Video: "Antinet" Book Club, Meeting #2 (DocDrop)

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so although I'm not a huge obsidian user anymore um The Vault seems to be working and it seems to be um it seems to be kind of

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doing that uh collaborative thing that um you know that it always kind of had the potential to do which I wasn't really focused on uh initially um so I think that it does

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I think it does pretty it's been it's doing a pretty good job for that for us although this isn't you know the way that we're using it is not really the way that they recommended you you do it

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hey Lewis so you're all in with analog huh um no I'm I'm sort of all in with Scranton and uh and analog and actually one thing that I have done is uh it

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occurred to me that I could take you know I could take pictures of my cards and they would and they could be you know because I'm putting images you know when I'm when I'm creating these boards for

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my students with primary sources on them in scrantal I'm putting an image at at the head of everyone um so it occurred to me that the card could be the image uh and you know so

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actually yeah I have a have a new board that I'm beginning to to kind of build out uh that has my notes um and and it was actually I've been

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I wouldn't say struggling but working to sort of reconcile the way that I think of uh my notes and the way that I sort of wrote about it in not that I'm I I

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guess I do feel a little bit committed to the stuff that I wrote but um but I do uh I just I do feel a little bit like I want to um in progress

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oh we're getting on if we're getting an echo now maybe from Greg um okay I'm gonna have to sign out of this one oh yeah I can hear you now okay so in any case um

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so I so I think of my notes as being kind of source notes where I very very rarely quote but usually sort of paraphrase and comment on and sort of

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develop my reactions to the ideas that I um you know that I come across mostly in books um and I've been sort of working at you

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know thinking about how I'm going to reconcile that with um this stuff hello Greg hey there good to see you got back all right and Greg is back too with sound

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okay so we got two grabs yes Okay I uh unfortunately I have to leave a little early because there's December commencement at the law school so I'll probably jump off at about 40 minutes into it but I look forward to being back

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for the full session on the 31st okay great and you can you can watch the video but uh yeah but why don't we yeah we'll um well it's 1002 so we should probably begin I was I was rambling a little bit

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about my my process but I can talk about that um a little bit later um why don't we uh Greg since this is your your first meeting uh maybe we'll um invite you to kind of go first and

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and kind of talk about your reaction to the book uh thus far uh you know maybe including the first few chapters as well as the chapters five and six that we're going to talk about today yeah sure uh my name is Gregory Silverman it's good

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to see some of you again I was part of the very first book club when uh we did uh Soren uh and cause a book and um been interested in Luman and zettelcaston for

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a long time I'm a law professor at Seattle University School of Law hence the need to go to December commencement uh and um yeah I've um you

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know I watched the the first session of the book club that was posted on YouTube and so I very much enjoyed your discussion from last week and picked up the book and have I guess

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read through chapter six now and um you know I think I agree with a lot of the sentiments that were voiced last week um it's I mean it's great to to see uh

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you know uh Stephen his uh passionate his passionate uh sort of Defense of luman's approach to zettle Caston uh you know I agreed he's it's a bit kind

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of snarky at times with respect to those doing sort of other approaches uh but that's uh kind of a youthful exuberance in having come upon the truth right I think I think so

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um you know but uh one thing I do very strongly agree with him is the importance of the numeric Alpha system and you know that's something I sort of uh you know sort of pushed during the first book club if you if you might

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remember and so I'm very you know I'm very interested in how someone that had the time and resources to really delve deeply into luman's specific approach

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and try to reconstruct it uh to see if he can sort of begin to get the same results and you know frankly a 600 page book by you know you know someone uh likes even you know suggests that there

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is real power in what he's reconstructed I I do agree that he could have used a good editor in in the book right but um you know such as the nature of I guess

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self-publishing today or right it's just not like the old Oxford books where you know there was never a grammatical error you know way back when showing my age I'm afraid but anyhow um yeah you know I one of the

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things I find especially sort of interesting um which I I think is just a function of how we developed the book using the internet is the references to sort of the memory science and and just the

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different things he pulls in it's very eclectic to defend luman's you know different aspects of luman's uh anti-net I guess we'll call it yeah yeah I was actually a little bit surprised I didn't

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I don't think I mentioned this um last time but I was a little bit surprised that at the stop the other stuff that he had read of luman's in addition to uh the article

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that everyone's read uh and uh and the Johanna Schmidt stuff and you know some of that other uh material that uh you know that we talked about you know we've talked about off and on really ever since we we began that first

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um smart notes uh class I've actually just picked up this um which is um uh merla's uh the radical Luman which is

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only um I mean before you get to the uh let's see there's an appendix which talks about yeah the conclusion ends on page 119. so

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and then there's an appendix that's that's much more um sort of biographical about uh Luman from an intellectual perspective looks like talking about um you know the the Frankfurt School and

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Parsons and all the and haramas and all of his influences and and the people that he that he uh I think Harbor he and haberma seem to have had a very interesting I thought it was kind of a

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you know just a rivalry initially but now you know now that I'm actually sort of picking up on some of the things that haramas has said about Luan in different articles um and hoverwise is better translated into English than uh then move on so you

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do see a little bit more um in places like jstor uh so that's been that's been interesting the one thing that struck me about this was that oh and Chris's Chris is just right

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um the one thing that struck me about this is that the way that Mueller describes System Theory and system environment Theory it

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almost seems like the Zero costume is inevitable um that this this idea of the way that he structures it I mean I mean and and I say that with a little bit of of of tongue-in-cheek because

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lumont's whole project was to um was to argue against inevitability and uh and especially you know the kind of teleology that's in Hegel um and you know and this sort of

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complete system must be you know the ultimate system and must be Transcendent and must lead to somewhere and everything and his his deal is much more about contingency and um and the upshot

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of contingency for Luman seems to be that everything that happens is extremely unlikely right like the thing you know like the uh the Ricky Gervais joke about the

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sperm and the Egg you know coming together and you know and creating you is like 400 trillion to one odds against um so so all all of that

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um is is apparently in in Luman and so it does kind of seem like um as I've been you know as I've been sort of making some notes about this and putting them in um you know and sort of

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and sort of putting them in an index and comparing them to other things um it does seem like it it kind of all flows from the same place which

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I found really really interesting um and so that that actually is sort of my big my big moment this week um not not as much the um

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I'm still you know it's kind of funny I'm still working off um I haven't got the physical copy of the book and I'm not using the um the Moby

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um which the down I got the download that um that Scott had donated to us at you know before we you know when we when I told him that we're gonna you know we're

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gonna uh look at this book and uh and he sent me a PDF a full PDF and uh and the Kindle file but you know it's one of those Kindle things it doesn't want to see that Kindle

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doesn't want to see that file um so I can you know on a computer that I have Kindle on like this one that I'm staring at right now uh but if I want to do it on my iPad

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there's more Hoops to jump through so I haven't bothered to do that I'm just um I'm just looking at you know highlighting and writing notes on the uh the PDF using the the regular uh PDF

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reader on my my iPad um one thing I will say yeah I I read most of the original PDF you know I brought it into Kindle but like you say you can't you

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can't uh for whatever reason it doesn't show up then if they brought it in on my desktop machine it doesn't show up on my iPad which I I really like to read in my iPad so anyway I did download the uh

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um the the Kindle version and I'm rereading it and I is it exactly the same I mean I I don't know why but um I don't know for some reason reading it

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the second time I I encounter things I don't remember from the first time I have a little bit higher opinion of the writing quality oh well good maybe he did have a have someone go over it yeah

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there are some um there are some moments where I I do think yeah it would have been it would have been nice if this had been uh had been looked at by a professional editor um

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I I you know I'm trying to I'm trying to not you know pay any attention to that um because I do think that the content is um you know is is valuable enough you know

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that I can Overlook um you know some of that um and and I do think that um it is you know it is kind of you know like you were saying Greg yes

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it's not you know it's not Oxford it's not Yale I had a really good editor uh you know and I think he was retired um when I I only worked with I worked with Yale the Yale press in 2019-2020

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and they were um they were locking down they were about to lock down for um covid but even even before that it seemed like they were sort of a lot of people who had been sort of

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salaried employees were becoming contractors right so I worked with this editor really good editor who um who was sore he was still sort of uh kind of associated with the Press but he wasn't actually an employee anymore he was like

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he's a retired guy um and uh and he did um he did you know it's it's always I mean just having another set of eyes on something is is valuable but then also

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you know just the conventions you know it's kind of funny because I would get um I would get responses from and say well you know yes you could do it that way but the Yale convention is to you

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know with like the way that things are are done in the text the way that numbering is done the way that you know that numbers are spelled out rather than you know using

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actual numerals and things like that just you know kind of little style points like that um yeah I've you know I've also had the self-publishing experience too so um so it does

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um you know all of those little tricks of of like reading it aloud slowly or reading it to somebody um having you know having somebody who's not um you know who hasn't been reading

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every draft kind of look at it all those things are are valuable oh it looks like we lost Chris um maybe he'll be back uh the um yeah so the the the one thing you know getting you know from from the very

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beginning of the um of these chapters um Blue Line wasn't a Nazi you know it's like it's like saying that anybody who you know who was drafted into the Soviet Army was a member of the

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Communist party it's not the way it works um so uh but but yeah I do think that that you know that that probably there's something going on there with the you know the um getting the crap beat out of

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you by the people who are supposed to be the good guys um does make you a little bit more um cynical about those designations of

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of Good and Evil and you know and who's wearing the the white hat who's wearing the black hat so uh so probably a you know A Life Lesson that he apparently survived um

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yeah um the what did people think about the um about kind of this the story of Luman

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and it's um its impact on what he's doing in the um you know what he's doing in the the zettel costume in at least as far as uh

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as far as Scott is interpreting his intentions I don't know how big of a role that paradigm shift and his views would have in developing the system that he's using

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perhaps it would have a paradigm shift in the beliefs that he has but I don't know how big of an impact it would have on the actual design of the system

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that he evolved yeah I uh it's it's kind of funny I had a the impression that I got was that there is something going on with um

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as I said something going on with the zettel constant itself where it is very um again not determined but seems to be

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influenced by the um by the the way that he kind of come up comes up with systems theory and with you know this contingency and with this idea of communication because there's

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you know the the the elements you know as far as I understand it so far from reading through half of this um the elements of this involve um not only contingency as opposed to sort of uh

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teleological sort of March towards an ultimate uh state but also um the idea that it's all about communication right so

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you've got systems and subsystems uh but everything's really a subsystem right and there's no way it's also it's one of those things also where um you you don't uh necessarily get to pick

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What's significant right like I've always you know I've been sort of fascinated by um science fiction for example that deals with kind of the Multiverse idea you know and this idea that you know that brand like the the

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um Amazon series that was just on peripheral right where uh it's from uh William Gibson book um which I liked uh the Gibson novel and I like the series too but but the idea

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is that you have these sort of branching uh realities right and um and you know and it's so it's so it's sort of adjacent to the idea of um

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of of a Multiverse but the thing that always struck me about this idea of of the Multiverse is that um we always think that we on we would recognize the significant points at

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which a branching would occur right there's oh there's a there's a critical yes no question there's a you know do we kill do we kill Hitler or do we not kill Hitler right so to add time travel to that uh but but you know just you know

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that there are these major decision points there are these these these forkings in a path and I'm not really sure that that is legitimate right and so and so the

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application here is that you know sort of this idea of of what is um kind of predetermined and um and and what is significant and the

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hierarchy elements you know I mean I can see that a guy that basically said well everything is contingent and that means that everything is extremely unlikely and there is no um you know and there's nothing going on

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with uh with anything that that resembles you know kind of hey I mean Hegel is where we hear that uh Chris is apparently having trouble getting on because now there's three of them

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um we what we hear about you know about his reaction to Hegel is that you know Hegel is the most you know the biggest influence in his uh intellectual life but you know he

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goes in a completely different direction than uh than Hazel did and so so it seems like it it's almost uh it almost sort of creates a not welcome back hey

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how are you you're back we lost it for for just a moment parts of you are back or many or many of you are back so um

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so in any case I I as I was writing notes about uh about this it just you know kind of came to me that that the the idea of sort of this this

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Serendipity that happens um with the indexing and I've actually been kind of I was actually kind of excited this week to you know I wrote a bunch of notes about this that I was reading and I wrote you know I had

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already written some notes about uh about Scots I haven't written my notes for chapters five and six yet but um as I was indexing them I was thinking oh yeah I can you know I'm I'm kind of beginning

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to kind of believe this I was sort of or sort of taking it you know I was acting as if until now and now I'm sort of thinking

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well okay because you know once you get to the point where you've got an index card you know a topic index card and you've got things hitting it from different sources

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right then I'm thinking oh okay you know we get to we get to a point where you know there's there's you know half a dozen or more different sources feeding into this

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general idea well then I can start to actually look at those I can start to actually compare them I can maybe you know then maybe that's the point where I take it and I make it into a

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to use obsidian language node of its own right and I you know and I say okay now I'm going to say something about this topic and I'm going to Branch those you know I'm gonna I'm gonna refer back to

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those and then I'm gonna Branch away from them with a you know kind of an ongoing conversation go ahead Nick I wanted to add to the idea of the index and then multiple sources pointing to

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the same key term what's even more interesting is when you have multiple ideas pointing to the same key term instead of multiple sources as well so an example of that in my antinet is Serendipity I have multiple examples of

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serendipity one is the main one is optimizing for Serendipity so a lot of the things that I end up building or projects that I do I always post about them online and send them to people because then that grows my network and

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basically creating my own luck another version of optimizing for Serendipity is in card games like magic the Gathering where you have your deck of 60 cards and you optimize for the best cards being

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there so then when you have when you draw a random card the chances of you drawing a good card are a lot higher than if half your deck was full of bad cards another example of this now is with the antinet something that Scott talks about is the selection of

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being careful with what you select we're not being careful but being very selective with what you choose to actually write down so that similarly when you're browsing through your antinet or just looking through or

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searching for something when you randomly fall onto something you've already optimized the Serendipity and it's already going to be a useful note or an interesting thought yeah yeah well and it's it's interesting

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because I'm aware that my brain has done that in the past you know that that as I've you know over the years as I've read and highlighted but not you know kind of

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created a central place to you know to store and compare these ideas you know I I'll I'll run into um you know I'll be reading like Talib

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and he'll start talking about you know heuristics and biases and even before he mentions condom right you know my brain is already kind of you know comparing it to you know the

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way I understood it when I had read that you know and so you know so these ideas that you know that I'm interested in that I seem to kind of gravitate towards and come back to um yeah they they should be

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um I think they they should I should pursue them more deliberately and I think that's what this process is kind of about yeah the um I did I did my around page 108 I did

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actually write up write a little thing I said this is getting a little too deep in the weeds um with um the argument I think he's arguing at this point about

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the fine details of internal branching and um but I do I do like his point that

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um that you can over generalize um a thing and I do think that that sunken Aaron's you know was a little bit guilty of that to the point where it becomes less uh less valuable and uh and

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it actually becomes something that can't um you know in the case of Aaron's um and it may all it may also be that my first reading of it I've read errands a couple of times but the first time I

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read it was with the um uh Rome book club the second I think was the second iteration of that um and there was a lot of talk about that promise of the Magic Moment uh go ahead

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Tim and then we'll get back to Nick thanks um it's struck me a bit with the way you were just talking about um being able to shuffle the cards

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and I keep harking back in some respects to this we particularly and I think you and Nicholas as well and he just put his head up with and

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said I've got white um preferred or why best set a card 60 cards and I can play without I think and in part we're trying to talk

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about the difference between how you manipulate the analog versus how you manipulate the digital if we go back as I understand it to Nicholas's

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analog system he's got 90 000 cards apparently I can't see you guys holding that in what hurts

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right so there's a there's an element of where with what seems to be said now about how you use the the whole set because we're

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also talking about is this subset the whole set or Etc with holding the fact that you've got

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upwards of 90 000 cars I mean John and I are both every now I mean will I go out Willy waving about how many notes we've got inside Evernote you know

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there's 35 000 now online um as I slowly move it in the brain yeah as as I move it over I'm not taking them away as I move it over to uh obsidian and for

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instance I'm I'm about 30 of the way through but I've still only got three thousand in obsidian it's not

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anywhere near the same portion but I'm also using it as as many of the Evernote users have said outside of what we've talked about as in

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have a sheet that says these are the bits that work for my fridge and these are the bits that work for web bank and always so I've got all that data about each one of those is one note right the

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thing the thing that just struck me about your example where you're picking different terminologies different phrases different explanations for what is

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ultimately the same idea and it automatically therefore comes up with what phraseology or what jargon is being used what terminology is being used for

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which bids and yet even within this group of of 19 12 15 people we have used multiple descriptions for the literature card or the literature

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notes I and if I remember rightly just after Scott's Nazi wrote one of the things he points out is is Nicholas never used the phrase literature note right right Aaron's

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invented that I I and he's and here I am working with people who've had an American style education or a European British style education and we can't even agree on the name of a faucet or

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attack and I've and on top of that I've got 20 other languages to worry about right 10 of which are Indian right I mean I've got no chance so

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I I'm I'm one of the things for instance that really made me say yeah I've got to move the research stuff over to obsidian for instance is

00:30:18

aliases there's no hint whatsoever that ever evernote's gonna have an alias so you end up by having to build and save really big search

00:30:34

strings such that you remember that literature note equals c note equals Guardian though equals whatever else we've got going for it and it it's

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it's one of the things that I know and I felt that is a real problem we've ever know is is the way that the tags are not

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visible as well as they could be for instance if a newer version in the older version it was wasn't so bad you could see a whole page worth of tax like four columns from a normal laptop now

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you can only see one column at a time and it's just one long toilet roll of tax and such that going through and finding those notes

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that have got a singular unit bag therefore his theory is is not a tag it's it's just a a bookmark almost how do I have resolve that and oh yeah I

00:31:37

spoke with a guy's name wrong I've gone John Smith he said a swift job or whatever um on paper and in and in my muscle memory of

00:31:52

writing down Smith John rather than John Smith I'm still curious as to how you think you could work because 40 years ago without knowing that's what I was doing

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because that's how the librarian at University said this is how you should do things with the paper poppies of a citation index you go find one paper you get given one paper

00:32:17

as being part of a question find that paper and use the citation indexes to go up upwards and downwards like research Reddit does these days right and it's and all of that you either make

00:32:30

long lists on a piece of paper and then the ones you picked out purely arbitrary by maybe reading the the abstract or just it looks more interesting than some of the others you put it on a card

00:32:44

and it becomes part of a research right there isn't there isn't there wasn't there wasn't the time or the access to be slightly more definitive for

00:32:57

saying yes I've touched at least a thousand of these references and I've now got 150 if I'm going to use for this paper essay or whatever right

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at the moment I still don't have a com have a nearly convincing argument that back in the day with a

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trickery of numbering versus I've really got to re-read my cards every month type thing just to make sure they stick a bit better

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versus I can type the keyword or I can even type the keyword backwards and I still get all the cards on all the notes or all the atomic notes there I it's

00:33:48

it's it seems to be loud item for loud autism's sake I yeah I I think are the um is that so of some sort of

00:34:08

that wasn't a comments no that wasn't an editorial by the cat uh it was just it would and actually that goes to the point that I was going to make which was about contingency right because of those thousand things

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that you look at and 125 that you picked right those are unique and kind of uniquely express your interests the things that jump out at you and and I think that that is one of

00:34:34

the things that I really like about this oh here's another cat wants to editorialize um but go ahead go ahead Nick okay I just wanted to quickly answer a question mark had put in the chat

00:34:49

um which was how can being careful in finding a connection that is unanticipated be a function of the same process referring yeah so when it comes to when it comes to that you can think of it as tagging in an

00:35:02

obsidian when you add a tag to a note so when I read about the being selective for the notes you put in your box that reminded me of the key terms Serendipity I then went to my index to look up Serendipity because I

00:35:16

know I have some kind of other note on Serendipity when I went to go place the card I had to look at the other notes that were there to figure I didn't have to but I looked at the other cards that were there to figure out where exactly I wanted to file that note

00:35:29

so it is a very it's a very similar process to coming up with an idea in and writing it down and then adding a tag to an obsidian the only difference between that and the analog or the way that I

00:35:41

did it is that when I added the tag I also got reminded of all the other notes or not all the other notes but the few notes in the general area of that tag as well and that's something you can do in obsidian through self-discipline

00:35:54

um is when you add a tag to a note you can go and check the other notes with that tag whereas with analog when I think of a key term and I know I want to file it there even if I actively try to avoid the other notes in that section

00:36:05

I'm still going to end up reading one or two titles and get reminded of them does that make sense yeah I think I mean when I try to translate a lot of this stuff I'm not

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necessarily anti the paper stuff I I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm trying to find kind of the Nuggets uh of Effectiveness that

00:36:28

that makes sense to me and and what you just said um reminds me a lot of something I'm interested which is a basically a generative view of learning and memory

00:36:42

and the idea is um you can have external process external experiences like taking a note like highlighting like in any of these things that are external actions and you

00:36:55

try to figure out if those external actions encourage um mental behaviors uh that that are effective so so when I look at that

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weird numbering lettering system I don't see that not as necessarily the key I think the key is all that thought that has to go into where you put that note and so like you just said

00:37:21

you know when you think about things you try to find it you examine different things all of that is generative and you wouldn't have done that necessarily unless you had to make or use you put upon yourself

00:37:35

um forcing that kind of decision by doing that you have to do a lot of thinking and it's the thinking yeah that's that's a value not not that silly process of it's got to go here

00:37:48

um I mean I'm sorry silly that's just the way I see it the silliness is what makes you do the other stuff which is what you really benefit from yeah I agree I think the arbitrariness

00:38:00

is just arbitrary but you know and so in that sense it's not like the Memory Palace really that you know that that Chris described to us um a couple clubs ago but but in a way

00:38:15

it kind of is because it is that it is that that building that mental muscle of finding the place and you know and thinking about the content the best

00:38:27

possible context in the you know in the work that you've already been doing um is that is that the way you experience it Nick yes I

00:38:40

yeah the the actual alphanumeric address is something Scott described in his book as well is that I'll just quickly use this as an example for what I'm about to say

00:38:52

is that when you file a note using the alphanumeric address it's technically connected to every single other note in your antinet what but the difference is that the strength of the connection is

00:39:04

dependent on how close that note is to the note that you've just filed so the address that's right like right in front of it or right behind it has a very strong connection to the new note whereas the note at the complete end of my antenna is technically still

00:39:17

connected is just an incredibly weak connection and it's one that I haven't thought about so in a sense the alphanumeric value kind of shows me exactly where that note is

00:39:33

actually useful but I'm not 100 sure I haven't thought a lot about the use or how it would change if I didn't have enough numeric value I've just noticed that in obsidian when I used obsidian I didn't have one and it

00:39:45

didn't seem as useful uh I think Gregory Silverman had mentioned uh finding the alphanumeric value very useful so maybe he could expand on that a little bit more after other Greg

00:39:59

uh yeah why don't we why don't we do that after uh Greg C goes first because you've been you've had your hands up for a while all right no no problem I I thoroughly enjoy hearing everybody's opinion on uh

00:40:12

as we kind of go through this and what I've done is I've I've basically arbitrarily gave myself a goal of by the end of the year so I've got two weeks to be able to determine whether I'm going to go analog or if I'm going to go

00:40:25

digital and I honestly see benefits in both and what I was wondering is um you know having used okay having used obsidian but now we're starting to go

00:40:37

and read like to be honest with you I'm only I think I'm just starting chapter six in his in his book um in Scott's book um still waiting for the physical copy um but I really see a lot of the

00:40:50

benefits of what he's saying and I know the benefits of being able to write things down especially as I apply it towards and as as I mentioned last week you know I do bullet journaling and I do that on paper versus you know versus

00:41:03

todoist which is what I used to use um but a question I really want to ask you guys was uh could you still use the concepts of what uh Scott has in

00:41:17

obsidian so in other words you would have a bib files directory you would have an index directory you would actually start storing your your cards with maybe in the title but you could

00:41:30

put in you know the address I really like is you know using the one thousand two thousand three thousand five all the way to five thousand then breaking it out from there using what Google's um you know I'm sorry Wikipedia's

00:41:43

breakdown structure uh and because then that way if you capture you know just general thoughts that apply to nothing that that I'm looking at right now but I want to store it somewhere for a future

00:41:55

thought you know I like that concept so kind of wanted to get everyone's opinion on on you know maybe maybe looking at obsidian but from an analog perspective as if it was an analog item

00:42:09

um because I have to admit I really like mind mapping and the fact of having canvas now on uh with um with obsidian I could see being able to use cards and pulling different cards and and putting

00:42:22

it into a way that my my mind would actually think that plus I like using the uh the plugin called journey journey kind of reminds me of the old BBC uh show connections where you could say

00:42:34

okay I'm gonna randomly choose a card and I want to see how it relates to this card and you can see the Journey of how the how how it's connected all the way through to your to the final connection it's just fascinating to kind of go

00:42:46

through something like that so with that I'll go ahead and stop and just I'm really kind of want to because I know you were starting to talk about that Dan at the beginning when I was having connection issues I wanted to hear you were saying that you were kind of using

00:42:59

analog but you're also using screen tool correct yeah yeah well and I think this this came out it's too bad Pat's not here because I think this came up a little bit in the um in the vault

00:43:11

um and as well there was a kind of a conversation going on in there in obsidian and and I think um and Mark I think you were involved in it too and and I think that

00:43:24

I mean my my reaction to that is that that you can do it but do you want to do it you know it's sort of like or will you do it right there there are ways you know and what I was what I was saying is

00:43:37

I'll just I'll show this briefly if you guys don't please um so this is my um so this is a uh a scrintle board that I've made and let me zoom in on it a

00:43:51

little bit um and I'm calling it um I'm calling I'm I'm calling it Aspen and wield because uh wield is a word for

00:44:06

forest in Old English and Aspens are connected right so I so I have I have a picture over there of Pando the uh the the biggest and oldest living thing on the planet um the the Aspen clonal colony in Utah

00:44:21

and so what but so what these are is these are actually as I mentioned earlier these are photographs of the cards that I wrote um talking you know just as I was as I

00:44:33

was reading this and so I I made a bunch of cards and then I thought well I can take pictures of them right and so I did that and I haven't typed anything basically on any of these

00:44:46

cards right what I've all I've done is I have uh photographed the card and then I've put a link to the um to the the bibliographical card that's at the top and then uh and then

00:44:59

actually visually what I did with this of course was I I put them all underground right so the the idea here is that this is you know that the line is the ground and that these you know that this if this is a forest right

00:45:11

these are roots and then they they lead to other um and what I what I decided to do in my numbering was that um my numbering is a little bit more random it's not based on the um the the

00:45:25

Wikipedia uh disciplines it's just based on the things that I'm going after and number four um at a at a top level domain level is um human knowledge and then

00:45:38

um 4.4 in sociology and then uh 4.4.1 is readings about sociology and then um the the next one is this particular book and then I've got my my numbered notes on the book

00:45:52

um I thought I would use zero as my interventions my notes so so in my terminology right these these things down here are all um Source notes and

00:46:05

then above ground is what I call Point notes right where I'm making a point where I'm you know sort of turning the corner and thinking about you know what I want to say about this if I'm teaching this or if I'm writing about this that

00:46:18

sort of thing and so uh and and then I'm gonna I'm just gonna kind of continue this way so when I started doing and I did type this um in scrantal I probably will hand write it as well and put it in my my

00:46:30

file cabinet down there but um sometimes I don't have my you know I do carry my cards around in this box uh and also carry my little backup drives

00:46:42

around but that you know that's sort of been what I've been thinking about as a kind of a hybrid thing um it also um sort of solves the

00:46:56

uh risk issue for me I think a little bit is that I sort of feel like you know if my you know if this room burns down and I lose my little cabinet um then I will still have these

00:47:11

available and and I and I think I am going to uh sort of force myself to continue that process oh Greg had to leave um sorry about that uh

00:47:22

I didn't notice when he was going but um but that's that's kind of um that's kind of what I'm what I'm playing with now I I am forcing myself to actually do the

00:47:37

um the the physical thing but at the same time I'm also trying to sort of replicate that in Scranton and that's why I I like um

00:47:49

I like scrantal as well because I you know because I like that that visual um capability so that's really cool Dan thank you thank you yeah uh John you've been

00:48:02

waiting to say something uh no no problem um so one of the aspects that's kind of related to this is what is what's uh Scott calls neuro in printing uh he has

00:48:15

no references to it and he it seems like a a mental model of the brain of his is simply recording and of course that's not true um and um I I think there are current

00:48:27

theories more like what Mark was talking about uh generating something enhances memory connections and it's that active processing so rewriting a note in your own words figuring out where it goes in the in the

00:48:41

card stack you know applying a the index number trees and leaves and things like that are all reprocessing things that enhances uh learning and memory um so it seems like you could still do

00:48:55

that um within obsidian regardless if you're tight even scrantal whether you're right handwriting or typing I think a couple meetings ago uh there was skepticism

00:49:07

expressed about some of these studies about note-taking in class um and typing versus handwriting and um uh and it's and it's pretty weak small

00:49:19

ends and it was probably self-selected groups which completely wipes out the validity those kinds of studies um so it I'm I'm still sort of thinking you can do both and get the same effect

00:49:33

as long as you take some of the uh the activities uh that uh Nick was talking about uh in either case uh and get the same effect I think yeah I think that there's a lot

00:49:46

of there's a lot of um and that's what kind of struck me about the conversation that was happening in the vault too I think there are a lot of things that you can do the question is do the tools

00:50:01

sort of help or or do you have to sort of end run the you know the the the features of the tools and you know kind of force yourself into this this

00:50:13

additional discipline of um of you know making sure that you do that and that's what I was trying to do in obsidian um and uh and it it sort of worked for

00:50:25

me up until the point I think although I love read wise up until the point where I let rewinds begin sweeping the you know all of my highlights and things and you know uh hypothesis and

00:50:39

and Kindle notes and all of that stuff in there because then it just overwhelmed me and there was just too much for me to actually process and think about and make actual notes about it and compare um I have used the card option in um in

00:50:52

scrivener actually that was my um I discovered that at about the time when I was writing my dissertation and um and I had been using Tinderbox but you know Tinderbox doesn't have a

00:51:05

nice connection to a to an output system so yeah that was that had been my my solution go ahead Tim yeah I I've heard your comment about a city and

00:51:20

the flip over and I I totally agree in terms of if you're one of those people that has I ever

00:51:33

turned on Automation and because you have so much it just floods through I mean that's one of the reasons why I got 30 000 plus notes in evidence or something

00:51:46

but I and I've seen it I understood it spoken to people about it as well seeing it mentioned in Parts in in various YouTubes or or even uh

00:52:00

newsletters and stuff and so I've been very careful about what add-ons what plugins I allow and

00:52:14

I see some people uh the plugin comes out and hasn't even really got out of beta but if sort has been released into the wild

00:52:28

and there's they've got the 45 minute YouTube um video audit with with three quarters of all the options being covered in in 10 minute detail sort of

00:52:43

thing uh I I learned very quickly I suppose with with

00:52:54

the IBM Lotus and Microsoft Office you never want the first one you probably don't want the second one you might just get away with third or fourth generation um and so I've I've

00:53:10

been one of the classics I think way back with word for Windows too when it was still yeah Word and Excel I don't even know that PowerPoint was out there but it wasn't there was no office they were all

00:53:26

separate right um word for Windows 2 was such so basic that if you wanted to put page 15 or 36 you had to write your own basic routine

00:53:38

to get it put it in the footer there was Footers and there was page numbers but you couldn't do page X of Y without writing like a two-line basically it's a character or they called it word basic

00:53:52

back then but it became Visual Basic or or uh office basic um yeah we've we've obsidian

00:54:03

there's there's a word kale in the core app and yet somebody's already produced a better workout I think it's even called that or bigger World count

00:54:16

um and it's like if you're taking notes and or trying to figure out which piece you're gonna a more initial transcode or or whatever and how you're going to pick them up

00:54:29

the last thing I care about is how many words are there on that card you know because obviously I've got an infinitely flexible length of cars I don't care it's not like you guys say oh

00:54:42

I'm halfway up and about it I forgot my pack of blank cards I've forgot to start writing smaller on the back or whatever you know so it those sorts of add-ons

00:54:55

and even as we you know repeatedly said on some of these conversations I really couldn't be given monkeys about the graphic view once it gets to above like

00:55:08

35 50. dots because you're not really getting anything out of it you know in that sense other than yes it's pretty and yes it grows looks nice and organic

00:55:22

now it's not organic I could do that with a control system no problem okay so it it the um

00:55:36

the unrestricted growth in plugins or or playing pretty patterns with let's have a different theme and make various color combinations and whatever and it's the same with Evernote to certain extent

00:55:48

the new version one of the big things they all fluffed about was this new home page which it they try to deliver as a proper dashboard and what was the first

00:56:01

thing they gave you to do with home page what picture would you like on your home page that you then immediately covered 90 of it up with widgets to give you

00:56:13

here's the list of files you've just touched here's the list of dates that are coming out and obviously and it's like guys you know you fired the previous CEO

00:56:25

for having that argument about the length of the turnover of the ear of the icon of Evernote sorry Tim when are you leaving right

00:56:39

oh sorry no Ian sorry Ian where are you leaving right and it's like you know this is supposed to be a productivity package and now we're going to spend or some people will spend

00:56:53

a good few hours over the month at least I want to change my Hope card picture oh which cat picture am I going to use today oh let's go and have a look at Facebook instead find a new one now

00:57:07

45 minutes later their word count says you put one more word on there no yeah so yeah it's a tool and it's and it's if

00:57:21

you want to put it in tools and Allergy you know as much of an engineer as I am I could probably get away with three spellers I don't need a whole step on trolley of

00:57:33

tools to do my three spellers right yeah I could probably get it on the left but if I if I push myself you know so you know add-ons plugins themes

00:57:49

the very first um book club we had we we spent like a week and a half fighting over what the Vault was going to look like before you know we

00:58:02

basically said no sorry you can't change the theme you can't you can't add your own plugins um and that's why that uh retaining your personal settings um Paige is still sitting there in the

00:58:14

vault to prevent people yeah as narcissist and I've also there's a lot 900 and something on plugins there's 25 of those are in Chinese

00:58:27

and only applicable to to Chinese script so actually it's the I don't need those right you know how far out is the word count I don't really care but it's nice to

00:58:40

know it's over a thousand or or 1500 or something but I don't need to know that it's uh it's 1238 excluding the 14 amp for saying so I put in instead of the word

00:58:52

end or something I go not that not that worried at least until I got my final draft of a Content that goes off to

00:59:04

whoever is going to publish it why not scrap it around with notes it's irrelevant I'm not paid by the word in that context paid by solution a problem right so

00:59:16

right it reminds me of um I there was a post this week in one of the I think it was the zettel cast in channel on Reddit somebody wrote a long post about I've

00:59:30

been doing this for a year and it kind of uh was that I'm giving up post or I don't get it or here here's my here's what I've done this for a year and here's what I've gleaned from it and

00:59:42

it's all you know mostly it just all seems to be crap but most of the post was or in studying it closely they never defined the problem they were trying to solve for themselves

00:59:57

and the one thing they did mention was I've been reading a lot and I want to make make it easier to remember what I've read and kind of make it actionable and then none of the work they did after that

01:00:10

was working on that problem it was I read all the books I read all these blog posts I went down the rabbit hole of PKM I read about all these systems I tried

01:00:23

all these systems I tried every app and pick my favorite food actually actually I think the one of the worst things you could do is to physically try every app because you never get enough

01:00:36

material in one system to start seeing benefits of the connection and you're making and I I just like

01:00:49

there's a phrase for it called shiny object syndrome and that's the thing you really really don't want to do but a lot of these things or even Scott's book suffers from it in some sense in that it's

01:01:02

almost 600 pages it's a lot for what is really a very at its root should be a simple system of do these five things do them for a while

01:01:16

and see where it gets you before you add on those you know to Tim's talking about the the 500 plugins the more plugins you add the worse your experience becomes or

01:01:27

in Dan's case the thing that dumps all your data into one spot and broke me I do it and I have a folder where all my stuff is dumped and it's great for search when I want to

01:01:42

search um in fact this week there was a an obscure philosopher that I had tagged and written about once before three years ago

01:01:53

and his name came up again this week in my reading oh that guy you mentioned in on Reddit yeah and I I well I may have been that or somebody this is another specific thing that I haven't written about externally

01:02:06

to my notes yet but um I tagged his name and out of curiosity I'm like oh I'm I'm curious if I've run across this guy before and yes in fact I had twice and completely forgotten about

01:02:20

it and in looking up those other two notes one from a year ago and another from two years ago I went down a whole nother Rabbit Hole of quirky interesting things

01:02:32

so my line of reading and I was trying to like chug through two chapters of a book so I can say I finished it and I totally four pages into the two chapters

01:02:43

I spent five hours going down another rabbit hole but I never would have if I didn't have those two and they were really throwaway notes they were not I it kills me we've spent so much time

01:02:58

talking about permanent notes and Evergreen notes and all these types of notes but it really these were two throwaway little mentions that got me delving back into that material but it

01:03:09

was in a massive amount of notes that you know I didn't have an intention to come back to but they were there in searchable for me they would never have been searchable I

01:03:22

would have never found them in an analog setting because I would have never spent the time to write out more of a card create the index entries and put them in there and find a place to put them and

01:03:36

use them so they would never have been searchable without that digital context um but there is that separate process of the more important things the things I'm

01:03:48

working on the things I really really care about that I spend the time that are going to become an article or a book chapter or something else later on those I'll spend more time on

01:04:00

so maybe we should call them spend more time on notes instead of Evergreen mode because yeah who cares but um I do make that kind of separation of these are throwaway things that I might

01:04:13

need or might be useful in the future and to a great extent they're not it's a long tail of nothing but every now and then those throwaway notes become super

01:04:26

important to me and it's it's much harder for me that's the one downside of the analog only version is that search functionality that I use

01:04:37

or um the Serendipity of the autocomplete when I double bracket something and start typing and five things pop up and I'm like oh I what about those ideas

01:04:51

that kind of and I in my system I call it combinatorial creativity is what are the potential links and how to what are the affordances of the system

01:05:03

to uncover that to make those apparent without having to physically manually search through it those things to me I and it happens invariably

01:05:16

two or three times a month that something pops up through an autocomplete or through a random search of some keyword for a person or a concept

01:05:29

um that I'll find and that's the the fun generative part for me that very few people are talking about in this space um and I you know usually it goes under

01:05:41

the words Magic and and no one actually describes what that the experience is when you feel the magic but I think that's usually what it is or

01:05:57

at least it is for me is that oh here's a five hour block of time that disappeared but was super productive for me and fun because that happened in a time where I was interested in that thing and I'm gonna put aside this thing

01:06:10

I was working on for this thing that's more fun for me right now and actually was not only more fun but way way more productive use of my time than finishing those damn two chapters which I've still

01:06:22

it'll be after the holidays before I come back because I've now found this new fun Rabbit Hole well that's very lumine-esque um Lewis given waiting patiently

01:06:36

hi thanks yeah uh um I mean what Chris just said was like part maybe of an answer to like well the question I was going to pose and that

01:06:48

was like I mean like I think it's clear we all agree that Simplicity like drives creativity inside down notes that we don't you know we're not changing the

01:07:02

fonts all the time and like the notes we should be approaching our note-taking like a craft like working on them and working them again and re sort of re looking at our

01:07:16

our ideas um but you know I think I mean that's got sixth chapter is all about analog so that's the sort of interesting thing for

01:07:28

me is that um Chris has just set like really eloquently what like that sort of um uh to sort of accidental uh discoveries

01:07:40

you can find in a digital system but but Scott is all about the analog system like is there something fundamental in an analog system that we can that we

01:07:53

can't like achieve with a digital system and I mean that's what he kind of basically implies that like we have a second uh

01:08:07

and intelligence that's talking with us through our notes um yeah and I've been I mean as you as you've been talking I've been I've been scrolling and I was lucky enough to scroll to the place where he gives the

01:08:21

pros and cons of analog on um where am I 163 to 164 right um what did people think about that I mean some of these

01:08:37

strike me as again the the whole I mean the one the one that seems to me to be the most real or the most powerful or the most potentially

01:08:54

um you know kind of powerful is the thinking is writing thing um or writing is thinking um depending on which you put first and and I do

01:09:09

kind of respond to that I'm not sure that I that I respond to it as much as you know as Scott does and as he would like us to at this point

01:09:29

um I do think that that expressing what I'm thinking in you know recording what I'm thinking is the main thing and and you know and and mark this goes

01:09:46

back to what you were we were talking about in the um in the chat you know the these these techniques you know these retrieval practices this kind of slowing down and writing and you know and does that

01:09:59

um and you know and as Tim says there there has been some some kind of sort of pushback on some of the the studies that that claimed that it was you know miraculous um for me it's

01:10:14

I I'm not 100 sure I like like I said I'm acting as if um it is real and uh and I'm gonna you know try to continue to evaluate

01:10:28

um but like I said I'm I'm sort of hedging my bets by you know by doing the thing that I showed you too and you know and and putting them in a form where you know when I've got my iPad or when I've

01:10:40

got my you know my um you know my notebook or when I'm at a computer I can you know I can play around with those ideas I can compare them you know just right there on the screen you know without having to come

01:10:53

to my you know my sanctum down the other end of the the office and you know open up the drawer and all of that um so I think that that is um super valuable yeah I

01:11:07

I I'm curious Dan do you feel like there's a concept in programming and you know computer architecture type

01:11:19

things and in some areas of engineering called dry diry forward don't repeat yourself and it in some sense it means do it once

01:11:31

do it right and have it where it's accessible and I'm curious if you feel like in this practice of writing them out as cards that you're doing extra work the extra

01:11:43

work in scrantable of repeating yourself to copy them and put them into the system and then link them together and if you're and I to me that's one of the issues with using multiple systems

01:11:55

or systems that don't dovetail you know it's nice that I can have a zotero repository and then take all that data and dump it into something like research rabbit without having to repeat all the

01:12:07

work of collecting and curating the thing to get new stuff out of it and there there's that issue of I've got a digital version and an analog version

01:12:19

how much extra time are you wasting on the doing of the both and what are you getting out of it for having repeated yourself or do you feel like you're doing that I feel like that my much more

01:12:33

Chris if I am just taking a file that I've scraped off of someplace you know a PDF that I pulled off a jstor or whatever and moving it from one database to another database or that you know that

01:12:47

sort of thing and really that was why uh and again it's too bad Pat's not here because I'm gonna talk talk about them again um that that was why I resisted you know when Pat you know kind of tried to talk me into the brain it's like well I'm not

01:12:59

you know I don't want to do all that again with respect to this these you know these files right these these you know even just the highlights you know and actually I do have a read wise inbox

01:13:12

folder in in obsidian um it wasn't it wasn't like clogging my main um graph it what but it was you know putting me in a place where I was never

01:13:24

clearing my inbox and I and I'd like you know and I'm really bad at that but I still have this this kind of feeling like I should clear my inbox um I think that for me

01:13:36

returning to my actual ideas is the exception to that to that feeling I feel okay I feel like that is time well spent if I'm you know if I'm looking at the cards if you know

01:13:51

in the same way that you know that I imagine you know Luman as you know sort of tending his you know his his boxes you know and you know and he did always claim that he spent more time doing that

01:14:04

than he actually spent writing which I think shows up in his writing too but that's we've already gone over that um but you know I I do think that that I yeah that I would disagree with the you

01:14:16

know with don't repeat yourself when it comes to actually you know sort of pondering on the ideas so that would that for me would be the you know kind of the one big exception

01:14:28

to that rule of not wanting to um to spend more time you know doing something that I've already yeah that was one of the things I think I picked up or was more apparent in

01:14:42

the designer I mentioned last week who wrote the book on the history of design and in taking his notes he touched it he reads it first once he writes the notes

01:14:53

that's a second touch then he sits and creates an outline and organize them it's a third touch and then he actually writes the book and it's yet another touch so each time he has

01:15:07

thought about and slowly integrated the ideas and done the linking and I think in those systems the repetition that's ineffects there's

01:15:19

an area called spaced repetition that specifically talks about doing that as a tacit act rather than doing it as part of your creation process and I don't

01:15:31

think there are a lot of people talking about space repetition as a thing during that creative process that you're both learning about it exploring about it thinking about it and then creating

01:15:43

something about it it and it it's a thing there too but I really don't see any literature or anybody talking about that as a a process or a method in their learning setup but ideally as a teacher

01:15:58

or a professor when you assign a writing assignment to a student you're essentially forcing them to do that multiple times because there's not a whole lot of ways around how do you

01:16:10

write a paper about some historical topic without having read and seen and thought about it at least a little bit and of course the students go in a lot

01:16:22

of it more often than not is to see and learn as little as they possibly can and spend as little time as they can to do that thing and one of the framings I like about

01:16:34

what lumon does and Aaron's repeats is study and learn about and spend the time on the things that interest you within that field

01:16:47

and then at least you're interested in it and more likely to get something useful out of it even if it's not necessarily the focus of the class and maybe some other tangential thing to the

01:16:58

the history class you somehow hate but you'll at least get something out of it um but that learning process of touching things multiple times is one of the few areas where I don't

01:17:15

I throw the dry principle out the window for that because for me that's a useful affordance of the system rather than a design that's out of the process but I

01:17:28

think a lot of people are spending a lot of time with the shiny object syndrome and they're repeating themselves but they're doing in a way that they're working on the notes

01:17:40

without the notes working for them yeah which I think is what you're saying when you're when you're doing that extra touch your notes are doing work for you instead of you wrangling and managing

01:17:52

the system which then or that you know when you mention the idea of um you know like inbox zero to me inbox zero is you you managing the notes and not the notes managing you

01:18:06

yeah yeah well and there's and there's a big difference yeah I think you're right between the you know between this is something that this is an idea that I'm developing that that originated you know and this kind of goes back to

01:18:18

the way I wrote about it right where it originates with some somebody else right it's somebody else's idea that you read or that you see on a video or that you hear in a lecture or something and and

01:18:29

gradually by returning to it and and working with it again and again again you kind of turn it into your own um that's a whole lot different you know sort of qualitatively than you know the the gasket for the refrigerator that Tim

01:18:42

was talking about that you know that becomes you know another you know another note in an Evernote system or in an obsidian or something like that Greg you've been very patient no problem I I'm thoroughly enjoying the

01:18:56

conversation so thank you Dan and the one question I did want to go ahead and ask everybody is uh how many of you actually use like zotero to store your PDFs and be able to ride

01:19:08

into because I know there's workflows that go from uh zotero to obsidian and I know even in the book I believe that Scott talks about even using zotero as

01:19:21

is as one of few digital items that actually stores his data in so if I could just ask uh does anyone here actually use doTERRA because it sounds like uh Chris you actually use that

01:19:33

character correct yeah yeah I do um I actually store all of my documents in um caliber

01:19:48

c-a-l-i-b-r-e and it's essentially like iTunes but for documents and it's stores the you know the title the author the publisher the dates

01:20:00

tags if you want so you can put tags on it that you've read something not read it you know I sort them all by fiction non-fiction you know half a dozen things so it's and it's very configurable and

01:20:13

super useful so I use that for the physical store and then I have zotero as really more just a root citation manager

01:20:25

and if you really want to dig into the weeds and it's kind of painful to figure out but there are ways to sink some of the data between those two applications I typically

01:20:38

I did it once once upon a time and have never dealt with it since um but I have two different places I can go and search for material which is nice

01:20:51

and then zotero makes the better citation manager for actually doing footnotes and that kind of stuff or for quickly bookmarking I want to read this or I should Mark this paper or book or article

01:21:05

as something I might want to read and I'll throw a couple tags on it and then I can sort through it quickly and then that also lets you create collections of things so you know there's an orality project I'm working

01:21:18

on I can take all the stuff I've got on a reality put it in one folder but it's also exists in kind of a bigger super folder above that if you want to think of it that way

01:21:30

um yeah and then it becomes easy to kind of manage some of that but I try not to do that you know that don't repeat yourself thing can become an issue depending on how you manage that problem

01:21:44

so I actually am starting to keep all of my PDFs whether their articles out of jstor or things that I've scanned myself

01:21:55

um in the actual zotero file um because it's um it's just more convenient for me to um to have you know kind of a clean and sometimes actually I will leave it if I

01:22:09

if it's a if it's a file that I'm going to assign to students I'll have a clean copy and I'll have a highlighted copy um it doesn't I haven't run into any um any kind of storage um

01:22:22

issues with it um it does I've never I never really tried the zot file integration with obsidian um that was that that was getting right to the edge of you know okay this is feeling too much like programming

01:22:35

um and um although I did um I really enjoyed the the connection between zotero and um research around it uh that was brilliant uh so that was that was a lot

01:22:49

of fun um I hope those guys resurface again I hope they're not just quiet because they're they're like I hope they're quiet because they're working and not quiet because they're like going out and finding other jobs or something like

01:23:01

that Nick did you have something you wanted to throw in just uh when it relates to zotero um I used it for a little bit at when I originally started my anti-net but now I

01:23:14

mainly use just the bibliography section and write everything on note cards as well um but there are still a few cases where for zotero now I use it as just a quick reference for something that I'm not

01:23:26

actually going to take the time to write a bibliography card for but it's just a quick reference of like oh I got this idea while I was watching this video and here's a little tag that you can look up on zotero and go find that video again

01:23:37

yeah I I do use I do have a drawer for bibliography cards too and I do um you know I do write a bibliography card because that allows me to connect you know to actually put the number of the you know that set of notes that I'm

01:23:51

writing off of the card um and uh what I don't do is the thing that Scott suggests where you use a little Z and you you know you make it create a code for it because it's so

01:24:04

easy just to go in and you know I I usually organize stuff by you know by publication year and author's last name and you know that that's been working for me so far you know and I haven't uh

01:24:18

oh caliber with an re okay thanks for I'll look that up um yeah so you might you might um have to pay actual money to put that all of that stuff in zotero

01:24:32

so I think and I think I do pay them something because I just feel like I I wanna you know I mean there are some things that I do actually want to support um I had I mean years ago I had uh

01:24:44

endnote and you know and then Thompson Reuters bought it and it went insane um I actually have an old I have a very old Macintosh in my bedroom in the house that is so old that every time I launch

01:24:57

word I have to wait for the error message to come up saying that it can't find the endnote database and you know so what do I want to do but that'll only hopefully be with me I can't upgrade it to the new operating

01:25:09

system so at some point it's going to be going away as soon as my wife lets me buy another computer [Music] so shall we is there anything more that

01:25:21

we want to say about chapters five and six I closed my iPad because the iPad somehow had stolen my um my trackpad and I wasn't able to get to my desktop so I had to close that for a

01:25:34

minute um the the analog part I think um and then the networked part are the part of the things that we um

01:25:47

we were kind of going to cover go ahead Nick I was curious as to everyone's here thoughts and interpretations on uh Scott what's got proposed on

01:25:59

replacement and enhancement whereas a digital system seems to act as a memory replacement where you write things down to go find them again in order so that you don't have to remember them and an analog system instead acts

01:26:13

as a way to enhance your memory so that you can think of cues and then when you get queued you'll think of another cue which will set off a chain so I'm wondering what everyone thinks of that

01:26:31

I think a big for me a big element of it is that whole that whole idea of um Evergreen notes right that um you know and I don't know that I I maybe I'm I'm

01:26:43

not doing Andy matuchak um you know maybe we're not giving him okay I'm not doing him Justice when I say you know but but the way I understood that was kind of as a well you keep working on this idea until you

01:26:57

get it right you know until you've polished it you know so that it goes from being a rough Stone off the you know out of the Quarry to being you know the gem that it could be and uh and for

01:27:07

me that sort of precludes the evolution right the time element right and you know I mean I'm a historian so I'm interested in change over time so so that that is one of the things that is really

01:27:21

resonant for me about the replacement enhancement question you know that I don't want to replace I don't replace anything there was actually I don't know if it was on Twitter or in Reddit this week somebody said do you you know do you do you

01:27:35

delete your notes or do you replace them or something I was like I have never deleted I mean even obsidian I'm not using that which I'm not taking anything out of it um you know I want to know what I thought you know and that's where that I mean

01:27:48

let's be realistic you know we're not communicating with a supernatural entity we're communicating with our past self okay and then so if it's not there if it's a race then you know I kind of feel

01:28:00

like I'm screwed I mean is that the way that you're thinking of it Nick or did you have another you know something else in mind yeah it's very similar to the way I think of it um where

01:28:12

personally what I've found is that when I use digital notes I was writing down more information and so I could remember a cue and then go find the note and then read what I had written but not much

01:28:26

else whereas with analog I can write down a lot less but it'll act as more of a cue for me to remember the train of thought that I had which might lead to another card and then I'll go see that

01:28:39

and then find another cue and then go down another Chain of Thought whereas personally that doesn't seem to happen for me in digital systems well and that that also goes back to that I think we

01:28:50

passed by it quickly about five or ten minutes ago that question of you know the long Scroll of you know of what you can write in a single note um in you know in a digital app you know

01:29:03

I I feel constrained by a card to say what it is I have to say about the thing that I found you know on page 41 of this text or whatever right

01:29:16

um and maybe you know and so maybe that also um is a a limitation that is actually really beneficial um

01:29:27

some of that question too goes back to and I think probably one of the best framings I've seen of it is then of our Bush's phrase associative trails

01:29:41

through thought so or um Mark Bernstein who've created Tinderbox has the idea of a digital garden and you can walk through your garden of ideas in

01:29:55

different ways and see them from different perspectives depending on which path you want to take through your garden or do you even want to go off Trail and see all the flowers and trees from you

01:30:06

know an even different perspective so there's that is a thing and I think a lot of people have the affordances for doing that are a little

01:30:18

harder in digital form than they are in analog form and if you want to think of it from an even older perspective uh people who used

01:30:32

you know the modern West may have this idea of the you know the Memory Palace as an imaginary place you go to remember those

01:30:43

things things but a lot of oral Society is moved as the thing to which they attach their memories and thoughts and ideas so as you physically

01:30:57

are walking around your environment you're attaching specific memories to trees and rocks and you know landmarks within your own environment so as you walk past the

01:31:09

white picket fence down the block if you've attached the idea of Napoleon Bonaparte and every time you walk past that fence you see Napoleon Bonaparte sitting on that fence post sneering at

01:31:23

you that can become a trigger for a Cascade of other ideas and you know the West totally misses

01:31:34

that piece of how those oral systems work because we don't think about it when we weren't trained to do that you know or when you've you know I'm

01:31:46

almost certain that you know the indigenous people doing their you know quote-unquote Indian dance the night before the big hunt there is a piece of culture

01:32:05

and fun and entertainment about that dance but the music the movements the dance itself is likely heavily tied to the actions and things they're gonna

01:32:17

perform in the hunt tomorrow so that by doing those things the night before they're literally sitting out and doing the same thing that you know the US military would do

01:32:31

in battle game planning before they go into battle how are we going to do this what is it going to look like and we because we're not in that culture we don't do that we don't see that we

01:32:43

don't have those same types of associative trails that made things way way easier for oral cultures because they didn't have writing but yet they were still doing those things they just

01:32:56

were doing it as they moved through their environment and those were the things that trigger were the objects that they had and held were the triggers for the memories and the things they wanted to remember

01:33:08

um I I think we don't have and we don't Center that and most people who are designing digital systems don't know that as a thing how do you design a good associative

01:33:21

Trail in a digital setting to make it easier to remember and we we really don't have the abilities to do that as well as we do in the physical world much less an analog

01:33:34

index card written world yeah yeah it's kind of it's it's interesting too I I was just kind of scrolling for that to find that place in the in the chapter too and and Scott does say it's

01:33:49

extremely difficult to deliver delude yourself into believing you never held such an opinion um you know when you know when a digital you know when you overwrite a digital thing um it's it's interesting in the context

01:34:02

of what you're talking about Chris because you know if you've got Standing Stones right or if you've got um you know these these things you know movements that are ritually significant

01:34:13

or something it's much more difficult to um turn forget that or two or to say oh that was you know that was just you know that wasn't something but you know

01:34:26

um it's it's not easy to notice or it's easy not to notice your attitude and your ideas changing gradually I think unless you're

01:34:39

confronted with you know going back to the box and finding you know the thing that you wrote um you know six months or ten years ago or maybe a culturally relevant thing for those who are at least on the Christian

01:34:52

side and celebrate the pseudo Pagan rituals of Christmas you have a Christmas tree and you have Christmas ornaments and you get one or two new ornaments each year yeah and you associate them the memories

01:35:04

of what you were doing in that year you know I pulled out ornaments that we got during the pandemic and I'm like oh yeah we bought this during the pandemic I you know I can't not associate those

01:35:17

decorations on the tree with the the you know the first pandemic Christmas and they resemble the symbols of christmasing whatever but they also have attached to them the place and time

01:35:36

I was when we first bought them or got them right um and that and so how do you design that into your digital system that become additional mental links that

01:35:50

aren't the physical tangible links that you're making between your ideas um I and I think Associated to this too and he relies on um

01:36:02

uh kevalini and Scott explicitly says the traditions of the floral legium and the commonplace book are not the same as doing this analog

01:36:16

that'll cast in practice and I honestly they are they're just done in a different format in a different space but from them and I you know

01:36:29

sometimes I approach it from too mathematical and too logical of perspective but there is an exact one-to-one mapping of almost all of the things you're doing in an analog

01:36:41

and I'll use his word antinet to distinguish the two um but in my mind all those things are the same and the one possible difference is if you go back and look at a lot of

01:36:55

the older um actual floralegia that people used and had a lot of them were more excerpt based than they were I'm going to write my own

01:37:09

original ideas here but you can go and look at um let's say Jonathan Edwards miscellaneous and yes he excerpts pieces out of the

01:37:21

Bible and other writings and writings of the church fathers but he's also attaching to those his own thoughts and new thoughts and injecting those on yeah so uh I would say I agree with Scott if

01:37:34

you're only looking at that tradition where people had books where they only excerpted interesting things in their life and never wrote their own notes in those things but if you have your own

01:37:47

commonplace book or floralegium or Vare comicum or you know whatever you want to waste book whatever you want to call it if you're putting your own ideas into those things there's a one-to-one mapping from those

01:38:01

methods to this method and he you know I was disappointed that he just dismissed that out of hand um yeah well and I think yeah I agree

01:38:12

and I think that that often he's taking a a Too Short Term a view um you know I think he's responding to people thinking that you know thinking maybe they want to stay in notebooks now

01:38:26

um I yeah I think I think you're right especially as you know as people went back and reviewed I mean that he actually uses an image from Thomas Jefferson right um which you know I mean Jefferson was you know was well known

01:38:39

for you know sort of returning to his notes and you know and kind of re-examining you know things that he had that he had thought about and written um you know previously I do think that that kind of the thing that that

01:38:52

I again am not 100 convinced of but but I'm treating as you know as sort of the the thesis or the hypothesis that I'm

01:39:04

testing is this idea of uh that he talks about as he's kind of um he wanders around a lot at the end of that analog chapter but you know on 203 when he talks about

01:39:16

um selection and you know and the constraint of of slowing down and um and you know and picking a place to connect your new thought to your current

01:39:28

uh you know to your current thoughts okay see you later Jim um and um and you know and then and then saying something concise about it

01:39:40

um I I do think that is um I think that's valuable and I guess everybody's you know oh gosh we I lost track of time so it's um we're having so much fun

01:39:53

Tim's question there I think is very appropriate and probably even just as much so for next week yep um but we should bookmark that to come back to because it's a a super important

01:40:07

question that nobody is talking about yeah yeah well and I think probably um I did jump ahead and I re and I said I wasn't gonna but I did read chapter 11. uh and

01:40:19

and it was and it was you know moderately useful and kind of um reminded me of a couple things uh to to make sure that I do as I'm starting to kind of work with this you know I did

01:40:31

go I actually took the time and you know and went in and you know updated my index and stuff so um all right see you later um and um yeah so let's let's uh yeah

01:40:43

let's talk about that and uh I guess it's time to go we're 10 minutes over so I will um I will say thank you and today and I will turn this thing into a video this afternoon

01:40:56

sounds good thank you Stan really do appreciate it buddy take care thanks my mouse there we go okay