Essay Idea: Moving beyond collecting: how to begin turning your bookmarks into something useful

Before he even begins the enterprise, Doto starts off by giving pride of place to a quote by Sertillanges admonishing the reader to beware of over-collecting.

https://hypothes.is/a/tGF6povnEe-bSc_BdDPn5Q

If you collect everything, you collect nothing.

for - reality as quantum - fallacy of misplaced concreteness - Frederico Faggin

( ~ 18:00)

Dr. Kurt regurgitates second Peter 3:3-4 where there are "scholars" who knowingly reject creation and the Bible on the merits of the past, absolutism; what happens now is how it has always been.

This is a logical fallacy also described by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in "The Black Swan"... Absence of Proof does not mean Proof of Absence. And also the fact that one cannot predict the future based on the past in all situations, especially Black Swan's... The Flood was actually a Black Swan (it was impossible to predict, and had catastrophic consequences)

for - key insight - Whitehead's fallacy of misplaced concreteness - adjacency - fallacy of misplaced concreteness - climate denialism - mistrust in science - polycrisis - Deep Humanity

• the worry for Goethe and whitehead is that
  • we forget sometimes with the typical scientific method that = we can only ever apply concepts derived from our empirical experience
• and so if we're trying to understand experience as if it were really
  • an illusion produced by
    • collisions of particles or
    • brain chemistry or
    • something that we can never in principle experience
• what we're doing is
  • applying concepts derived from our experience
  • to an imagined realm that
    • we think is beyond experience
• but it's not
• This is Whitehead's fallacy of misplaced concreteness.

key insight - Whitehead's fallacy of misplaced concreteness - This helps explain the rising rejection of science from the masses. I didn't realize there was already a name for the phenomena responsible for the emergence of collective denialist behavior

adjacency - between - fallacy of misplaced concreteness - increasing collective rejection of science in the polycrisis - adjacency statement - Whitehead's fallacy of misplaced concreteness exactly names and describes - the growing trend of a populus rejection of climate science (climate denialism), COVID vaccine denialism, exponential growth of conspiracy theory and misinformation - because of the inability for non-elites and elites alike to concretize abstractions the same way that elite scientists and policy-makers do - Research papers have shown that the knowledge deficit model which was relied upon for decades was not accurate representation of climate denialism - Yet, I would hold that Whitehead's fallacy of misplaced concretism plays a role here - This mistrust in science is rooted in this fallacy as well as progress traps - Deep Humanity is quite steeped in Whitehead's process relational ontology and the fallacy of misplaced concreteness requires mass education for a sustainable transition - This abstract concreteness is everywhere: - Shift from Ptolemy's geocentric worldview to the Copernican heliocentric worldview - Now we are told that the sun is not fixed, but is itself rotating around the Milky Way with billions of other galaxies - scientific techniques like radiocarbon dating for dating objects in deep time - climate science - atomic physics - quantum physics - distrust of vaccines, which we cannot see - Timothy Morton's hyperobjects is related to this fallacy of misplaced concreteness. - "Seeing is believing" but we cannot directly experience the ultra large or ultra small. So we have scientific language that draws parallels to that, but it is not a direct experience. - - Those not steeped in years or decades of science have the very real option of feeling that the concepts are fallacies and don't hold as much weight as that which they can experience directly, even though those concepts have obviously produced artefacts that they use, like cellphones, the internet and airplanes.

This is a restatement that a particular system should be customized to its users.

There is potential that a system could be applied universally, but it requires a very large amount of data and metadata to suit the needs of a greater number of people and use cases. It also requires a reasonable amount of work in practical use to make it operate as expected.

The Mundaneum was likely close on paper and Google comes close to this, but still isn't perfect.

quote via ¶76 and 92

Passion of the Nerd aka @popotoproductions3015 in The Toolbox Fallacy

This wasn't quite the toolbox fallacy definition I expected, but was a larger philosophical framing of a smaller version specific to getting things done (GTD).

Many people move from tool to tool hoping the next one will somehow "fix" things. In reality, it's having a tool and USING IT which creates progress.

Remember that it's rare that supposed innovation will be the fix, but picking a road and traveling down it will at least get you somewhere.

highlights link to this video: https://youtu.be/sz4YqwH_6D0

via https://www.reddit.com/r/gtd/comments/1b984sc/fellow_gtders_which_tools_do_you_use_to_track/

Point: there is no "authority" on which spelling is correct, because normal people using the language are the ones who decide

see: https://hypothes.is/a/rYYCXsbDEe6fpR-_EMl5Fw

see: https://hypothes.is/a/rYYCXsbDEe6fpR-_EMl5Fw

It is incredibly difficult to plan in advance what to collect for any zettelkasten, even when its scope is tightly defined, like it would have been for the Oxford English Dictionary.

reply to u/chasemac_ at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/19ep9rc/comment/kjempeu/

I'm curious from where you draw your "original purpose" claim? This presupposes having identified a zettelkasten progenitor who has clearly made such a statement. (If you're thinking Luhmann, you're missing the mark by centuries. And even if you're thinking Luhmann, where did he say this specifically?) While Konrad Gessner seems to have been an early progenitor in 1548, the broader idea goes much further back. Even in the early days of the commonplace book, the primary analogy was using them as "storehouses" for collecting treasure (thesaurus) aka knowledge or wisdom.

Even Luhmann's framing of his zettelkasten as his "second memory" was old by the time he wrote it:

In a short academic dissertation on the art of excerpts, Andreas Stübel described the card index as a ‘secondary and subsidiary memory’ (‘memoria secundaria and subsidiaria’), summing up in just three words the dilemma scholars had been struggling with for two centuries with respect to the use of commonplace books. As far as I know, Stübel was the first among contemporaries to speak of secondary memory. —Alberto Cevolini in “Where Does Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index Come From?” Erudition and the Republic of Letters 3, no. 4 (October 24, 2018): 390–420. https://doi.org/10.1163/24055069-00304002.

If we look even further back we read Seneca the Younger in Epistulae morales, writing positively about collecting with respect to classic rhetoric:

"We should follow, men say, the example of the bees, who flit about and cull the flowers that are suitable for producing honey, and then arrange and assort in their cells all that they have brought in;

Without a clear originator, I might suggest that historically the first purpose was for memory followed closely by learning and then accumulating wisdom and knowledge (sententiae). Using them for output only came much later.

Why is there so much bad ink in the zettelkasten space about about "collecting"? (a la the "collector's fallacy") If you collect nothing, you'll have nothing. You have to start somewhere. Collecting happens first before anything useful comes out of the enterprise. Where are all these "people [who] do nothing but boast about the amount of cards in their box"? I'm not seeing lots of evidence of them in fora or online certainly. Show us your collection of examples of those to back up the claim. Are there index card hoarders out there who honestly have tens of thousands of notes with absolutely no purpose? I suspect it's rare.

If you're a collector, collect away! Take solace in the words of historian Keith Thomas:

Unfortunately, such diverse topics as literacy, numeracy, gestures, jokes, sexual morality, personal cleanliness or the treatment of animals, though central to my concerns, are hard to pursue systematically. They can’t be investigated in a single archive or repository of information. Progress depends on building up a picture from a mass of casual and unpredictable references accumulated over a long period. That makes them unsuitable subjects for a doctoral thesis, which has to be completed in a few years. But they are just the thing for a lifetime’s reading. So when I read, I am looking out for material relating to several hundred different topics.

One of the primary problems with note taking in most of the mid-twentieth century (and potentially well before, particularly as framed in most educational settings) was that students would take notes, potentially review them once or twice for a test, but then not have easy access to them for later review or reuse.

People collected piles of notes without any ability to reuse or review them. Perhaps we should reframe the collector's fallacy as this: collection without reuse has dramatically decreasing returns. Certainly there may be some small initial benefit in writing it down as a means of sense making, but not reviewing it past a short period of two weeks or even several months and not being able to reuse it in the long term is a travesty, especially in a world of information overload.

I like that she's explicit about not migrating over all of one's highlights and annotations after the fact. Few people focus on this piece which is highly important and many beginners fall trap to thinking that they need to write down, save, and link everything.

What if the initial exercise of making the fleeting note was enough to have a baseline knowledge of a thing that really isn't going to be used again? Save the time and effort for the really important ideas. Build these.

An annotation like 2+2=4 is useful in 2nd grade and will be remembered/used for your lifetime. It's so ubiquitously commonplace that it doesn't need to be commonplaced into your zettelkasten. Similarly for basic ideas that anyone in a particular sub-field will already know. Delve deeper for building true insights.

This is related to the idea of collector's fallacy, but is subtly different from the usual framing. It has to do with focus against the commonplace.

The flip side of the collector's fallacy....

Strong agree with Bob here.

Quite often collecting can create huge value in slowly building a substrate for serendipity to do its work. Some of the key to overcoming this is in the affordances of one's system to find or discover these tidbits in one's collection.

(1:21:20-1:39:40) Chris Aldrich describes his hypothes.is to Zettelkasten workflow. Prevents Collector's Fallacy, still allows to collect a lot. Open Bucket vs. Closed Bucket. Aldrich mentions he uses a common place book using hypothes.is which is where all his interesting highlights and annotations go to, unfiltered, but adequately tagged. This allows him to easily find his material whenever necessary in the future. These are digital. Then the best of the best material that he's interested in and works with (in a project or writing sense?) will go into his Zettelkasten and become fully fledged. This allows to maintain a high gold to mud (signal to noise) ratio for the Zettelkasten. In addition, Aldrich mentions that his ZK is more of his own thoughts and reflections whilst the commonplace book is more of other people's thoughts.

people are great at the collecting and categorizing pieces, but we're less good at going back in and connecting or expressing and this is where the value increases exponentially

u/ittspelledsindi

Luhmann felt that quotations aren't worth collecting unless they were "exceptionally concise, and for your own thoughts."

There's a danger to using digital tools to help with Higher Order Thinking; namely, it offloads precious cognitive load, optimized intrinsic load, which is used to build schemas and structural knowledge which is essential for mastery. Another danger is that digital tools often make falling for the collector's fallacy easier, meaning that you horde and horde information, which makes you think you have knowledge, while in fact, you simply have (maybe related) information, not mastery. The analog way prevents this, as it forces you to carefully evaluate the value of an idea and decide whether or not it's worth it to spend time on writing it and integrating it into a line of thought. Evaluation/Analysis is forced in an analog networked thinking tool, which is a form of Higher Order Learning/Thinking, as they are in the higher orders of Bloom's Taxonomy/Hierarchy.

This is also true for AI. Always carefully evaluate whether or not a tool is worth using, like a farmer. (Deep Work, Cal Newport).

Instead, use a tool like mindmapping, the GRINDE way, which is digital, for learning... Or the Antinet Zettelkasten by Scott Scheper, which is analog, for research.

This is fundamental. No research project has no quotes. Sometimes the words of the author is just better than anything that one could say.

(p. 125)

Collecting for collections' sake is a fools errand. Collecting to connect and create is where the magic happens.

Johnson's articles on DT were a great inspiration when I fiddled with the app. Surprise/serendipity is a moment he shares with the Zettelkasten Method -- but he focuses too much on finding new stuff in original sources (PDFs, web clippings), so you figured that out all right: his popular approach only makes you suffer from Collector's Fallacy more and more. Christian Tietze 2015-11-16 https://zettelkasten.de/posts/luedeckes-follow-up/#comment-2362116722

Christian Tietze credits Stephen Johnson for inspiration with respect to his DevonThink work and writing but accuses him of popularizing an approach which tends to draw people into the "collector's fallacy". Johnson's more traditional commonplace book approach seems to have worked incredibly well for him and allowed him to have a rather large output of books, articles, and blog posts over the years.

Tietze also suggests that the surprise/serendipity portion of the system works well for both the commonplace book and Luhmann-esque zettelkasten approaches.

optimization-procrastination trap is related to shiny object syndrome - the idea of tweaking one's system constantly

perfect tool trap - guess what? there isn't one

Sam Matla talks about the collector's fallacy in a negative light, and for many/most, he might be right. But for some, collecting examples and evidence of particular things is crucially important. The key is to have some idea of what you're collecting and why.

Historians collecting small facts over time may seem this way, but out of their collection can emerge patterns which otherwise would never have been seen.

cf: Keith Thomas article

concrete examples of this to show the opposite?

Relationship to the idea of AI coming up with black box solutions via their own method of diffuse thinking

The second reference to "archive fever" in almost as many weeks.

• Derrida, Jacques, and Eric Prenowitz. Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.

There's some truth and falsity here...

What does the collector's fallacy really relate to?

If you're collecting material you're not processing and either linking/tagging for future active use, then yes, it's definitely a fallacy. Collecting articles and tidbits that you don't read and don't use, at least in the moment is a massive waste.

But if, instead, you're collecting tidbits of context and examples over time, say like historian Keith Thomas (? double check this reference, but I think it was him in his essay Working Methods (LRB, 2010)) describes, and then linking them into some sort of larger thesis or puzzling out some pattern between and amongst those examples, then you're collecting correctly and productively.

!- key point : net zero fallacy - a way for incumbent fossil fuel industry and allies to continue burning fossil fuels well into 2050 - there is no net zero plan that does not include large amounts of fossil fuels - and burning these are inconsistent with staying under 1.5 Deg C

The time it takes to make notes is an important investment. If it's not worth the time, what were you actually doing? Evergreen/permanent notes are only useful if you're going to use them later in some sort of output. Beyond this they may be useful for later search.

But if you're not going to search them or review them, which the writer says they didn't, then what was the point?

Have a reason for taking a note is of supreme importance. Otherwise, you're just collecting scraps...

People who have this problem shouldn't be using digital tools they should be spending even more time writing by hand. This will force them into being more parsimonious.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/zl2hwh/is_the_concept_of_personal_knowledge_management/

This essay seems to be more about shiny object syndrome. The writer doesn't seem to realize any problems they've created. Way too much digging into tools and processes. Note the switching and trying out dozens of applications. (Dear god, why??!!) Also looks like a lot of collecting digitally for no clear goal. As a result of this sort of process it appears that many of the usual affordances were completely blocked, unrealized, and thus useless.

No clear goal in mind for anything other than a nebulous being "better".

One goal was to "retain what I read", but nothing was actively used toward this stated goal. Notes can help a little, but one would need mnemonic methods and possibly spaced repetition neither of which was mentioned.

A list of specific building blocks within the methods and expected outcomes would have helped this person (and likely others), but to my knowledge this doesn't exist as a thing yet though bits and pieces are obviously floating around.<br /> TK: building blocks of note taking

Evidence here for what we'll call the "perfect system fallacy", an illness which often goes hand in hand with "shiny object syndrome".

Too many systems bound together will create so much immediate complexity that there isn't any chance for future complexity or emergence as the proximal system is doomed to failure. One should instead strive for immediate and excessive simplicity which might then build with time, use, and practice into something more rich and complex. This idea seems to be either completely missed or lost in the online literature and especially the blogosphere and social media.

people had come up with solutions Sadly, despite thousands of variations on some patterns, people don't seem to be able to settle on either "one solution" or their "own solution" and in trying to do everything all at once they become lost, set adrift, and lose focus on any particular thing they've got as their own goal.

In this particular instance, "retaining what they read" was totally ignored. Worse, they didn't seem to ever review over their notes of what they read.

I was pondering about different note types, fleeting, permanent, different organisational systems, hierarchical, non-hierarchical, you know the deal.

Why worry about all the types of notes?! This is the problem with these multi-various definitions and types. They end up confusing people without giving them clear cut use cases and methods by which to use them. They get lost in definitional overload and aren't connecting the names with actual use cases and affordances.

I often felt lost about what to takes notes on and what not to take notes on.

Why? Most sources seem to have reasonable guidance on this. Make notes on things that interest you, things which surprise you.

They seem to have gotten lost in all the other moving pieces. Perhaps advice on this should come first, again in the middle, and a third time at the end of these processes.

I'm curious how deeply they read sources and which sources they read to come to these conclusions? Did they read a lot of one page blog posts with summarizations or did they read book length works by Ahrens, Forte, Allosso, Scheper, et al? Or did they read all of these and watch lots of crazy videos as well. Doing it "all" will likely lead into the shiny object syndrome as well.

This seems to outline a list of specifically what not to do and how not to approach these systems and "popular" blog posts that are an inch deep and a mile wide rather than some which have more depth.

Worst of all, I spent so much time taking notes and figuring out a personal knowledge management system that I neglected the things I actually wanted to learn about. And even though I kind of always knew this, I kept falling into the same trap.

Definitely a symptom of shiny object syndrome!

Quote timestamp 01:26:36 from Obsidian Book Club checkin on 2022-12-04

Context: talking about note taking methods; note that the autogenerated transcription actually misses the word as eclectoamania which is interesting in itself as a potential word.

cliptomania<br /> definition: an excessive enthusiasm or desire to clip interesting material into one's notes. It often manifests itself in online settings where digital tools allow one to easily highlight and keep information including a URL or permalink to revisit that information in the future; a portmanteau of "clip" and "mania"

Examples of tools that allow or encourage this collection of material include Evernote and Hypothes.is.

a phenomenon which is related to the so-called "collector's fallacy"

Perhaps the collector's fallacy may turn out to be useful in this broader argument?

Is he falling trap to the lure of literacy as the only means of crystallizing knowledge here? He starts with a literate Aristotle and specifically mentions 30,000 years ago instead of oral cultures which we know could do this sort of work orally almost 65,000 years ago.

How is the paradox of hoarding related to the collector's fallacy?

Regardless of how much you collect, you can't take it with you. So what's the value? - Having and using it to sustain you while you're alive. - Combining it in creative ways to leave behind new ideas and new innovations for those who follow you. - others?

This chapter is too entailed with productivity advice, which can be useful to some, but isn't as note taking focused for those who probably need more of that.

What is the differentiator between knowledge workers, knowledge creators, students, researchers, academics. How do we even clearly delineate knowledge worker as a concept. It feels far too nebulous which makes it more difficult to differentiate systems for them to use for improving productivity and efficiency.

Do we? Really? This definitely needs reframing and books like this that play on these sorts of fears are both partially responsible, but are also preying on an atmosphere which they're propagating.

This is the sort of sad thing that a productivity guru would say...

Your notes shouldn't be a place to collect what you already know.

Collecting everything in your notes, especially in digital realms where saving is phenomenally easier and nearly automatic, is a fatal flaw in note taking.

Anecdotal evidence of contemplation of suicide based on over-collection of notes without creating a clear thesis or use for them.

I'm curious who the colleague was and what or how their note taking system wasn't working for them. Most likely the inability to link ideas to each other, lack of clear examples of others doing the practice to help guide them?

Keeping a manual zettelkasten using pen/pencil and paper may be beneficial to some as it will tend to remove the easy functionality of cut and paste in the digital space and force the user to think a bit more deeply about what they're working on and expand on it. Those with paper zettelkasten aren't as likely to spend time collecting simple facts as a result of this. This will make the content going into the system much more solid and reusable in the future.

I have tongue-in-cheek posted a massive graph indicating that it was only a "few days work" to see what sort of reaction it would get. No one batted an eyelash, which makes me think that too many are "collectors" and aren't actually building something or using their system correctly.

There is a dearth of solid examples of these systems online for people to look at and evaluate critically. This is killing the space slowly.

ReconfigBehSci [@SciBeh]. (2021, November 26). Clearly we haven’t “kept borders closed forever”—Most borders have been open for many months now. The question is whether we urgently close a particular border now. “kept borders closed forever” = straw man (and I say this as a researcher on fallacies of argumentation) [Tweet]. Twitter. https://twitter.com/SciBeh/status/1464131447799922689

ReconfigBehSci. (2021, February 2). @MichaelPaulEdw1 @islaut1 @ToddHorowitz3 @richarddmorey @MaartenvSmeden as I just said to @islaut1 if you want to force the logical contradiction you move away entirely from all of the interesting cases of inference from absence in everyday life, including the interesting statistical cases of, for example, null findings—So I think we now agree? [Tweet]. @SciBeh. https://twitter.com/SciBeh/status/1356530759016792064

ReconfigBehSci. (2021, February 1). @MaartenvSmeden @richarddmorey you absolutely did (and I would have been disappointed if you hadn’t ;-)! It was a general comment prompted by the fact that the title of the article you linked to doesn’t (as is widespread), and I actually genuinely think this is part of the “problem” in pedagogical terms. 1/2 [Tweet]. @SciBeh. https://twitter.com/SciBeh/status/1356227423067664384

Maarten van Smeden. (2021, February 1). Personal top 10 fallacies and paradoxes in statistics 1. Absence of evidence fallacy 2. Ecological fallacy 3. Stein’s paradox 4. Lord’s paradox 5. Simpson’s paradox 6. Berkson’s paradox 7. Prosecutors fallacy 8. Gambler’s fallacy 9. Lindsey’s paradox 10. Low birthweight paradox [Tweet]. @MaartenvSmeden. https://twitter.com/MaartenvSmeden/status/1356147552362639366

ReconfigBehSci. (2021, February 2). @MichaelPaulEdw1 @islaut1 @ToddHorowitz3 @richarddmorey as this account is focussed on COVID, maybe time to move the discussion elsewhere- happy to discuss further if you want to get in touch by email—U.hahn" "https://t.co/HOGwHragEb [Tweet]. @SciBeh. https://twitter.com/SciBeh/status/1356529368630239232

ReconfigBehSci. (2021, February 1). Great list, but I think one of the main problems with “absence of evidence fallacy” is its phrasing: “absence of evid. Is not the same as evidence of absence” is a true statement, “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence” is literally false @richarddmorey [Tweet]. @SciBeh. https://twitter.com/SciBeh/status/1356172673651503104

(6) ReconfigBehSci on Twitter: “@MichaelPaulEdw1 @islaut1 @ToddHorowitz3 @richarddmorey @MaartenvSmeden and not just misguided (as too simplistic) but part of the problem....” / Twitter. (n.d.). Retrieved February 24, 2021, from https://twitter.com/SciBeh/status/1356528429211021319

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

The problems with productivity.... You have to appreciate that she sees the issues in this space.

Before looking at productivity, ask "What is your goal?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnFHwl2Dbr0

• System should be as frictionless as possible.
• Capture in one location. (She says as few as possible, but this is too wishy-washy: she's got a "Readwise page" and a "Links page".)
• There needs to be levels of processing.
  • Split out based on future value.
• Everything has resources. How to capture metadata and be able to cite it?

Everything needs to have a "Why"? What is the context for capturing? What is the reason? How will it be used in the future? Why was it interesting?

She also describes how she collects notes in various formats (books, online articles, Kindle, Twitter, etc.) It primarily involves using Notion along with a variety of other sub-applications including Instapaper for sharing to Notion.

Dramatically missing from this presentation is the answer to the question "why" collect all this stuff? How is she using it in the future? What is the overall value? She touches on writing the why for herself as she's taking notes, but I get the impression that she's not actively practicing what she preaches, and I suspect that many don't. This leaves me with the impression that she's collecting with no end goal, which for many may be fine.

She's got a gaping hole in the processing section which likely needs a video unto itself and which would probably go a long way toward answer the "why" question above.

In looking at her other videos, I see she's using the phrase "second brain" and words like productivity. There seems to be a high level of disconnect between those using "second brain" and the "why do this?" question other than the simple idea of "productivity" which seems to be a false trap that gets people into the mindset of being a collector for collections' sake.

Almost hilariously she's got videos with titles like: - "I'm a productivity guru and I hate it." - "Productivity YouTube is brainwashing you"

She's titled the final portion of the video "Outro" which is actually displayed on the video UI. This might be useful for production purposes but should be changed or omitted for actual consumption.

The title "How I Remember Everything I Read" is pure clickbait here. It's more aptly titled, "How I Take and Save Notes". Where's the how I use this after? or how I review over it all to actually remember it/memorize it? There's nothing here to support this end of things which is the promise given in the title.

This is a case of false generalization.

A memo to myself last week on this topic: people—even smart ones—still have trouble wrangling the implications of natural selection.

Natural selection does not mean survival of the fittest. It means survival of the good enough.

There was more to it than that, but funnily enough, there's this part:

Dan Luu writes of Twitter and companies generally that they should continue to hire so long as it makes financial sense, and what makes financial sense is defined by an equation where savings at the margin is one component

Understanding this is important, not just for the reasons that Dan mentions in the linked ("I could do that in a weekend!") piece, but because it gives companies a budget for inefficiency.

Companies can make non-optimal decisions. (Deleterious ones, even.a^1 a^2)

Instant death is not really a thing, although most misunderstandings demand that it is (as in the case of the parable of the "non-existent" 20-dollar bill). This is the timeless fallacy.

When i was working this into a starter for a potential standalone piece, i drafted the following passage, hoping to use it as an intro:

This is not a piece about biology. It is not even a piece about humans' understanding of biology. It is a piece about humans and humans' inability to grapple with particularly counterintuitive concepts (like natural selection).

i also jotted down the phrase "cognitive fluency".

qbatten annotates on Jan 11, 2022:

Why note-taking is bad. Why you shouldn't take notes. Taking notes shouldn't be the end in itself!

I'll agree that "taking notes shouldn't be the end in itself", but they've drawn the completely wrong conclusion about note taking being bad or that this flimsy argument indicates that one shouldn't take notes.

Not everyone who wields a hammer is going to be a master craftsman and it's even less likely that someone who tinkers with one for a few months or even a few years will get there without some significant help. There's no evidence here of anything but desire for methods to work. Where was the deep practice, research into these systems described?

From the start, the featured image in the original article of a crazy person's conception of a massive collection of piles of paper to represent the process is highly illustrative of so many misconceptions.

https://reallifemag.com/rank-and-file/

An interesting example of someone who fell into the trap of thinking that a particular tool or tools would magically make them smarter or help them do a particular line of work without showing any deep evidence of knowing what they were doing. The discussion here flows over a number of mixed note taking domains with no clear thrust for what they were using it pointedly for. The multiple directions and lack of experience likely doomed them to failure here.

The unused accumulation of notes is the worst travesty. The collector's fallacy run amok.

Why did this person fail here? What was their need/use case? Was it well-defined? Were the tools suited to their purpose?

Collecting fleeting notes and not processing them into something more useful and permanent will eventually end in abject failure.

An example can be seen in the note taking of Joachim Jungius in 1657. He compiled approximately 150,000 slips (also known as scraps) with excerpts and ideas without any sort of order, arrangement, index or reference system. Following his death his students and heirs could make nothing of the massive "scrap heap". As a result, Vincent Placcius in De Arte Excerpendi (1689) specifically warns against this practice (p. 72).

(cross reference from : https://hypothes.is/a/SyenKlO2Eeys0esqwOgjUw)

The important part of permanent notes are generating your own ideas and connecting (linking them densely) into your note system. The linking part is important and can be the part that most using digital systems forget to do. In paper zettelkasten, one was forced to create the first link by placing the note into the system for the first time. This can specifically be seen in Niklas Luhmann's example where a note became a new area of its own or, far more likely, it was linked to prior ideas.

By linking the idea to others within the system, it becomes more likely that the idea can have additional multiple contexts where it might be used and improve the fact that context shifts will prove more insight in the future.

Additional links to subject headings, tags, categories, or other forms of taxonomy will also help to make sure the note isn't lost completely into the system. Links to the bibliographical references within the system are helpful as well, especially for later citation. Keep in mind that these categories and reference links aren't nearly as valuable as the other primary idea links.

One can surely collect ideas and facts into their system, but these aren't as important or as interesting as one's own ideas and the things that are sparked and generated by them.

Asking questions in permanent notes can be valuable as they can become the context for new research, projects, and writing. Open questions can be incredibly valuable for one's thinking and explorations.

Cross reference: https://hypothes.is/a/BuMcAnr4EeyxO-PwNBfPrg (Dan Allosso's analogy about the Kuiper Belt)

ANJIELI FAIRBANKS:

Noncentral Fallacies: links humans to Nazis in the eyes of animals to create emotion.

ANJIELI FAIRBANKS:

Confirmation bias? ignoring the fact that humans need food to survive so they compare it to babies being killed.

ANJIELI FAIRBANKS:

Red herring: Because animals are being treated like "what Jews and others went through in the Holocaust", people should be aware that the animals are having a holocaust of their own. This evidence is misleading because it is justifying Prescotts actions to move forward with the images.

Faulty authority: They are asking the audience to agree with them simply because they are doing the right thing. In their opinion, calling upon the character of themselves as means to justify comparing factory farms to the Holocaust. They also do not provide any evidence for why they are qualified to speak on the subject. Instead using the words of others (second-hand evidence) to get across their point.

ANJIELI FAIRBANKS:

Faulty analogy, animals don't have the ability to comprehend things the way humans do.

Unfalsifiability:

There is no way to prove this to be true, because there are so many animals, not all of them have been tested. As well as it is different from what we consider "fear and loneliness" because humans or any animal are unique, maybe similar, but do not think exactly the same.

Noncentral Fallacy:

Since the Holocaust already gives such an emotional reaction, by mentioning it even though there is no unbiased evidence to compare it to the animal industry, Peta tries to make it evidence for their argument when it has nothing to do with how animals are treated.

ANJIELI FAIRBANKS:

I think this is anonymous authority: says he was being funded by a Jewish philanthropist who wishes to stay anonymous. Either he wasn't actually being funded and he said he was to give him even more of a reason to continue with the project, or he was being respectful. probably shouldn't include this then.

ANJIELI FAIRBANKS:

This has got to be some kind of fallacy. I'll add a comment later when I find it. But, Prescott being Jewish himself still went through with the project, even being the campaign creator. With the knowledge that these images would receive a lot of backlash, he still went through with the project without a single reason why he thought it was acceptable, except a quote from earlier where he compared humans to nazis when it comes to killing animals. He was also being funded by a Jewish philanthropist so maybe it was for the money.

ANJIELI FAIRBANKS:

Red Herring (I think, cause this evidence is irrelevant): Matt Prescot explains that "we can do anything we want to those we decide are 'different or inferior'" which leads to his belief that because humans feel animals are inferior, humans kill them which is the "same mindset that made the holocaust possible".

ANJIELI FAIRBANKS:

So a Jewish man even said that people are like nazis to humans? And then PETA took this and ran with It or something?

FAYTHE SEALS: Genetic Fallacy

Just because this person is of certain genetic descent he was considered good enough evidence to their cause. When in fact he has no actual information on the animals themselves. As well as just because he's Jewish he knows everything that went on during the Holocaust, he would be considered to have an argument if he, one research heavily and got stories from actual survivors or if he himself is a survivor. But since that is not clearly seen in the context this makes him an unreliable source.

Loaded question/hasty conclusion

Strawman analogy

hasty generalization

strawman/hasty conclusion

Strawman fallacy

Argument by assertion

Begging the Question/Hasty generalization

Straw Man fallacy

Strawman fallacy

Appeal to incredulity/perfectionism

Argument by asserstion/begging the question

strawman fallacy

Over generalization/strawman/ hasty generalization/ Plain wrong

Loaded question

begging the question/loaded question

Straw man fallacy Hasty conclusion

Appeal to incredulity (Difficult to understand) Confirmation bias

This is true but for the wrong reasons. Many trans people, myself included deal with not only Gender dysphoria, but imposter syndrome. This is only made worse by people like the author telling us things like these. Learning I am a boy and accepting that for myself took a long time, and coming out to others who reacted positivly has helped me tremendously. I am happier in myself and that's improved my relationships. I can't accept my body the way it is because it is objectivly female. I want my chest to be flat and it is objectivly not. I want to have a deep voice beecause I know and as you hear it you can hear, it is objectively high pitched. The person writing this article has clearly never spoken to an out trans person or tried to show compassion to them before coming to this conclusion.

Straw man argument hasty generalization

Perfectionism

Being very nitpicky.Definitely check for something here. Maybe relevance?

Loaded question.

Also the answer is a person's hormone levels.

ANJIELI FAIRBANKS:

Noncentral Fallacies: links humans to Nazis in the eyes of animals to create emotion.

ANJIELI FAIRBANKS:

Faulty analogy, animals don't have the ability to comprehend things the way humans do.

ANJIELI FAIRBANKS:

Red Herring (I think, cause this evidence is irrelevant): Matt Prescot explains that "we can do anything we want to those we decide are 'different or inferior'" which leads to his belief that because humans feel animals are inferior, humans kill them which is the "same mindset that made the holocaust possible".

ANJIELI FAIRBANKS:

This has got to be some kind of fallacy. I'll add a comment later when I find it. But, Prescott being Jewish himself still went through with the project, even being the campaign creator. With the knowledge that these images would receive a lot of backlash, he still went through with the project without a single reason why he thought it was acceptable, except a quote from earlier where he compared humans to nazis when it comes to killing animals. He was also being funded by a Jewish philanthropist so maybe it was for the money.

ANJIELI FAIRBANKS:

Red herring: Because animals are being treated like "what Jews and others went through in the Holocaust", people should be aware that the animals are having a holocaust of their own. This evidence is misleading because it is justifying Prescotts actions to move forward with the images.

ANJIELI FAIRBANKS:

Confirmation bias? ignoring the fact that humans need food to survive so they compare it to babies being killed.

ANJIELI FAIRBANKS:

I think this is anonymous authority: says he was being funded by a Jewish philanthropist who wishes to stay anonymous. Either he wasn't actually being funded and he said he was to give him even more of a reason to continue with the project, or he was being respectful. probably shouldn't include this then.

Faulty authority:

They are asking the audience to agree with them simply because they are doing the right thing. In their opinion, calling upon the character of themselves as means to justify comparing factory farms to the Holocaust. They also do not provide any evidence for why they are qualified to speak on the subject. Instead using the words of others (second-hand evidence) to get across their point.

Unfalsifiability:

There is no way to prove this to be true, because there are so many animals, not all of them have been tested. As well as it is different from what we consider "fear and loneliness" because humans or any animal are unique, maybe similar, but do not think exactly the same.

Noncentral Fallacy:

Since the Holocaust already gives such an emotional reaction, by mentioning it even though there is no unbiased evidence to compare it to the animal industry, Peta tries to make it evidence for their argument when it has nothing to do with how animals are treated.

ANJIELI FAIRBANKS:

So a Jewish man even said that people are like nazis to humans? And then PETA took this and ran with It or something?

FAYTHE SEALS: Genetic Fallacy

Just because this person is of certain genetic descent he was considered good enough evidence to their cause. When in fact he has no actual information on the animals themselves. As well as just because he's Jewish he knows everything that went on during the Holocaust, he would be considered to have an argument if he, one research heavily and got stories from actual survivors or if he himself is a survivor. But since that is not clearly seen in the context this makes him an unreliable source.

Argument by assertion fallacy and claim of fact: Repeating the claim again and again, does not make it true.

False authority, second-hand evidence: According to Wikipedia, "NewsPunch is a Los Angeles-based fake news website known for spreading conspiracy theories, political misinformation, and hoaxes,". NewsPunch is definitely not a reliable source to cite.

Straw man fallacy, second-hand evidence: While it is true that Psaki said this, NaturalNews is misrepresenting what she is truly saying. According to WebMD, the COVID-19 strike forces are "...made up of health and logistics experts from several federal agencies, will conduct coronavirus testing, distribute medicines designed to fight the virus and boost local and state efforts to increase vaccinations,". They are not forcing people to take "KILL SHOTS".

Slippery slope fallacy, claim of fact

Appeal to nature: Assuming that having "natural" immunity is better than having immunity from a vaccine.

According to Hopkins Medicine "New studies show that natural immunity to the coronavirus weakens (wanes) over time,".

Argument by assertion fallacy and claim of fact: Restating this claim once again.

Faulty analogy: Comparing health officers to Nazi police is illogical.

Faulty analogy: Comparing a vaccine that has been proven to protect people against a virus to genocide is illogical.

Red herring: The Capitol Hill Organized Protest is irrelevent to the author's argument about "covid concentration camps".

ANJIELI FAIRBANKS:

So a Jewish man even said that people are like nazis to humans? And then PETA took this and ran with It or something?

FAYTHE SEALS: Genetic Fallacy

Just because this person is of certain genetic descent he was considered good enough evidence to their cause. When in fact he has no actual information on the animals themselves. As well as just because he's Jewish he knows everything that went on during the Holocaust, he would be considered to have an argument if he, one research heavily and got stories from actual survivors or if he himself is a survivor. But since that is not clearly seen in the context this makes him an unreliable source.

Faulty authority:

They are asking the audience to agree with them simply because they are doing the right thing. In their opinion, calling upon the character of themselves as means to justify comparing factory farms to the Holocaust. They also do not provide any evidence for why they are qualified to speak on the subject. Instead using the words of others (second-hand evidence) to get across their point.

Unfalsifiability:

There is no way to prove this to be true, because there are so many animals, not all of them have been tested. As well as it is different from what we consider "fear and loneliness" because humans or any animal are unique, maybe similar, but do not think exactly the same.

Noncentral Fallacy:

Since the Holocaust already gives such an emotional reaction, by mentioning it even though there is no unbiased evidence to compare it to the animal industry, Peta tries to make it evidence for their argument when it has nothing to do with how animals are treated.

Argument by assertion

Confirmation bias

Anonymous authority

Appeal to tradition

circular reasoning- "Or maybe it's because I'm a guy, the ripe old age of 31."

circular reasoning- "And here's where my age comes in"

Middle Ground Fallacy

Strickland, J. C., Stoops, W., Banks, M., & Gipson-Reichardt, C. D. (2022). Logical Fallacies and Misinterpretations that Hinder Progress in Translational Addiction Neuroscience. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/frd5e

https://takingnotenow.blogspot.com/2007/12/critique-of-zettelksten.html

archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20201021193157/https://takingnotenow.blogspot.com/2007/12/critique-of-zettelksten.html

Manfred Kuehn looks at Karl Kraus' criticism of the idea of a zettelkasten as a tool which can be misused.

Of course this begs the question of what one is using their index card catalog for? Are you using it as a rhetorical thinking and creation device or simply a second memory?

https://zettelkasten.de/posts/collectors-fallacy/

No True Scotsman

Ambiguity fallacy: Calling the management of protests "calm" when most of the nation has seen fire hoses and police dogs is part of what undermined the clergymen's argument. They may have seen a calm response prior to April 12, but the nation saw violence afterward.

Tu quoque: Blaming nonviolent protesters for "inciting hatred and violence" basically blames the victims of racism for the hatred of racists.

Confirmation Bias: Selecting the one recent success as evidence that no action is needed (and ignoring lots of evidence that not much has changed).

Ambiguity: not race causing the problems, but racism

Begging the question: Calling subjective details "facts" is dubious evidence upon which to make any claim of value.

Kit Yates. (2021, December 12). Both I and Lewis Hamilton can drive. [Tweet]. @Kit_Yates_Maths. https://twitter.com/Kit_Yates_Maths/status/1470035843851112449

Solid advice for note taking.

This reasoning seems to be missing from writers like Ryan Holiday who just give the advice without the underlying reason why.

CDC. (2021, September 8). How to Address COVID-19 Vaccine Misinformation. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/covid-19/health-departments/addressing-vaccine-misinformation.html

This commenter is committing what I call "the timeless fallacy". It's not that far off from people who don't "get" evolution by natural selection—which is odd, because most of the people who commit the timeless fallacy in venues like this almost certainly do understand it.

intuitive EPI. (n.d.). intuitive EPI - Table 2 Fallacy (Part 1). Retrieved August 5, 2021, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufwRaWQmxDE

ReconfigBehSci on Twitter: ‘@ToddHorowitz3 I think that attribution is hard to make. I have no doubt they’re systematically promoted by bad faith actors, but I think it’s much harder to feel confident about all those who repeat them. But the rather extensive public discussion of efficacy does make this case seem unlikely’ / Twitter. (n.d.). Retrieved 15 July 2021, from https://twitter.com/SciBeh/status/1415364895046963205

The Last Crusidual. (2021, February 2). @SciBeh @MichaelPaulEdw1 @ToddHorowitz3 @richarddmorey you can’t have any form of evidence. If you concider any form of evidence, than what is talked about than isn’t anymore what the falacy sais. [Tweet]. @islaut1. https://twitter.com/islaut1/status/1356529266519924736

ReconfigBehSci on Twitter. (n.d.). Twitter. Retrieved 19 February 2021, from https://twitter.com/SciBeh/status/1356525692700291072

Gambler’s fallacy. (2021). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gambler%27s_fallacy&oldid=1006742838