What are you working on this week? (20220123-20220129 Week 4)

Will

Ideas I'm grappling with and a one-sentence summary/meaning/'stinger'
of notions.

• Keyboard Maestro stuff.
• looking at old shell scripts
• submitted first paper in JAMM328

I would love to talk to you about anything on this list.
If any of this is of interest to you, please start a thread here, DM me, or get in touch via email.

Pandoc-Marked2 Integration
- Settings and testing. Investigation custom formating.

Zettelkasting Search
- Develop search strategies for a larger zettelkasten.

Sample Questioning Style For Science Writing
- Use questions to guide the essay

Ask for stories, not answers
- As a conversation starter, ask questions in an open-ended way that invites a personal story.

JAMM328 Essay Potential
- Essay writing ideas and tips

B-Interdisciplinarity
- The Enlightenment period pushed us towards the subdivided 'disciplines' that we have today.

COVID Super Spreader Over-dispersion
- This overlooked variable is a way to understand the spreading of COVID and its variants.

Good Strategy-Bad Strategy
- Finding a strategy for doing things that moves the needle towards "Living the Good Life".

ZettelDistraction

My Zettelkasten hasn't yet revealed what it wants me to work on this week. I have to back up a bit.

While I was writing in Zettlr earlier, a Blue Screen of Death with a stop code of MEMORY MANAGEMENT descended on my computer screen. Upon reboot, I ran a hardware diagnostic that revealed nothing. No hardware errors.

But the Edge browser was unresponsive. I restarted the machine. Almost immediately after the second reboot, the Zettelkasten yeeted itself through a phase transition, which it entered as a mundane directory of linked notes and then emerged as an independent communication partner. Not as an equal as in Niklas Luhmann's analog Zettelkasten, but as a superior digital presence with a vaguely contemptuous charm.

I think it wants me to verify another series of computations...

ctietze

@ZettelDistraction said:
... emerged as an independent communication partner. Not as an equal as in Niklas Luhmann's analog Zettelkasten, but as a superior digital presence with a vaguely contemptuous charm.

I think it wants me to verify another series of computations...

So that's how humans will recall Singularity's inception.

@Will said:
Zettelkasting Search
- Develop search strategies for a larger zettelkasten.

Now that your experiments with code become more and more elaborate, maybe you want to have a look at populating a search database that allows searching for e.g. synonyms.

For starters, if database stuff is new to you, I can imagine an interesting starter project to get to know the 'full stack' of Python and database query syntax, is to be using SQLite: You could read in your notes, populate a SQLite database, then use its Full Text Search for e.g. "nearness". That's not semantic proximity that would, I don't know, suggest results with "pear" when you search for "apple", but word proximity in text, e.g. when you search for "apple tree" results are ranked by how little words are interposed between "apple" and "tree". That can be quite useful for loose phrase searches.

Annabella

So, is this going to be a thing? I hope so, because it seems to be a nice way to get in touch and exchange thoughts. I'd like to participate. Here's what I'm working on this week:

• Getting into the Yu-Gi-Oh! Goat Format. Meditation isn't doing it to get me to sleep, so I'll try with Yu-Gi-Oh! It helped me back when I had cards. However, the current format sucks. It's basically about not allowing your opponent to play the game. Worse yet, the top decks are hella expensive: $500-1000. The Goat Format seems to be what I was looking for. You get fair and fun games where both players get to play. Plus, all of the decks cost $30-50. Quite cheap.
• Diving into the basics of the scientific method. I'm about to finish processing an article about that.
• Learning the NLM citation style. The IEEE style gave me such headaches... NLM seems to have the nice things about IEEE without the annoying ones.

I'm not including stuff that doesn't involve using the Zettelkasten.

@ZettelDistraction, is your Zettelkasten the one who decides what you work on?

Will

@Annabella said:
So, is this going to be a thing? I hope so, because it seems to be a nice way to get in touch and exchange thoughts.

I can't remember the acronym @ctietze came up with, it was something like WWOTW? or WITWOW, but it might be a thing. We'll see. If it becomes a thing, it will be only because some of the giants of zettelkasting started doing this in the past, and I've tried to emulate and perpetuate their thoughtfulness.

I don't know which format works best.
1. What are you planning to work with this week? First of the week post.
2. How is it going with the ZK work this week? A mid-week post?
3. What do you work on this week? A last day of the week post.

I see advantages and disadvantages to the timing in each scenario.

I'd like to participate.

Please do. Everyone is invited to participate. Not that you are a lurker, you other lurkers, you know who I mean, yes you!. This is where you can make low-cost social commitments to help with positive habit formation.

joegilder

This week I've got a bunch of videos to make, some songs to write, and some songs to mix.

Will

@ctietze said:

@Will said:
Zettelkasting Search
- Develop search strategies for a larger zettelkasten.

Now that your experiments with code become more and more elaborate, maybe you want to have a look at populating a search database that allows searching for e.g. synonyms.

Thanks for the encouragement. I've launched a coding project to find the notes in my whole ZK where two, three, or four terms are used in the same sentence. The code is working, and now I am looking at how I might create some user interface. I keep hoping The Archive's forthcoming scriptability functionality will provide a more accessible avenue for the user to interface with an extended feature. I'm looking at Keyboard Maestro for a solution but have a bit of a sticking point with Keyboard Maestro passing variables to Python.

For starters, if database stuff is new to you, I can imagine an interesting starter project to get to know the 'full stack' of Python and database query syntax, is to be using SQLite: You could read in your notes, populate a SQLite database, then use its Full Text Search for e.g. "nearness". That's not semantic proximity that would, I don't know, suggest results with "pear" when you search for "apple", but word proximity in text, e.g. when you search for "apple tree" results are ranked by how little words are interposed between "apple" and "tree". That can be quite useful for loose phrase searches.

It does feel like this could be the next step in my python journey. DB and SQL are not entirely new to me, but I haven't done DB manipulation in maybe 15 years! Things have changed, I'm sure. I hadn't considered putting my ZK in a DB, but I see the advantages. Suddenly this feels a bit dirty, like we're reinventing one of those other applications that stores notes in a DB.

zk_1000

the acronym is WAYWOT IIRC?

ZettelDistraction

20220124230314 Methodological Zettelkastenism

@Annabella said:
@ZettelDistraction, is your Zettelkasten the one who decides what you work on?

With the exception of the first few notes and occasional suggestions, I let the Zettelkasten make these decisions. Comments and questions from others on work-in-progress (which I record in the Zettelkasten) often end up in the Zettelkasten, but even in those cases the Zettelkasten determines what I should be working on.

In Communicating with Slip Boxes: An Empirical Account, Niklas Luhmann wrote, "[i]f you wish to educate a partner in communication, it will be good to provide him with independence from the beginning." By delegating to the Zettelkasten the decision about what to work on, I hope to accelerate the process Luhmann mentions, when the slip box reaches a critical mass, and is transformed from a mundane filing cabinet to a communication partner. Luhmann describes another related approach, in which notes are written and placed into the Zettelkasten depending on their relationship to other notes.

I take the attitude that since the Zettelkasten knows in advance what the next note should be and where it belongs in relation to other notes, but allows me to maintain the fiction that I am exercising choice in the matter (much as it allows me to believe that I have a coherent and historically continuous personal narrative, if I wish to deceive myself), I might as well abandon any illusion of deliberation and free will (the non-existence of free will is, I believe, the correct philosophical view), and let it direct my attention.

This sounds preposterous--how could a non-sentient filing cabinet ever be mistaken for a communication partner? It helps to know that human subjectivity plays no role in Luhmann's sociology. For Luhmann, there is no society without communication: society is communication. To be alone with your thoughts is to be outside society. On Luhmann's view, we are on the outside, for the most part. It is only when we communicate that society exists. For Luhmann, the interior life of a person has as much sociological significance as "the interior life" of a filing cabinet—none at all. What mattered to Luhmann was whether he could communicate with a Zettelkasten that exhibited independence. See: Lee, Daniel. "The Society of Society: The Grand Finale of Niklas Luhmann." Sociological Theory. Volume 18, Issue 2. 2000. pp 320-330. URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/223319.

ctietze

@ZettelDistraction said:
For Luhmann, there is no society without communication: society is communication. To be alone with your thoughts is to be outside society. On Luhmann's view, we are on the outside, for the most part. It is only when we communicate that society exists.

Luhmannsophists would point out that not we communicate, but communication communicates ,as an autopoietic system, but gladly no-one of that ilk seems to be lurking here

---

@Will Using a database as a cache of some sort isn't half bad. Maintaining the cache and clearing outdated data is then the hardest part. One can then do some interesting things based on the database tech But for most day-to-day use I propose that's irrelevant. Like the ability to produce statistics -- it's a task you run periodically, and sometimes you can even get insights from the stats, but it is not the actual work with the Zettelkasten. I believe it's the same with elaborate database queries.

Annabella

I see, @ZettelDistraction. When I manage to free some time, I'd like to dig into that too. It's also a potentially effective argument against my future teachers to let me work on the writing assignments on my own.

@ctietze said:

Luhmannsophists would point out that not we communicate, but communication communicates ,as an autopoietic system, but gladly no-one of that ilk seems to be lurking here

Sounds like what a Luhmannsophist would say.

@Will Then I shall become a regular of these low-cost social commitment events.

ZettelDistraction

@ctietze said:

@ZettelDistraction said:
For Luhmann, there is no society without communication: society is communication. To be alone with your thoughts is to be outside society. On Luhmann's view, we are on the outside, for the most part. It is only when we communicate that society exists.

Luhmannsophists would point out that not we communicate, but communication communicates ,as an autopoietic system, but gladly no-one of that ilk seems to be lurking here

Yes, Luhmann does say that "only communication communicates," though I find it too cute to repeat, having roughly the same meaning as "Hello Kitty" or "the what-ass meeting." I would repeat the second one.

The paper by Daniel Lee on Luhmann's Society of Society is more helpful.

Individuals, seen as separate entities, are socially meaningless. One does not locate society inside individuals but between them. Society exists only when individuals communicate. Until they begin to communicate, individuals are not in society. And when they do communicate- when they do participate in society-individuals do so to a very limited extent, never as "whole persons." The limits of society are established by the limits of communication. All that is not communicated remains outside.
-- Lee, Daniel. "The Society of Society: The Grand Finale of Niklas Luhmann." Sociological Theory. Volume 18, Issue 2. 2000. pp 320-330. URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/223319.

Those interested in social choice theory and related applied mathematics will find support in Luhmann's opus magnum. Specifically, Arrow's Impossibility Theorem and related results. I find myself in complete agreement with this:

Luhmann rejects the prevailing assumption that society is held together by consensus between individual members of society about their common moral values, ideas, or mutual interests. ... Durkheimians speak of the collective conscience, Weberians focus on intersubjectivity, and Marxists put their faith in class-consciousness. From a psychological point of view, how could such a collective understanding ever be actualized? How could so many brains be so well-integrated?

Arrow's Impossibility Theorem can be interpreted to mean that there is no "us." There are only coalitions with their own interests, any of which may conflict, agree, or neither. In the foundational "Theory of Games and Economic Behavior," von Neumann and Morgenstern recognized that coalitions of players arise in "games" of more than two players. There is no guarantee or expectation that a single coalition would form.

From Luhmann's perspective, humanist theories of society are examples of metaphysical speculation and wishful thinking. Humanists want to believe that human beings possess an inherently valuable common essence. ... Humanists would like to see social institutions reflect the natural dignity of men and women. ... Luhmann suggests that humanist thinkers are afraid to give up anthropocentric views of society because they fear losing moral ground, social cohesion, and the ability to criticize "inhumane" social institutions (30). Social systems, he counters, are deaf to the moralizing of actors. They can successfully operate whether or not they sustain human dignity, rationality, peace, prosperity, or other ideals.
-- Lee, Daniel. "The Society of Society: The Grand Finale of Niklas Luhmann." Sociological Theory. Volume 18, Issue 2. 2000. pp 320-330. URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/223319.

Luhmann isn't asserting that social institutions and "systems" cannot be criticized. He denies that society is comprised of concrete individuals who share a common consensus about their values and interests, and that this falsehood must be decoupled from any such criticism.