, was ständig zitiert werden muss. Studenten erproben dies oft zum ersten mal intensiv für ihre Diplomarbeit. Nach Schlagworten und Autoren werden Notizen alphabetisch geordnet und was in den Kasten einsortiert wurde, kann man auch wieder herausholen.

      Google translate:

      In addition to the methods of conventional research, card boxes are usually created in which index cards are used to record what needs to be constantly quoted. Students often try this out intensively for their diploma thesis for the first time. Notes are sorted alphabetically according to keywords and authors, and what has been sorted into the box can also be taken out again.

      An indication from 2001 of the state of the art of zettelkasten written in German. Note that the description is focused more on the index card or slip-based version of a commonplace book sorted alphabetically by keywords and authors primarily for quoting. Most students trying the method for the first time are those working on graduate level theses.

    1. Lüdecke, Daniel. “Introduction to Luhmann’s Zettelkasten - Thinking and Its Technical Implementation.” Presented at the Trier Digital Humanities Autumn School 2015, Trier University, October 1, 2015. https://strengejacke.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/introduction-into-luhmanns-zettelkasten-thinking.pdf..

    2. “The Zettelkastenis much more effortand time consumingthan writing books.”Niklas Luhmann, Shortcuts, p.26
    3. Branching and note sequences allow “story telling”
    4. In electronic Zettelkasten, no text limits for notes, however itis also recommended to keep notes short

      Note the recommendation to keep notes short without any stated reason why this should/ought to be done.

    5. Categories mean determination of internal structure less flexibility, especially “in the long run“ of knowledgemanagement and storage

      The fact that Luhmann changed the structure of his zettelkasten with respect to the longer history of note taking and note accumulation allowed him several useful affordances.

      In older commonplacing and slip box methods, one would often store their notes by topic category or perhaps by project. This mean that after collection one had to do additional work of laying them out into some sort of outline to create arguments and then write them out for publication. This also meant that one was faced with the problem of multiple storage or copying out notes multiple times to file under various different subject headings.

      Luhmann overcame both of these problems by eliminating categories and placing ideas closest to their most relevant neighbor and numbering them in a branching fashion. Doing this front loads some of the thinking and outlining work which would often be done later, though it's likely easier to do when one has the fullest context of a note after they've made it when it is still freshest in their mind. It also means that each note is linked to at least one other note in the system. This helps notes from being lost and allows a simpler indexing structure whereby one only needs to use a few index entries to get close to the neighborhood of an idea as most other related ideas are likely to be nearby within a handful or more of index cards.

      Going from index to branches on the tree is relatively easy and also serves the function of reminding one of interesting prior reading and ideas as one either searches for specific notes or searches for placing future notes.

      When it comes to ultimately producing papers, one's notes already have a pre-arranged sort of outline which can then be more easily copied over for publication, though one can certainly still use other cross-links and further rearranging if one wishes.

      Older methods focused on broad accretion of materials into subject ordered piles while Luhmann's practice not only aggregated them, but slowly and assuredly grew them into more orderly trains of thought as he collected.

      Link to: The description in Technik des wissenschaftlichen Arbeitens (section 1.2 Die Kartei) at https://hypothes.is/a/-qiwyiNbEe2yPmPOIojH1g which heavily highlights all the downsides, though it doesn't frame them that way.

    6. “multiple storage”

      Within the history of personal knowledge management, one was often faced with where to store their notes so that it would be easy to find and use them again. Often this was done using slip methods by means of "multiple storage" by making multiple copies and filing them under various headings. This copying process was onerous and breaks the modern database principle "don't repeat yourself" (DRY).

      Alternate means of doing this include storing it in one place and then linking that location to multiple subject headings in an index, though this may cause issues of remembering which subject heading when there are many appropriate potential synonyms.

      Modern digital methods allow one to store a note in one location and refer to it in multiple ways electronically as well as with aliases.

    1. Niklas Luhmann's Zettelkasten<br /> http://fremdlesen.de/?p=297

      cartoon of Luhmann's zettelkasten asking him for a beer

      Zettelkasten: Niklas hol' mir 'n Bier!<br /> Niklas Luhmann: Hatte ich doch bloss nie diessen ver-fluchten zettelkasten erfunden!

      translation:

      Niklas get me a beer!<br /> If only I had never invented that damn note box!

      Link to: Effort of maintaining a zettelkasten: https://hypothes.is/a/ahU8YqmoEe2tL79vZF9PvQ

    1. https://danallosso.substack.com/p/new-york-in-1687

      Source: "Condition of New York in 1687", by Thomas Dongan, in E. B. O’Callaghan, The Documentary History of the State of New-York (Albany, 1850), I, 101-117. https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.45493/page/n561/mode/2up

    2. I observe that they take no care of the conversion of their Slaves.

      In New York in 1687, Thomas Dongan reports that people didn't convert their slaves to their own religions.

    1. Marcel Proust on What Writing Is<br /> by William Benton

    2. Proust writes, with only the faintest irony, “Real life, life at last laid bare and illuminated—the only life in consequence which can be said to be really lived—is literature.”

      source? Swann's Way?

      Definitely from a literacy forward perspective!

    3. stayed with me

      "stayed with me" as a phrase to mean an idea so powerful and compelling that one regularly revisits it in their mind at various intervals without spending time on memorizing or actively trying to remember it.

    1. CAA Raises Eight to Agent by Mia Galuppo

      Kate Arenson, Jessica Brown, Sydney Chance, Emmett Gordon, Ron Jordan, Sydney Lipsitz, Peter Morton and Andi Wong have been upped.

      read on Fri 2022-12-09 7:10 AM

    1. https://www.edwinwenink.xyz/posts/59-writing_not_collecting/

    2. recording something does not prevent you from losing it. You lose it when you don’t actively use it.
    3. a very simple principle for note-taking: notes are things where I explain something to myself.
    4. What we ultimately should care about is being able to use our knowledge to produce something new, whatever that may be. To not merely reproduce you must understand the material. And understanding requires application, a hermeneutic principle that particularly Gadamer worked out extensively. If you really want to measure your level of understanding, you should try to apply or explain something to yourself or someone else.
    5. This points to perhaps the most dangerous pitfall of note-taking. It’s very tempting to convince yourself you are learning just because you are writing down - in the sense of passively recording - what someone else says or writes.
  2. www.edwinwenink.xyz www.edwinwenink.xyz
    1. https://www.edwinwenink.xyz/about/

    2. Here’s a basic hermeneutic insight for you: interpretation requires a form of application which renews the interpretandum by engaging it in a new context. Yes, “something in it anarchives” itself, but that’s also the seed for the old to enter into something new and to stay “alive”.
    3. This weblog is a mnemonic device.

      Blogs as digital commonplace books

    4. It is to burn with a passion. It is never to rest, interminably, from searching for the archive right where it slips away. It is to run after the archive, even if there’s too much of it, right where something in it anarchives itself. It is to have a compulsive, repetitive, and nostalgic desire for the archive, an irrepressible desire to return to the origin, a homesickness, a nostalgia for the return to the most archaic place of absolute commencement (Derrida, Archive Fever 1995, 57)
    5. Ha, I've been here before...

    1. About this time I met with an odd volume of the Spectator.[18] It was the third. I had never before seen any of them. I bought it, read it over and over, and was much delighted with it. I thought the writing excellent, and wished, if possible, to imitate it. With this view I took some of the papers, and, making short hints of the sentiment in each sentence, laid them by a few days, and then, without looking at the book, try'd to compleat the papers again, by expressing each hinted sentiment at length, and as fully as it had been expressed before, in any suitable words that should come to hand. Then I compared my Spectator with the original, discovered some of my faults, and corrected them. But I found I wanted a stock of words, or a readiness in recollecting and using them, which I thought I should have acquired before that time if I had gone on making verses; since the continual occasion for words of the same import, but of different length, to suit the measure, or of different sound for the rhyme, would have laid me under a constant necessity of searching for variety, and also have tended to fix that variety in my mind, and make me master of it. Therefore I took some of the tales and turned them into verse; and, after a time, when I had pretty well forgotten the prose, turned them back again. I also sometimes jumbled my collections of hints into confusion, and after some weeks endeavored to reduce them into the best order, before I began to form the full sentences and compleat the paper. This was to teach me method in the arrangement of thoughts. By comparing my work afterwards with the original, I discovered many faults and amended them; but I sometimes had the pleasure of fancying that, in certain particulars of small import, I had been lucky enough to improve the method of the language, and this encouraged me to think I might possibly in time come to be a tolerable English writer, of which I was extremely ambitious. My time for these exercises and for reading was at night, after work or before it began in the morning, or on Sundays, when I contrived to be in the printing-house alone, evading as much as I could the common attendance on public worship which my father used to exact of me when I was under his care, and which indeed I still thought a duty, thought I could not, as it seemed to me, afford time to practise it.

      Even the greats copied or loosely plagiarized the "masters" to learn how to write.The key is to continually work at it until you get to the point where it's yours and it is no longer plagiarism.

      This was also the general premise behind the plotline of the movie Finding Forrester.

    1. Logging some keywords here for later cross referencing.

    2. If you ask an elder about the work’s meaning, you may quickly find yourself enrolledin what Wardaman law man Yidumduma Bill Harney calls “Bush University”.
    3. Synopsis:

      A relatively basic chapter on Indigenous knowledge as it relates to astronomy and art. Several art and dance examples (including dance machines!) and descriptions of how they relate to folklore and knowledge.

      Some great examples to explore, though perhaps better done via the specific references.

      I do wish there was a more explicit association by means of overlay of the stories to the art for the first time Westerners.

    4. A modern artistic style emergedwith the development of Zamiyakal (dance machines) – mechanical devices whosemotions mimic important elements of the dance to enhance their meaning, some of whichare based on ancient rituals and warfare (Fernandez and Loban, 2009).
    5. Zugubal Mabaig (astronomers - literally translated to “Star Man“ or “ConstellationMan”
    6. the cosmos and Islanders’ cultural identity is the reason a star is featured at the centre ofthe Torres Strait Islander flag, designed by Bernard Namok in 1992.

      The close connection between

    7. Traditions about Usal and the Zugubals are based on the story of Thoegay, a fiercewarrior, Zogo Le, and skilled navigator who commanded a ship crew of thirteen: a firstmate named Kang and a crew of twelve men, called the Zugubals. The group embarkedon a long expedition at sea on a hot day. Before long, the crew began consuming theirrations in zest. They were warned by Kang to conserve their supplies, but before longthey had consumed the water for the entire trip, including Thoegay’s. When Thoegayrealised this, he flew into a fit of rage and killed the 12 men. Because the Zugubals werealso spiritual beings, they could not die, so Thoegay cast them into the sky as two groupsof six stars: Usal (the six brightest stars of the Pleiades) and Utimal (the six brightest starsof Orion’s belt and scabbard). Thoegay then ascended into the opposite side of the sky,taking Kang and his canoe with him. He can be seen as a large constellation holding aspear in his left hand (the Southern Cross) and a Eugenia fruit in his right hand (theconstellation Corvus), standing at the bow of his celestial canoe (Scorpius) with Kang(Antares; Alpha Scorpii) sitting at the stern (Robinson 2016a).

      This is a great story, but interestingly, without the appropriate art to explicitly map the idea onto, it's much harder to remember or to help those unaccustomed to these ideas. Presumably the audience of this book doesn't/wouldn't.

      A simple drawing here or an overlay onto an existing image would be immensely helpful. Perhaps the Robinson reference has one? (it doesn't)

    8. The linocut medium is especially prevalent in the Torres Strait,where a handful of pioneering artists have mastered the art of printmaking (Robinson2001)
    9. The story on canvassymbolises the importance of traditional law, explains the transmutation of the Moon,and exposes the raw power of human emotion. T

      Notice how in the story of Garnkiny, the Moon Man, and Dawool, that the power of emotion is used as a means of strengthening not only the story, but the memory of the other associated elements.

    10. As in any science class, you learn how tointerpret and apply what you observe. Elders refer to this process as “reading the stars.”

      This idea is closely related to "talking rocks" and seems a very apt parallel.

    11. Art is often focused on aesthetic, but more importantly, it is avisual embodiment of knowledge.
    12. And yes, it is also very pretty.

      understated quote of the day

    13. Hamacher, Duane W. “The Art of Star Knowledge.” In 65,000 Years: A Short History of Australian Art, edited by Judith Ryan and Marcia Langton. Melbourne, Australia: University of Melbourne Press, 2023. https://www.academia.edu/96537139/The_Art_of_Star_Knowledge.

    1. | physics/mathematics | Classical Physics | Quantum Mechanics |<br /> |---|---|---|<br /> | State Space | fields satisfying equations of laws<br>- the state is given by a point in the space | vector in a complex vector space with a Hermitian inner product (wavefunctions) |<br /> | Observables | functions of fields<br>- usually differential equations with real-valued solutions | self-adjoint linear operators on the state space<br>- some confusion may result when operators don't commute; there are usually no simple (real-valued) numerical solutions |

    2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qGRPOzMWnA

      Watched the first 46:39 on 2023-02-02. His personal communication style is a bit off-putting, but remedied slightly by watching at 1.25 or 1.5x speed. He's broadly covering pieces directly from his text which seems much more compact and elegant. Questions from the viewers in real time is a bit muddy with respect to understanding what they're saying.

      I gave up on the video due to streaming issues.

    3. One of the problems in approaching quantum gravity is the choice for how to best represent it mathematically. Most of quantum mechanics is algebraic in nature but gravity has a geometry component which is important. (restatement)


      This is similar to the early 20th century problem of how to best represent quantum mechanics: as differential equations or using group theory/Lie algebras?

      This prompts the question: what other potential representations might also work?

      Could it be better understood/represented using Algebraic geometry or algebraic topology as perspectives?

      [handwritten notes from 2023-02-02]

    1. Only then do I start writing. Compared with the labour of making, sorting and arranging notes, this is a relatively speedy business. But it is followed by a much more time-consuming task, that of travelling round the libraries to check the references in my footnotes, only too many of which, thanks to poor handwriting, carelessness and an innate tendency to ‘improve’ what I have read, turn out to be either slightly wrong or taken out of context.That one hit a little close to home. lol.

      We should also acknowledge that when revisiting some of our references again later, we're doing so with a dramatically increased knowledge and context of a particular problem which we may not have had when we first read a piece or took the notes.

      Not many here are writing or talking about these small sorts of insights into learning and writing or generating new work. Perhaps we should do more to acknowledge this hermeneutic cycle in our work?


      reply to u/stjeromeslibido at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/10wj6tv/comment/j7uexbk/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

    2. What are your two favourite articles, videos or books on the zettelkasten process?

      reply to u/stjeromeslibido at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/10wj6tv/what_are_your_two_favourite_articles_videos_or/

      My favorite video for its utter brevity and compactness combined with complexity and trueness to the historical record, not to mention the spectacular production value - The Process of Writing World History of Design, 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kxyy0THLfuI.

      Runner up video, which I love for the supreme simplicity of the method—literally slips and a box - “The Speed Traders/Mandela/Eminem.” 60 Minutes. CBS, October 10, 2010. https://youtu.be/pPXBwy3JgVo?t=64

      My favorite article for its practicality and some studied perspective - Thomas, Keith. “Diary: Working Methods.” London Review of Books, June 10, 2010. https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v32/n11/keith-thomas/diary.

    3. gxabbo
    1. Zettelkasten and the big picture .t3_10xqd30._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; }

      This question calls to mind that I haven't seen the word consilience in this space at all. Search pulls up only one post: https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/zg80qc/comprehensible_texts_productivity_and_again/

      Where does consilience sit with respect to the use of a zettelkasten?

    2. Rookie question: Part of my knowledge database is based on the Zettelkasten method, i.e. I have concept-oriented, atomic notes that are linked to each other. I don't, however, however use IDs and neither the Folgezettel method.

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

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

    1. Should you copy a method just because Luhmann used it? No, indeed it doesn’t make sense to copy a method just because it appears sexy. One should find the best fitting method for himself.

      Some in the current zettelkasten space come close to this (Bob Doto comes to mind) while others seem to be more dogmatic. I think people generally ultimately do this in practice, but there is still a lingering sense of orthodoxy.

    2. I recently was invited by the Niklas-Luhmann-Archiv research group, to give an overview of my Zettelkasten and discuss aspects of the technical implementation of Luhmann’s Zettelkasten method.

      So nice to see a blog post specifically talk about "Luhmann's Zettelkasten method" rather than a more generic zettelkasten method as being Luhmann's. Notice the 2015 date before the "fame" had caught on in the blogosphere's productivity porn space closer to 2018.

    1. Chris, Chris... concepts and propositions are not nebulous dictionary definitions unless you're joining the Frankfurt School :) :).Click here to get some clarity about these basic terms as applied to learning: https://cmap.ihmc.us/docs/concept.phpAbout systems and emergence, I prefer Mario Bunge's book: https://www.amazon.com/Emergence-Convergence-Qualitative-Knowledge-Philosophy/dp/1442628219Irony? No way. You are always bringing new information about the historical roots of Zettelkasten. Keep doing that, please! Thanks!

      reply to u/New-Investigator-623 at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/10r6uwp/comment/j784srg/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

      I meant nebulous for my initial purposes. They obviously have very concrete meanings in more specific contexts, though even there they can vary. I saw your other post on concept maps where I imagine they matter more; some of that reminds me about some of my initial explorations into category theory (math) a few years back. I'm curious what the overlap of those two looks like...

      On systems, complexity, and emergence, I'm probably closer to the school of thought and applications coming out of the Santa Fe Institute. I'll have to look at Bunge's work there, I've only glanced at some of his math/physics work but never delved into his philosophical material.

    1. Suppose that we were asked to arrange the followingin two categories—distance, mass, electric force, entropy, beauty, melody.I think there are the strongest grounds for placingentropy alongside beauty and melody and not with thefirst three.
    2. Eddington, Arthur Stanley. The Nature of the Physical World. Cambridge University Press, 1928. http://archive.org/details/b29928011.

    1. Mattei, Clara E. The Capital Order: How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way to Fascism. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2022. https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo181707138.html.

      I've always wondered why the United States never used the phrase austerity to describe political belt tightening.

    1. the essay Of the Plurality of Worlds (1853), in which he argued against the probability of life on other planets
    2. Whewell was one of the Cambridge dons whom Charles Darwin met during his education there, and when Darwin returned from the Beagle voyage he was directly influenced by Whewell, who persuaded Darwin to become secretary of the Geological Society of London. The title pages of On the Origin of Species open with a quotation from Whewell's Bridgewater Treatise about science founded on a natural theology of a creator establishing laws:[33] But with regard to the material world, we can at least go so far as this—we can perceive that events are brought about not by insulated interpositions of Divine power, exerted in each particular case, but by the establishment of general laws.
    3. Whewell was prominent not only in scientific research and philosophy but also in university and college administration. His first work, An Elementary Treatise on Mechanics (1819), cooperated with those of George Peacock and John Herschel in reforming the Cambridge method of mathematical teaching.

      What was the specific change in mathematical teaching instituted by Whewell, Peacock, and Herschel in An Elementary Treatise on Mechanics (1819)?

    4. In Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences Whewell was the first to use the term "consilience" to discuss the unification of knowledge between the different branches of learning.
    5. His best-known works are two voluminous books that attempt to systematize the development of the sciences, History of the Inductive Sciences (1837) and The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, Founded Upon Their History (1840, 1847, 1858–60). While the History traced how each branch of the sciences had evolved since antiquity, Whewell viewed the Philosophy as the "Moral" of the previous work as it sought to extract a universal theory of knowledge through history. In the latter, he attempted to follow Francis Bacon's plan for discovery. He examined ideas ("explication of conceptions") and by the "colligation of facts" endeavored to unite these ideas with the facts and so construct science.[11] This colligation is an "act of thought", a mental operation consisting of bringing together a number of empirical facts by "superinducing" upon them a conception which unites the facts and renders them capable of being expressed in general laws.[22]
    6. He corresponded with many in his field and helped them come up with neologisms for their discoveries. Whewell coined, among other terms, scientist,[2] physicist, linguistics, consilience, catastrophism, uniformitarianism, and astigmatism;[3] he suggested to Michael Faraday the terms electrode, ion, dielectric, anode, and cathode.[4][5]
    1. Rhetoric of encomium

      How do institutions form around notions of merit?

      Me: what about blurbs as evidence of implied social networks? Who blurbs whom? How are these invitations sent/received and by whom?

      diachronic: how blurbs evolve over time

      Signals, can blurbs predict: - the field of the work - gender - other

      Emergence or decrease of signals with respect to time

      Imitation of styles and choices. - how does this happen? contagion - I'm reminded of George Mathew Dutcher admonition:

      Imitation to be avoided. Avoid the mannerisms and personal peculiarities of method or style of well-known writers, such as Carlyle or Macaulay. (see: https://hypothes.is/a/ROR3VCDEEe2sZNOy4rwRgQ )

      Systematic studies of related words within corpora. (this idea should have a clever name) word2vec, word correlations, information theory

      How does praise work?

      metaphors within blurbs (eg: light, scintillating, brilliant, new lens, etc.)

    2. My blurb should have a blurb, it was so good. —Simon DeDeo (12:10)

    3. Rebecca Spang: Stuff and Money in the Time of the French Revolution (book)

      Part of Sprang's process (per conversation with DeDeo) is reading each line out loud and revising it until it sounds good.

    4. Competing interpretations of ideas within the humanities. Ideas within the humanities can conflict with each other.

      comparing/contrasting the humanities with respect to the sciences.

      The humanities are interested in "the exceptional" or what is unique.


      me: Idea of "new" in the humanities reflects a bit of the idea of "novel" in the sciences.

    5. Two traditions within the humanities: - Continental tradition: continuity with the sciences. - American tradition: reflection and interpretation

    6. What makes for good work in the humanities?

    7. "drawing together of distant phenomena" which William Whewell, master of trinity college, called conscilience (coinage).

      (3:50)

    1. Consilience see https://sci-hub.se/10.1016/j.tics.2020.09.013.

      Did they just publicly link to an article via SciHub?! This is a first for me.

    2. Sign (informal)   Informally, a more general case of a signal in the informal sense.

      How "informal" are we really being here?! informal 3x in 14 words....

    3. If the jargon points to a coherent phenomenon, it can be very useful.

      When jargon or argot points to "coherent phenomenon" or provides a taxonomic purpose, it can be useful beyond its alternate function of gatekeeping areas of thought.

    4. These added elements form a frame for the main text, and can change the reception of a text or its interpretation by the public”. Blurbs are part of the paratext.

      Paratext can be more important than the text itself as it's used to frame or encourage the ultimate work. Paratext can be an inviting lobby that welcomes the guest in or scares them away.

    5. “zeugma” is the use of the same word in two different senses in the same sentence: “he caught a fish, and a cold”.
    1. Prof. Joseph Novak (Cornell) developed conceptual maps based on David Ausubel's subsumption (aka meaningful learning) theory and Piaget's concept of conceptual schemes. Conceptual maps have been proven successful across all levels of education worldwide (check Google Scholar).
    2. Zettelkasten can be described as a collection of conceptual maps in a written format.

      What are the connections between zettelkasten and conceptual maps?

      How are they different/similar to Tony Buzan's mind maps?

    1. Is it worth it to create a Zettelkasten? .t3_10w5rvr._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; }

      https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/10w5rvr/is_it_worth_it_to_create_a_zettelkasten/

      What can zettelkasten/card indexes do or not do?<br /> Can they be used for learning?<br /> What are they for?

    1. Stettler, Lucia. “Geheime Gästekartei überlebt Hotelbrand – und birgt Zündstoff.” Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen (SRF), April 8, 2021, sec. Kultur. https://www.srf.ch/kultur/gesellschaft-religion/brisanter-fund-geheime-gaestekartei-ueberlebt-hotelbrand-und-birgt-zuendstoff.

      <small><cite class='h-cite via'> <span class='p-author h-card'>ManuelRodriguez331</span> in Advantages of Analog note taking : Zettelkasten (<time class='dt-published'>02/07/2023 08:33:25</time>)</cite></small>

    2. https://www.srf.ch/kultur/gesellschaft-religion/brisanter-fund-geheime-gaestekartei-ueberlebt-hotelbrand-und-birgt-zuendstoff

      cc: @remikalir: Interesting example here of a historical collection of business files annotated by hotel staff used in a digital humanities perspective for semantic shift and tracking antisemitism over time.

      Published book:<br /> Hechenblaikner, Lois, Andrea Kühbacher, and Rolf Zollinger. Keine Ostergrüsse mehr!: Die geheime Gästekartei des Grand Hotel Waldhaus in Vulpera. 3rd ed. Zürich: Edition Patrick Frey, 2021.

    3. Wie durch ein Wunder blieben vier Holzkisten mit hochbrisantem Inhalt verschont. Sie waren zum Zeitpunkt des Infernos in einem anderen Gebäude eingelagert. Sie enthielten 20'000 Gästekarten, die Concierges und Rezeptionisten zwischen 1920 und 1960 heimlich geführt hatten.

      srf.ch/kultur/gesellschaft-religion/brisanter-fund-geheime-gaestekartei-ueberlebt-hotelbrand-und-birgt-zuendstoff

      Google translate:

      four wooden boxes with highly explosive contents were spared. They were stored in a different building at the time of the inferno. They contained 20,000 guest cards that concierges and receptionists had kept secretly between 1920 and 1960.

      The Grandhotel Waldhaus burned down in 1989, but saved from the inferno were 20,000 guest cards with annotations about them that were compiled between 1920 and 1960.

    4. At the Grandhotel Waldhaus in Vulpera, Switzerland concierges and receptionists maintained a business-focused zettelkasten of cards. In addition to the typical business function these cards served denoting names, addresses, and rooms, the staff also made annotations commenting on the guests and their proclivities.

      The old Grandhotel Waldhaus in Vulpera attracted the noble and the rich from all over the world to the Lower Engadine. R GULER

      1:

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      6:

    5. Lois Hechenblaikner, Andrea Kühbacher, Rolf Zollinger (Hrsg.): «Keine Ostergrüsse mehr! Die geheime Gästekartei des Grandhotel Waldhaus in Vulpera». Edition Patrick Frey, 2021.Der reich bebilderte Band bietet eine spannende Reise in ein Stück Schweizer Tourismusgeschichte: Die Herausgeber haben die 20'000 Karteikarten aus den Jahren 1920-1960 sehr sorgfältig kuratiert, nach Themen gegliedert und in einen grösseren, gesellschaftlichen Zusammenhang gestellt.Die Leserinnen und Leser erfahren viel über die Klientel im Hotel Waldhaus, zum Teil sogar in kleinen biografischen Porträts; und sie können an konkreten Beispielen verfolgen, wie sich der Sprachgebrauch der Concierges im Laufe der Zeit verändert – gerade zum Beispiel im Zusammenhang mit jüdischen Gästen.

      Google Translate:

      Lois Hechenblaikner, Andrea Kühbacher, Rolf Zollinger (editors): «No more Easter greetings! The secret guest file of the Grandhotel Waldhaus in Vulpera". Edition Patrick Frey, 2021.

      The richly illustrated volume offers an exciting journey into a piece of Swiss tourism history: the editors have very carefully curated the 20,000 index cards from the years 1920-1960, structured them by topic and placed them in a larger, social context.

      The readers learn a lot about the clientele in the Hotel Waldhaus, sometimes even in small biographical portraits; and they can use concrete examples to follow how the concierge's use of language has changed over time - especially in connection with Jewish guests, for example.

    6. War eine Dame häufig an der Bar anzutreffen, nannte man sie hinter vorgehaltener Hand «Miss Martini».

      Google translate:

      If a lady was often to be found at the bar, she was called “Miss Martini” behind closed doors.

      Use by hotel staff of rich clientele


      Link to the idea of nominative determinism as somewhat related.

    7. Die Klientel bewegte sich unter ihresgleichen und hatte keine Ahnung, dass der höfliche Concierge an der Rezeption heimlich seinem Ärger Luft machte – mittels giftiger Kommentare: «Ganz grober Kerl; treibt es arg mit den Weibern», «Grosser Protz à la Neureich», «Rappenspalter», «blöde Ziege» oder «Beisszange».

      Google translate:

      The clientele moved among their own kind and had no idea the polite concierge at the front desk was secretly venting his anger with venomous comments: 'Very rude fellow; does it badly with the women", "Big Protz à la Neureich", "Rappensplitter", "Stupid Goat" or "Tongs".

    1. https://cathieleblanc.com/2023/02/05/choosing-learning-materials/

      Cathie notices that students skip materials about the theoretical "why" of assignments to get to the simpler assignments.

      This seems to be an issue with some in the personal knowledge management space who want to jump into the technology, the terminology, and moving things about without always understanding what they're doing or why. Many end up giving up as a result. Few books provide reasoning behind the terminologies or building blocks they describe to provide the theoretical why. As a result some may figure it out from long, fraught practice, but it's likely that more are not seeing the results they expect and thus giving up.

    1. I started analog 08/09, went digital 09/10, went software-agnostic 11. All dates within 6month margin of error.
    2. Current count: 12.258

      https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/wjzjaz/comment/ik7k2q6/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

      u/FastSascha reported 12,258 notes ("cards" on 2022-08-13), which presuming a start around 2013 (the beginning of zettelkasten.de) gives him 3.73 notes per day.

      Update:<br /> Sascha reports starting analog notes around 08/09 then he went digital 09/10, and software-agnostic in 11.

      This gives him 12,258 notes over 14 years (5,110 days) or 2.4 notes per day.

    1. With a category you can just bypass idea-connection and jump right to storage.

      Categorizing ideas (and or indexing them for search) can be useful for quick bulk storage, but the additional work of linking ideas to each other with in a Luhmann-esque zettelkasten can be more useful in the long term in developing ideas.

      Storage by category means that ideas aren't immediately developed explicitly, but it means that that work is pushed until some later time at which the connections must be made to turn them into longer works (articles, papers, essays, books, etc.)

    1. https://writing.bobdoto.computer/how-to-use-folgezettel-in-your-zettelkasten-everything-you-need-to-know-to-get-started/

    2. A long alphanumeric ID is an immediate indicator that a train of thought has been developing.
    3. Using an alphanumeric identification system for your notes is a workout. By having to situate new notes among previously imported ones, folgezettel forces at least one connection between ideas. It's mental calisthenics,8 acting as a check against capture bloat—that is, importing "all the things."

      Those who practice analog note taking have a high level of friction which prevents them from over-collecting (or "capture bloat", importing "all the things", or "collector's fallacy") ideas, which may not rise to a certain level of value. Beyond this, the requirement to find at least one other note to link each idea to provides a smaller hurdle against these hoarding practices.

    1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incremental_reading

      Incremental reading is spaced parallel reading of multiple sources with note taking and spaced repetition.


      It's not far from how I read and take notes myself, though I place less emphasis on the spaced repetition piece as I tend to run across things naturally within my note collection anyway.


      One of the major potential benefits of incremental reading (not mentioned in the Wikipedia article; is it in Wozniak's work?) is the increase of combinatorial creativity created by mixing a variety of topics simultaneously.

      There is also likely a useful diffuse thinking effect happening between reading sessions.