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  1. Last 7 days
  2. Nov 2024
    1. In the 1950s and 1960s, information retrieval (IR) theorists drew a distinction between“document retrieval systems” and “fact retrieval systems.” The former, were intendedto retrieve, in response to a user’s query, all documents that might contain informationpertinent to answering that query, while the latter were to lead the user directly tospecific pieces of information – facts – embedded within the documents being searchedthat would answer his or her question. The idea of information analysis clearlyprovided the theoretical impetus for fact retrieval (aka question-answering) systems
    1. Stafford Beer coined and frequently used the term POSIWID (the purpose of a system is what it does) to refer to the commonly observed phenomenon that the de facto purpose of a system is often at odds with its official purpose

      the purpose of a system is a what it does, POSIWID, Stafford Beer 2001. Used a starting point for understanding a system as opposed to intention, bias in expectations, moral judgment, and lacking context knowledge.

  3. Oct 2024
    1. System

      card system ⇒ system theory

      In the early 1900s it was very common, especially in English speaking countries to call these note taking/paper database systems "card systems". Is it a wonder then that they may have helped to create "systems theory"?

      In particular, look at Niklas Luhmann's work as well as Ross Ashby.


      Example of a fleeting note triggered by a single word in a context, but with thoughts not relating at all to the specifics of the particular work.

  4. Sep 2024
    1. https://web.archive.org/web/20240923175503/https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2024/the-promise-and-the-distraction/

      glorious rant by Baldur Bjarnason, but not much surprisal here. As with other stuff, albeit agile scrum, getting things done, and any of the pitched perfect ways to make notes, whenever the process becomes the thing rather than a tool in the hand of an knowledge artisan stuff is useless and boring.

      It's about output, not in units or volume, but in quality. Needing to know why your are making these notes, and weaving your network of meaning.

      The people who do things with their system usually don't talk about it much. I've done it on occasion and am happy to share and show how/why I do things, but never with the intention to convince another to do the same or similar.

    1. Therefore, similar to Ribes et al. in their study of domain [113], the epistemic positions we propose aim to provide conceptual tools for reasoning about different styles of organizing creativity-oriented research practices in HCI.

      David Ribes' work explores the definition of domain in computing and data science; offers insight into how studying domains helps organize computational systems.

    1. Our estimated safe ESB is that around 50–60% of global land surface should be in largely intact, natural condition to halt species extinction, secure biosphere contributions to climate regulation, and stabilise regional water cycles.

      for - stats - earth system boundary - biodiversity - intact natural systems - 50 to 60% global land need to be intact

    2. The amount of intact natural land as of 2018 was around 15% below this ESB, but could be increased through restoring degraded ecosystems or previously converted ecosystems,102,103,106102.Strassburg, BBN ∙ Iribarrem, A ∙ Beyer, HL ∙ et al.Global priority areas for ecosystem restorationNature. 2020; 586:724-729CrossrefScopus (536)PubMedGoogle Scholar103.Jung, M ∙ Arnell, A ∙ de Lamo, X ∙ et al.Areas of global importance for conserving terrestrial biodiversity, carbon and waterNat Ecol Evol. 2021; 5:1499-1509CrossrefScopus (162)PubMedGoogle Scholar106.Wolff, S ∙ Schrammeijer, EA ∙ Schulp, CJE ∙ et al.Meeting global land restoration and protection targets: what would the world look like in 2050?Glob Environ Change. 2018; 52:259-272CrossrefScopus (72)Google Scholar with conservation efforts distributed across all ecoregions.

      for - stats - earth system boundary - biodiversity - intact natural systems - 15% below ESB in 2018

  5. Aug 2024
    1. Designers want every part of the app interface and all the elements to have the same look and feel, and design tokens were created to help them achieve that outcome.

      Design tokens are platform-agnostic and are the first layer of design decisions in a design system.

    1. The song's criticism on mass media is mainly related to sensationalism.

      "Good" things are usually not sensational. They do not demand attention, hence why the code of known/unknown based on selectors for attention filters it out.

      Reference Hans-Georg Moeller's explanations of Luhmann's mass media theory based on functionally differentiated systems theory.

      Can also compare to Simone Weil's thoughts on collectives and opinion; organizations (thus most part of mass media) should not be allowed to form opinions as this is an act of the intellect, only residing in the individual. Opinion of any form meant to spread lies or parts of the truth rather than the whole truth should be disallowed according to her because truth is a foundational, even the most sacred, need for the soul.

      People must be protected against misinformation.

    1. Alternate systems for helping to thin out typewriter collections:

      Designer William Morris' weighing system:

      “Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.”

      I once had a collector friend who loved standard typewriters, so his weighing system was as follows:<br /> - If it weighs over 25 pounds, keep it<br /> - If it weighs less than 25 pounds, sell it off

      And naturally, minimalist Marie Kondo's system:<br /> - Does it spark joy?

      Joe Van Cleave also had another video for creating a minimal collection based on categories of typewriter which may also be useful for some: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ej6kd1FsnE

  6. Jul 2024
    1. for - paper review - building a system-based Theory of Change using Participatory Systems Mapping - participatory systems mapping - SRG / Indyweb dev - system mapping - participatory approach

      summary - I'm reviewing this paper because the title seems salient for the development of our own participatory Stop Reset Go system mapping tool within Indyweb ecosystem. - The building of - a systems-based Theory of Change using - Participatory Systems Mapping - is salient to our own project and aligns to it with different language: - Theory of Change with uses theory to perform an evaluation and propose an intervention - The Stop Reset Go framework focuses on the specific type of process called "improvement", or - transforming a process to make it "better" in some way

      to - Indyweb project info page - https://hyp.is/RRevQk0UEe-xwP-i8Ywwqg/opencollective.com/open-learning-commons/projects/indy-learning-commons

    1. A critique on the Mass Media... The problem is that they want the Mass Media system to operate on the code of "True/False" rather than "Known/Unknown"... But if it were to be so, it would not be Mass Media anymore, but rather the Science System.

      For Mass Media to be Mass Media it needs to be concerned with selection and filtering, to condense and make known, not to present "all the facts". Sure, they need to be concerned with truth to a certain degree, but it's not the primary priority.


      This is a reflection based on my knowledge of Luhmann's theory of society as functionally differentiated systems; as explained by Hans-Georg Moeller (Carefree Wandering) on YouTube.

  7. Jun 2024
    1. Creating building systems in the present sense is not enough. We need a new, more subtle kind of building system
    2. A generating system, in this sense, may have a very simple kit of parts, and very  simple rules.
    3. The formal systems of mathematics are systems in this sense. The parts numbers, variables, and signs like + and =. The rules specify ways of combining three parts to form expressions, and ways of forming expressions from other expressions, and ways of forming true sentences from expressions, and ways of forming true sentences from other true sentences. The combinations of parts, generated by such a system, are the true sentences, hence theorems, of mathematics. Any combination of parts which is not formed according to the rules is either meaningless or false
    4. computation of such interrelational, complex behaviour-based systems
    5. complex systems of interactions and reciprocities
      • complex systems
      • interactions and reciprocities
    6. systems may come to necessitate their own propagation, he suggests, when we use them.
    7. Almost every ‘system as a whole’ is generated by a ‘generating system’. If we wish to make things which function as ‘wholes’ we shall have to invent generating systems to create them.

      Alexander 2011, p. 59; Alexander 1968, p. 605

    1. (~0:45)

      Justin mentions that a better way to think about learning is in systems rather than techniques. This is true for virtually anything. Tips & Tricks don't get you anywhere, it is the systems which bring you massive improvements because they have components all working together to achieve one goal or a set of goals.

      Any good system has these components working together seamlessly, creating something emergent; worth more than the sum of its parts.

    1. TensionThe ability to see like a data structure afforded us the technology we have today. But it was built for and within a set of societal systems—and stories—that can’t cope with nebulosity. Worse still is the transitional era we’ve entered, in which overwhelming complexity leads more and more people to believe in nothing. That way lies madness. Seeing is a choice, and we need to reclaim that choice. However, we need to see things and do things differently, and build sociotechnical systems that embody this difference.This is best seen through a small example. In our jobs, many of us deal with interpersonal dynamics that sometimes overwhelm the rules. The rules are still there—those that the company operates by and laws that it follows—meaning there are limits to how those interpersonal dynamics can play out. But those rules are rigid and bureaucratic, and most of the time they are irrelevant to what you’re dealing with. People learn to work with and around the rules rather than follow them to the letter. Some of these might be deliberate hacks, ones that are known, and passed down, by an organization’s workers. A work-to-rule strike, or quiet quitting for that matter, is effective at slowing a company to a halt because work is never as routine as schedules, processes, leadership principles, or any other codified rules might allow management to believe.The tension we face is that on an everyday basis, we want things to be simple and certain. But that means ignoring the messiness of reality. And when we delegate that simplicity and certainty to systems—either to institutions or increasingly to software—they feel impersonal and oppressive. People used to say that they felt like large institutions were treating them like a number. For decades, we have literally been numbers in government and corporate data structures. BreakdownAs historian Jill Lepore wrote, we used to be in a world of mystery. Then we began to understand those mysteries and use science to turn them into facts. And then we quantified and operationalized those facts through numbers. We’re currently in a world of data—overwhelming, human-incomprehensible amounts of data—that we use to make predictions even though that data isn’t enough to fully grapple with the complexity of reality.How do we move past this era of breakdown? It’s not by eschewing technology. We need our complex socio-technical systems. We need mental models to make sense of the complexities of our world. But we also need to understand and accept their inherent imperfections. We need to make sure we’re avoiding static and biased patterns—of the sort that a state functionary or a rigid algorithm might produce—while leaving room for the messiness inherent in human interactions. Chapman calls this balance “fluidity,” where society (and really, the tech we use every day) gives us the disparate things we need to be happy while also enabling the complex global society we have today.
    2. However, it’s not this particular system that failed but rather the mode of society that depends on rigid systems to function. Replacing one rigid system with another won’t work.
    3. The complexity of society today, and the failure of rigid systems to cope, is scary to many. Nobody’s in charge of, or could possibly even understand, all these complex technological systems that now run our global society.
    4. Now, nebulosity, complexity, and the breakdown of these systems is all around for everyone to see.
    5. The challenge with previous generations of tech—and the engineers who built them—is that they got stuck in the rigidity of systems.
    6. To boost its search engine rankings, Thai Food Near Me, a New York City restaurant, is named after a search term commonly used by potential customers. It’s a data layer on top of reality. And the problems get worse when the relative importance of the data and reality flip. Is it more important to make a restaurant’s food taste better, or just more Instagrammable? People are already working to exploit the data structures and algorithms that govern our world. Amazon drivers hang smartphones in trees to trick the system. Songwriters put their catchy choruses near the beginning to exploit Spotify’s algorithms. And podcasters deliberately mispronounce words because people comment with corrections and those comments count as “engagement” to the algorithms.These hacks are fundamentally about the breakdown of “the system.” (We’re not suggesting that there’s a single system that governs society but rather a mess of systems that interact and overlap in our lives and are more or less relevant in particular contexts.)
  8. May 2024
    1. for - recombination of proteins in higher level proteins - from - youtube - Evolution 2 podcast interview - book - Understanding Living Systems - Denis Noble - Ray Noble

      from - youtube - Evolution 2 podcast interview - book - Understanding Living Systems - Denis Noble - Ray Noble - https://hyp.is/OttWABYFEe--gLNFyeNyTw/docdrop.org/video/oHZI1zZ_BhY/

    1. we also challenge in the book The Very concept of selfishness itself

      for - book - Understanding living systems - challenging selfishness - critique - of Richard Dawkins' Selfish Gene

      • Ray Noble points out a contradiction in Richard Dawkin's use of the word selfish in his "Selfish gene".
        • Unless there is purposefulness, choice and agency, there cannot be any concept of selfishness
    2. for - Denis Noble - Ready Noble - evolutionary biology - critique of Richard Dawkins Selfish Gene theory - critique of gene centrism - book - Understanding Living Systems - human agency

      summary - In this informative interview, brothers Denis and Ray Noble discuss their new book - Understanding Living Systems, and - dispel the 70 year old narrative of Gene centrism and the selfish gene as determining the high level behaviour of living organisms

    1. for - Oded Rechavi - neurobiology - gene centrism - critique - from - youtube podcast interview - book - Understanding Living Systems - Ray Noble - Denis Noble

      summary - Rechavi performed experiments with C Elegan and demonstrated that it possesses a type of neuron that - produces RNA that in response to elevated temperature change is transmitted to reproductive cells so that the offsprings encode it in the genome, and it is better adapted to deal with elevated temperatures

      question - How many species do this? Is it generally found throughout nature?

      from - outube podcast interview - book - Understanding Living Systems - Ray Noble - Denis Noble - https://hyp.is/OUlGVBXrEe-iaBeZhH_4DQ/docdrop.org/video/oHZI1zZ_BhY/

    1. organisms can actually go and use the chance and they're doing that all the time see the way our immune systems work shows that what happens when a new virus or new bacterium or new 00:02:56 anything else arrives

      for - key insight - living systems use chance to adapt

      key insight - living systems use chance to adapt - immune system defends against novel viruses - cancers grow - bacteria become resistant to antibiotics

    1. four 00:08:25 major common misunderstandings that have infected our understanding of what it is to be a living system

      for - molecular biology - paradigm shift - living system - 4 common misunderstandings - book - Understanding Living Systems - 4 common misunderstandings

      4 common misunderstandings of living systems - 1. The central dogma of molecular biology - one way causation - Genes (DNA) to - proteins to - organism - 2. The Weismann Barrier - 3. DNA as self-replicator - 4. Separation of Replicator (DNA) and Vehicle (Living cell) are completely separate

    2. biology Beyond The 00:00:19 genome

      for - book - Biology Beyond the Genome - author - scientist - biologist - Denis Noble - book - Understanding Living Systems

  9. Apr 2024
    1. Either system canbe s tart ed with a small li stof captions and be increasedscientifically.

      Scientific principles had bled so thoroughly into both culture and business that even advertising for filing systems in business in the 1930 featured their ability to be used and expanded scientifically.

    1. And the evidence is coming back with unexpected results. A series of randomised controlled trials, including one looking at how to improve literacy through evidence, have suggested that schools that use methods based on research are not performing better than schools that do not.

      This, too, is very logical. It is due to the nature of systems.

      When one component, or even a lot, get "upgraded" this does not result in the overall results being improved. A system works best when all components work together to one or multiple goals in seemless harmony, creating emergence.

      Therefore, if a component is out of place, even if it is better than its predecessor, it won't yield the correct results.

      So for the methods to have a large, positive, impact, the entire system needs to be transformed.

      This is why I don't want to upgrade a component of education at a time, but completely transform it once my theory of optimal education is complete. Like a phoenix, from the ashes we will rise. Burn it all down, and build it up again with an OODA loop at the core... The system needs to be in constant change, for without change, evolution cannot happen.

      Observation Orientation Decision Action

      This loop needs to be at the center of every system for "systems without the inherent capacity to change are doomed to die" -- Colonel John Boyd.

      Of course, the system will need to be designed with utmost care and based on countless amounts of research, reviewed by a multitude of world-class experts in numeral areas.

    1. Stated briefly the work of the intelligence department can be 50brought under the three heads: filing, indexing and summarising.

      For Kaiser, his "intelligence department" has three broad functions: summarizing, indexing, and filing.

  10. Mar 2024
    1. It was said (76) that it isimpossible to devise a system wliich could be applied universally,the card registers give a very clear illustration of tliis.

      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

    2. In each class the individual articles or the folders containing anumber of articles belonging to the same firm are numbered con-secutively, CI, C2, Tl, T2 etc. that is : a new series of consecutivenumbers is started with each initial letter. The correspondenceof Smith & Co. may for instance be in a folder marked C34, thecatalogues of Jones Bros, may be numbered T89. But theremay be a hundred letters to and from Smith & Co. and a dozencatalogues from Jones Bros, so that it will be necessary to dividefurther until each specific article will have a specific numberby which it can be quoted exclusively reserved to it. This isdone by suffixing the date to the previous numbers thus : C34-3VII7or T89-1906 etc. The former refers to a letter of Smith & Co.dated July the third 1907, the latter refers to a catalogue ofJones Bros, of 1906. No matter how large the files will becomein time, the meaning of these numbers will remain the same, andthere can be no other articles bearing these numbers. If a numberor numbers refer to more than one article, confusion is invariablythe result

      Kaiser lays out an alphanumeric system for indexing materials using letters, numbers, and even dates and importantly suggests a 1-1 and onto relationship (though not in these terms) to prevent confusion.

      Compare with Niklas Luhmann's system.

    1. By 1700, we should note, slaves comprised half the population of thesouthern portion of the Carolina colony, an imbalance that widened to 72percent by 1740. Beginning in 1714, a series of laws required that for everysix slaves an owner purchased, he had to acquire one white servant.Lamenting that the “white population do not proportionally multiply,”South Carolina lawmakers had one more reason to wish that a corps ofLeet-men and women had actually been formed. Encouraged to marry andmultiply, tied to the land, they might have provided a racial and class barrierbetween the slaves and the landed elites.13
    2. Slavery was thus a logicaloutgrowth of the colonial class system imagined by Hakluyt. It emergedfrom three interrelated phenomena: harsh labor conditions, the treatment ofindentures as commodities, and, most of all, the deliberate choice to breedchildren so that they should become an exploitable pool of workers.
    1. Katherine Sarafian,a producer who’s been at Pixar since Toy Story, tells me she prefers to envision triggering theprocess over trusting it—observing it to see where it’s faltering, then slapping it around a bitto make sure it’s awake. Again, the individual plays the active role, not the process itself. Or,to put it another way, it is up to the individual to remember that it’s okay to use the handle,just as long as you don’t forget the suitcase.
    1. By jumping into unfamiliar areas of code, even if you do not "solve" the bug, you can learn new areas of the code, tricks for getting up to speed quickly, and debugging techniques.

      Building a mental model of the codebase, as Jennifer Moore says over at Jennifer++:

      The fundamental task of software development is not writing out the syntax that will execute a program. The task is to build a mental model of that complex system, make sense of it, and manage it over time.

  11. Feb 2024
  12. Jan 2024
    1. Only reprints (without any alterations)retain the original call number, all revises or new editions howeversmall the alterations should be given a new call number, butdecimals may be used with advantage.

      Though referring to catalogs and office literature, in 1908 it was known that using decimals would allow one to distinguish between slightly different versions of indexable items without running out of "space" for new additions.

    2. Call Numbers

      Interesting to see a mix of numbers and letters in the indexing system here from 1908.

      Numbers for companies and dates and letters as tags for a variety of business purposes as well as for month indicators.

    1. I've sketched it out elsewhere but let's memorialize the broad strokes here because we're inspired at the moment... come back later and add in quotes from Luhmann and other sources (@Heyde1931).

      Luhmann was balancing the differences between topically arranged commonplaces and the topical nature of the Dewey Decimal System (a standardized version across thousands of collections) and building neighborhoods of related ideas.

      One of the issues with commonplace books, is planning them out in advance. How might you split up a notebook for long term use to create easy categories when you don't know how much room to give each in advance? (If you don't believe me, stop by r/commonplacebooks where you're likely to see this question pop up several times this year.) This issue is remedied when John Locke suggests keeping commonplaces in chronological order of their appearance and cross-indexing them.

      This creates a new problem of a lot of indexing and increased searching over time as the commonplace book scales. Translating to index cards complicates things because they're unattached and can potentially move about, so they don't have the anchor effectuated by their being bound up in a notebook. But being on slips allows them to be more easily shuffled, rearranged, and even put into outlines, which are all fantastic affordances when looking for creativity or scaffolding things out into an article or book for creation.

      As a result, numbering slips creates a solid anchor by which the cards can be placed and always returned for later finding and use. But how should we number them? Should it be with integers and done chronologically? (1, 2, 3, ..., n) This is nice, but makes a mish-mash of things and doesn't assist much in indexing or finding.

      Why not go back to Dewey, which has been so popular? But not Dewey in the broadest sense of using numbers to tie ideas to concrete categories. An individual's notes are idiosyncratic and it would be increasingly rare for people to have the same note, much less need a standardized number for it (and if they were standardized, who does that work and how is it distributed so everyone could use it?) No, instead, let's just borrow the decimal structure of Dewey's system. One of the benefits of his decimal structure is that an infinity of new books can be placed on ever-expanding bookshelves without needing to restructure the numbering system. Just keep adding decimal places onto the end when necessary. This allows for immense density when necessary. But, importantly, it also provides some fantastic level of serendipity.

      Let's say you go to learn about geometry, so you look up the topic in your trusty library card catalog. Do you really need to look at the hundreds of records returned? Probably not. You only need the the Dewey Decimal Number 516. Once you're at the shelves, you can browse through that section to see what's there and interesting in the space. You might also find things on the shelves above or below 516 and find the delights of topology and number theory or abstract algebra and real analysis. Subjects you might not necessarily have had in mind will suddenly present themselves for your consideration. Even if your initial interest may have been in Zhongmin Shen's Lectures on Finsler geometry (516.375), you might also profitably walk away with James E. Humphreys' Introduction to Lie Algebras and Representation Theory (512.55).

      So what happens if we use these decimal numbers for our notes? First we will have the ability to file things between and amongst each other to infinity. By filing things closest to things which seem related to each other, we'll create neighborhoods of ideas which can easily grow over time. Related ideas will stay together while seemingly related ideas on first blush may slowly grow away from each other over time as even more closely related ideas move into the neighborhood between them. With time and careful work, you'll have not only a breadth of ideas, but a massive depth of them too.

      The use of decimal numbering provides us with a few additional affordances:

      1 (Neighborhoods of ideas) 1.1 combinatorial creativity Neighborhoods of ideas can help to fuel combinatorial creativity and forge new connections as well as insight over time. 1.2 writing One might take advantage of these growing neighborhoods to create new things. Perhaps you've been working for a while and you see you have a large number of cards in a particular area. You can, to some extent, put your hand into your box and grab a tranche of notes. By force of filing, these notes are going to be reasonably related, which means you should be able to use them to write a blog post, an article, a magazine piece, a chapter, or even an entire book (which may require a few fistfuls, as necessary.)

      2 (Sparse indexing) We don't need to index each and every single topic or concept into our index. Because we've filed things nearby, if a new card about Finsler geometry relates to another and we've already indexed the first under that topic, then we don't need to index the second, because our future selves can easily rely on the fact that if we're interested in Finsler geometry in the future, we can look that up in the index, and go to that number where we're likely to see other cards related to the topic as well as additional serendipitous ideas related to them in that same neighborhood.

      You may have heard that as Luhmann progressed on his decades long project, broadly on society and within the area of sociology, he managed to amass 90,000 index cards. How many do you suppose he indexed under the topic of sociology? Certainly he had 10s of thousands relating to his favorite subject, no? Of course he did, but what would happen over time as a collection grows? Having 20,000 indexed entries about sociology doesn't scale well for your search needs. Even 10 indexed entries may be a bit overwhelming as once you find a top level card, hundreds to thousands around it are going to be related. 10 x 100 = 1,000 cards to flip through. So if you're indexing, be conservative. In the roughly 45 years of creating 90,000 slips, Luhmann only indexed two cards with the topic of "sociology". If you look through his index, you'll find that most of his topical entries only have pointers to one or two cards, which provide an entryway into those topics which are backed up with dozens to hundreds of cards on related topics. In rarer, instances you might find three or four, but it's incredibly rare to find more than that.

      Over time, one will find that, for the topics one is most interested in, the number of ideas and cards will grown without bound. Here it makes sense to use more and more specific topics (tags, categories, taxonomies) all of which are each also sparsely indexed. Ultimately one finds that in the limit, the categories get so fractionalized that the closest category one idea has with another is the fact that they're juxtaposed closely by number. The of the decimal expansion might say something about the depth or breadth of the relationship between ideas.

      Something else arises here. At first one may have the tendency to associate their numbers with topical categories. This is only natural as it's a function at which humans all excel. But are those numbers really categories after a few weeks? Probably not. Treat them only as address numbers or GPS coordinates to be able to find your way. Your sociology section may quickly find itself with invasive species of ideas from anthropology and archaeology as well as history. If you treat all your ideas only at the topical level, they'll be miles away from where you need them to be as the smallest level atomic ideas collide with each other to generate new ideas for you. Naturally you can place them further away if you wish and attempt to bridge the distance with links to numbers in other locations, but I suspect you'll find this becomes pretty tedious over time and antithetical when it comes time to pull out a handful and write something. It's fantastically easier to pull out a several dozen and begin than it is to go through and need to pull out linked cards in a onesy-twosies manner or double check with your index to make sure you've gotten the most interesting bits. This becomes even more important as your collection scales.

    1. The physicistsStephen Wolfram and Brosl Hasslacher introduced me, in the early1980s, to chaos theory and nonlinear systems. In the 1990s, I learnedabout complex systems from conversations with Danny Hillis, the bi-ologist Stuart Kauffman, the Nobel-laureate physicist Murray Gell-Mann, and others. Most recently, Hasslacher and the electrical engineerand device physicist Mark Reed have been giving me insight into the in-credible possibilities of molecular electronics.

      some of Bill Joy's intellectual history here mirrors much of my own...

    1. Der Ausbau der Windenergie in Deutschland hat sich unter der Ampelkoalition beschleunigt. Es werden aber im Augenblick nur etwa halt so viele Anlagen gebaut, wie es nach den Plänen der Bundesregierung nötig wäre. In den südlichen Bundesländern ist der Ausbau viel zu langsam. Genehmigungsverfahren z.B. für den Transport dauern zu lange. https://taz.de/Ausbau-der-Windenergie/!5983011/

    1. I built the system out of necessity–because after trying my hand at the big names in personal productivity systems for years, I couldn’t quite get them to work for me. Out of that frustration, The Today System was born.

      Mike Sturm ostensible created the Today System for his own use.

      Is the system productized? Is he charging something for it or just proselytizing it?

  13. Dec 2023
    1. history is always the result of a lot of causes coming together you know 00:29:22 you have this metaphor of the chain of events and this is a terrible metaphor for there is no chain of events a chain of events imagines that every event is a link connected to one previous event and 00:29:36 to one subsequent event so there is a war there is one cause for the war and there will be one consequence it's never like that in history every event is more like a tree there is an entire system of 00:29:50 roots that came together to create it and it has a lot of fruits with lots of different influences
      • for: insight - history - complexity, bad metaphor - chain of events

      • insight: complexity and history

        • chain of events is a bad metaphor for things that occur in history
        • the complexity of history is that many causes come together too being about an event
        • likewise, when that event occurs, it is the cause of many different consequences
        • linear vs systems thinking
      • adjacency between

        • history
        • emptiness
        • Indra's net
      • adjacency statement
        • history reflects emptiness
        • Indra's net extended into historical events
    2. what you're referring to is the idea that people come together and through language culture and story they have narratives that then create their own realities like the 00:12:04 sociologist abely the sociologist wi Thomas said if people think people believe things to be real then they are real in their consequences
      • for: Thomas Theorem, The definition of the situation, William Isaac Thomas, Dorothy Swain Thomas, definition - Thomas Theorem, definition - definition of the situation, conflicting belief systems - Thomas theorem, learned something new - Thomas theorem

      • definition: Thomas Theorem

      • definition: definition of the situation
        • "The Thomas theorem is a theory of sociology which was formulated in 1928 by William Isaac Thomas and Dorothy Swaine Thomas:

      If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.[1]

      In other words, the interpretation of a situation causes the action. This interpretation is not objective. Actions are affected by subjective perceptions of situations. Whether there even is an objectively correct interpretation is not important for the purposes of helping guide individuals' behavior.|

    1. If I had a dollar for every organizational system I have tried, I could treat myself to a steak dinner in a fancy restaurant. (Hey! That’s not a bad ideal!) I’ve tried notebook organizers, card files, flip charts, a stop watch, and numerous labeling gadgets. I’ve tried refrigerator magnets, the buddy system, lots of books, and a bunch of classes and seminars. All of these were good tools and some of them had great ideas, but none of them worked for me. (p27)

    2. I accomplished a couple of other things on that first day back into reality. First, with an evil Grinch-like smile | uprooted every household management system | had ever tried, and tore up every single 3x5 card in them. Then one by one, | roasted and toasted them in the fireplace until they were gone, gone, gone. Next, with equally fiendish delight, | speared my $35 namebrand notebook organizer with a marshmallow fork, and | roasted it too. It melted into oblivion, all but it’s ugly metal spine. Next, | prayed for my attitude and for help. And finally, | marched myself into Wal-mart and bought my first clear plastic bin, a two pound sack of M&M's, and a loaf of white bread. For better or worse, we have been pretty happy campers at my house ever since. (p6)

    1. many people are complex systems thinkers even though they don't know it
      • for: example - systems thinking, quote -: many people are complex systems thinkers

      • quote:

        • many people are complex systems thinkers even though they don't know it
      • Thomas Homer-Dixon
      • date: 2023

      • examples: complex systems clichés

        • the whole of greater than the sum of its parts
          • nonlinearities
        • the straw that broke the camels back
          • emergence
      • comment

        • the first one could be that systems are not the same as just all the parts
        • the second one could also represent Tipping points and nonlinearities of complex systems
  14. Nov 2023
    1. The nightmares of AI discrimination and exploitation are the lived reality of those I call the excoded

      Defining 'excoded'

    2. AI raises the stakes because now that data is not only used to make decisions about you, but rather to make deeply powerful inferences about people and communities. That data is training models that can be deployed, mobilized through automated systems that affect our fundamental rights and our access to whether you get a mortgage, a job interview, or even how much you’re paid. Thinking individually is only part of the equation now; you really need to think in terms of collective harm. Do I want to give up this data and have it be used to make decisions about people like me—a woman, a mother, a person with particular political beliefs?

      Adding your data to AI models is a collective decision

  15. everbookforever.com everbookforever.com
    1. https://everbookforever.com/

      Everbook appears to be a variation on some of the GTD, PKM, and productivity traditions done on larger loose slips of paper (instead of notebook style) with an incredibly lovely leather folder. There's a lot to like here for those stuck between love of slips and notebooks. Its reminiscent of project planning and to do methods using ring binders or FiloFaxes.

  16. Oct 2023
    1. Each page just has a page number at the top corner, as far as I can see. The German Wikipedia entry says that from notebook E, he numbered the front pages with Arabic numerals and the back pages with Roman numerals, so his notes began at both ends and met in the middle of the book. This is clear in the original, but hard to understand. And he would at least have been able to refer to his notes in the form {volume letter, page number}.It seems he didn’t number consecutive entries himself, but that in later Lichtenberg scholarship there developed an editorial convention to do so. After his death they only published his ‘aphorisms’, organised by theme, and later re-organised by date, but still missing his scientific and other writings.
    1. Zunächst war ich ein Jahr am Oberverwaltungsgericht Lüneburg zurOrganisation eines Referenz-Systems für Verwaltungsgerichtsent-scheidungen; das Gericht sollte sehen können, was an obergerichtli-chen Entscheidungen jeweils vorlag

      In the early 1950s, Luhmann spent a year at the Lüneburg Higher Administrative Court organizing a reference system for the administrative court decisions to enable researchers to see what decisions had been made in the higher courts.

      Though he had begun his zettelkasten during his studies, this referencing system may have influenced the structure of his own note taking system.


      Can we pin the dates on these practices down more closely?

    1. when building on unenclosable P2P systems like Holochain, it’s actually possible to have it both ways: clean-energy projects that have the resources for large-scale impact and are not at risk of becoming corrupt in protection of proprietary business interests.
      • for: competitive advantage, competitive advantage - unencloseable carriers in energy systems
      • competitive advantage: unencloseable carriers
        • when building on unenclosable P2P systems like Holochain,
        • it’s actually possible to have it both ways:
          • clean-energy projects that have the resources for large-scale impact and
          • are not at risk of becoming corrupt in protection of proprietary business interests.
  17. Sep 2023
    1. 08:00 his sword technique was adaptable, mendable, consistent with the complex nature of reality, that changes constantly, not resisting change but adapting self to it

      • see zk on how a more dynamic approach to productivity and systems can help us reflect reality more closely, ever changing
    1. Merchants and traders have a waste book (Sudelbuch, Klitterbuch in GermanI believe) in which they enter daily everything they purchase and sell,messily, without order. From this, it is transferred to their journal, whereeverything appears more systematic, and finally to a ledger, in double entryafter the Italian manner of bookkeeping, where one settles accounts witheach man, once as debtor and then as creditor. This deserves to be imitatedby scholars. First it should be entered in a book in which I record everythingas I see it or as it is given to me in my thoughts; then it may be enteredin another book in which the material is more separated and ordered, andthe ledger might then contain, in an ordered expression, the connectionsand explanations of the material that flow from it. [46]

      —Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Notebook E, #46, 1775–1776


      In this single paragraph quote Lichtenberg, using the model of Italian bookkeepers of the 18th century, broadly outlines almost all of the note taking technique suggested by Sönke Ahrens in How to Take Smart Notes. He's got writing down and keeping fleeting notes as well as literature notes. (Keeping academic references would have been commonplace by this time.) He follows up with rewriting and expanding on the original note to create additional "explanations" and even "connections" (links) to create what Ahrens describes as permanent notes or which some would call evergreen notes.

      Lichtenberg's version calls for the permanent notes to be "separated and ordered" and while he may have kept them in book format himself, it's easy to see from Konrad Gessner's suggestion at the use of slips centuries before, that one could easily put their permanent notes on index cards ("separated") and then number and index or categorize them ("ordered"). The only serious missing piece of Luhmann's version of a zettelkasten then are the ideas of placing related ideas nearby each other, though the idea of creating connections between notes is immediately adjacent to this, and his numbering system, which was broadly based on the popularity of Melvil Dewey's decimal system.

      It may bear noticing that John Locke's indexing system for commonplace books was suggested, originally in French in 1685, and later in English in 1706. Given it's popularity, it's not unlikely that Lichtenberg would have been aware of it.

      Given Lichtenberg's very popular waste books were known to have influenced Leo Tolstoy, Albert Einstein, Andre Breton, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. (Reference: Lichtenberg, Georg Christoph (2000). The Waste Books. New York: New York Review Books Classics. ISBN 978-0940322509.) It would not be hard to imagine that Niklas Luhmann would have also been aware of them.


      Open questions: <br /> - did Lichtenberg number the entries in his own waste books? This would be early evidence toward the practice of numbering notes for future reference. Based on this text, it's obvious that the editor numbered the translated notes for this edition, were they Lichtenberg's numbering? - Is there evidence that Lichtenberg knew of Locke's indexing system? Did his waste books have an index?

  18. Aug 2023
    1. these are the seven main thrusts of the series
      • for: societal design, designing societies, societal architecture, transforming society, whole system change, SSO, social superorganism, John Boik

      The seven main ideas for societal design: 1. societal transformation - is necessary to avoid catastrophe 2. the specific type of transformation is science-based transformation based on entirely new systems - de novo design - 3. A practical way to implement the transformation in the real world - it must be economical, and doable within the short time window for system change before us. - Considering a time period of 50 years for total change, with some types of change at a much higher priority than others. - The change would be exponential so starting out slower, and accelerating - Those communities that are the first to participate would make the most rapid improvements. 4. Promoting a worldview of society as a social superorganism, a cognitive organism, and its societal systems as a cognitive architecture. 5. Knowing the intrinsic purpose of a society - each subsystem must be explained in terms of the overall intrinsic purpose. 6. The reason for transformation - Transformation that improves cognition reduces the uncertainty that our society's intrinsic purpose is fulfilled. 7. Forming a partnership between the global science community and all the local communities of the world.

    2. all that sense making and problem 00:14:18 solving has been siloed
      • for: whole system approach, system approach, systems thinking, systems thinking - societal design, societal design, John Boik, societal design - evolutionary approach, designing societies - evolutionary approach -paraphrase
        • currently, all societal systems function as silos
        • how does the total system change and achieve new stable states?
        • advocating for designing societal systems so that the cognitive architectures of the different component systems can all serve the same purpose
        • design a fitness evaluation score Rather than tackling problems in individual silos, John is promoting an integrated approach.

      This is wholly consistent with the underpinnings of SRG Deep Humanity praxis that stresses the same need for multi-disciplinary study and synthesis of all the various parts of the SSO.into one unified Gestalt to mitigate progress traps. https://hyp.is/go?url=https%3A%2F%2Fthetyee.ca%2FAnalysis%2F2019%2F09%2F20%2FRonald-Wright-Can-We-Dodge-Progress-Trap%2F&group=world https://hyp.is/go?url=https%3A%2F%2Fthetyee.ca%2FCulture%2F2018%2F10%2F12%2FHumanity-Progress-Trap%2F&group=world

    1. Dana (Donella) Meadows Lecture: Sustainable Systems

      deep insight -systems thinking - system behaviour comes out of the system, its interrelationships, its goals, not the elements of the people or actors in it

  19. Jul 2023
    1. Converting Commonplace Books? .t3_14v2ohz._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; }

      reply to u/ihaveascone at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/14v2ohz/converting_commonplace_books/

      Don't convert unless you absolutely need to, it will be a lot of soul-crushing make work. Since some of your practice already looks like Ross Ashby's system, why not just continue what you've been doing all along and start a physical index card-based index for your commonplaces? (As opposed to a more classical Lockian index.) As you browse your commonplaces create index cards for topics you find and write down the associated book/page numbers. Over time you'll more quickly make your commonplace books more valuable while still continuing on as you always have without skipping much a beat or attempting to convert over your entire system. Alternately you could do a paper notebook with a digital index too. I came across https://www.indxd.ink, a digital, web-based index tool for your analog notebooks. Ostensibly allows one to digitally index their paper notebooks (page numbers optional). It emails you weekly text updates, so you've got a back up of your data if the site/service disappears. This could potentially be used by those who have analog commonplace/zettelkasten practices, but want the digital search and some back up of their system.