Share with us what is happening in your ZK this week. March 13, 2024

Will

Swimming with Ideas

This is yet another opportunity to share with your friends what you are working on. Add to this discussion by telling us about your zettelkasten journey. Share with us what you're learning. Sharing helps me and, hopefully, you, too. It helps us clarify our goals and visualize our thinking. And sometimes, a conversation sparks a magical moment where we can dive into an idea worth exploring. We'd love to hear more from you. 🫵🏼

It's spring break! It's time to catch up on zettelkasting projects.

Ideas I'm exploring with my ZK:

• To make a note is to isolate an object of attention and investigate it with vigor.
• The ideas around developing an ambiance for thriving.
• The novel idea of ambient love.
• The meaning of "cogent" as related to ideation.
• The constellation of ideas around the portrayal of blindness in Young Adult Literature.

Things I'm reading:

• Sertillanges, A. G. and Ryan, Mary. The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods. 1987. Physical
• Heiligman, Deborah. Charles and Emma: the Darwins' leap of faith. 2011.
• Reilly, Winifred M. It Takes One to Tango: How I Improved My Marriage - with Absolutely No Help from My Husband* - and How You Can, Too (*Maybe Just a Little). 2017. Everand Audiobook

Music I'm listening to:

• Lara Somogyl
• Greta Svabo Bech
• Lofi Girl Study Beats

A look at this week's ZK work themes:

0 zettel - meta zettelkasting
0 zettel - meta writing
0 zettel - advancing python
2 zettel - Ed-Curriculum & Instruction (EDCI445)
8 zettel - captured new and novel ideas

★★★★★

The "My rolling ten-day zettel production" is produced by a script for attachment to my daily journaling template. I do my journaling in Bear to keep personal journaling separate from my knowledge work.

Let me know if you would like to discuss any of these notes.

My ten day zettel production

c4lvorias

Ideas I'm exploring with my ZK:

• The modeling process itself and how scientific process is conducted.
• Biologically plausible AI algortihms' history and the SOTA.
• Continuing to the algorithm of neocortex and relativism
• Inequalities in the STEM education and why keeping a Knowledge Portfolio/Zettelkasten is an opportunity for disadvantageous groups

Things I'm reading:

• I'm processing Brain Inspired Neuro-AI course and its suggestive readings.
• The Beggining of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World
• The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

Music

• ADHD Relief Music
• Turkish punk

Will

@c4lvorias,

Ideas I'm exploring with my ZK:
*Inequalities in STEM education and why keeping a Knowledge Portfolio/Zettelkasten is an opportunity for disadvantageous groups.

Interesting. This is an idea worth exploring. Disadvantaged people of almost all ilks might create a trusted mentor for themselves by developing a Knowledge Portfolio/Zettelkasten. Women and minorities face inequities in STEM education, as do visually impaired young adults during their academic years. I'm doing research on the portrayal of the visually handicapped in Young Adult Literature. Your post inspired me to consider the advantages of developing a zettelkasten as a way to decrease feelings of isolation in young adults with visual impairments.

Why keep a zettelkasten if you feel disadvantaged or disabled? These are some of mine.

• The lonely zettelnaut can find their tribe by connecting with a community of note-takers. This builds a sense of belonging, and the aspiring zettelnaut can feel comfortable sharing their experience.
• You can transform from having no portfolio to accomplishing something remarkable - building an interconnected knowledge network.
• Use networked knowledge to explore, define, and counter social, physical, or mental disadvantages.

What ideas do you have about why and how people in disadvantaged groups would value keeping a Knowledge Portfolio/Zettelkasten?

–––––

⠀Things I'm reading:

• The Beginning of Infinity Explanations That Transform the World

This is on my 'to read' list. It is a big read, with 487 pages or 20 hours with the audiobook. It won't fit in my reading load until summer break. I'd like your take on Deutsch's arguments.

c4lvorias

Seeing Zettelkasten as a mentor is interesting. Can you elaborate on that?

_What ideas do you have about why and how people in disadvantaged groups would value keeping a Knowledge Portfolio/Zettelkasten?

This was a very simple idea that is in a seed stage and not fully processed yet, I don't know whether I'll meet your expectations... I see Zettelkasten as a proof of know-how and will include in my doctorate application as a showcase externalizing my brain. ZKs can be evaluation criteria for knowledge workers. That was it. I am inspired by your thoughts, actually.

Andy

@c4lvorias said:

Ideas I'm exploring with my ZK:

• Inequalities in STEM education and why keeping a Knowledge Portfolio/Zettelkasten is an opportunity for disadvantageous groups.

@Will said:

What ideas do you have about why and how people in disadvantaged groups would value keeping a Knowledge Portfolio/Zettelkasten?

I'm reminded of a book, which I read in the 1990s, for people without formal credentials (although I'm not without formal credentials), which is one kind of disadvantaged group:

Charles D. Hayes (1995). Proving You're Qualified: Strategies For Competent People Without College Degrees. Wasilla, Alaska: Autodidactic Press.

Some excerpts (I leave the connection to Zettelkästen as an exercise for the reader):

• Grades, testing, and success: "It is important to observe that being motivated by grades is not related to a thirst for knowledge. Moreover, there is little doubt that extrinsic rewards reduce intrinsic satisfaction. In effect, grades have become the purpose of education. People reach for approval instead of knowledge; when the grades stop, so does their inquiry."
• Communication—the universal credential: "People who learn to write well do so, in large part, by reading. People who learn to speak well do so by talking. ... It has recently occurred to me that my own thrust toward self-education was due in part to a sense of frustration over my personal ability to communicate. So, if you have similar problems communicating, I have great news: books and conversation are very inexpensive. Your posture and commitment to lifelong learning may have a greater bearing on your future success than anything you learn from this book. Indeed, strong interests propel us toward discovery, which is the surest way to build competence and expertise. And there is no better way to increase our powers of communication than to have something exciting to write and talk about."
• Résumés: "A crisp sense of self-knowledge, a working appreciation of all of your strengths, and well-defined goals and career objectives will better enable you to make a case that you are qualified. This can't be done in a day. It will take lots of time to read, reflect, and experiment. But the payoff in terms of clarity and direction will make it well worthwhile."
• Portfolio development: "It's as if you were building a case for a courtroom, trying to convince a judge and jury of your learned competence. Better yet, think of it as one of those television commercials where the competitor's product gets blown away. That's essentially what you need to do. Prove your learning beyond doubt. The following is but a partial list of the kinds of tangible evidence that can help you make your case ..."
• The importance of finding the right fit: "Discovering our strengths and fitting into the workplace accordingly sounds perfectly logical and is one of the things this book recommends. This process, however, is not without its hazards: if we're not careful, our strengths are also likely to become our weaknesses. For example, a strength which requires a narrow focus can easily become a limited view during times of rapid change. This is precisely the argument which supports the case for lifelong education through continual self-directed inquiry. Narrow focus and specialization can contribute substantially to a feeling of helplessness because, without a broad view, we lose perspective. Gone is the sense of positive expectation that makes us receptive to the future. ... The task of self-education is to enable us to function within society by fitting in intelligently while developing the wisdom and sense of value necessary to define and build a better society."
• The learning organization and the learning individual: "One of the best ways to fight credentialism at a practical level is to rise above it by developing genuine expertise in your own field and in your own life. ... The first thing we have to do is give ourselves permission not to know. ... Thus, we can fight credentialism by playing in an arena so foreign to those who try to hide their ignorance that we win by default."
• Entrepreneurs and the ground floor: "The most difficult aspect of getting in on the ground floor is being in the right place at the right time. And the only way to be in the right place at the right time is to investigate your field of interest to such an extent that you can speak to a visionary as a visionary."
• The Me, Inc., philosophy: "In essence, proving you are qualified means taking back some of the power and quality of life that has been lost to credentialism. It means thinking of your talents and skills as strengths, as capital assets, which must be continually developed and upgraded. Proving you're qualified means turning your anger at the injustice of credentialism into strategies for positive action. The concept of portfolio development works nicely for educational credits, but it is a fundamental strategy in a Me, Inc., mindset."

At one point in the book, Hayes describes "a notebook or a journal with sections or pages for" various elements of self-assessment and planning. A typical Zettelkasten software app can serve this purpose well, in addition to serving the purpose that Hayes called "investigating your field of interest to such an extent that you can speak to a visionary as a visionary."

Will

@c4lvorias wrote:

Seeing Zettelkasten as a mentor is interesting. Can you elaborate on that?

I'm framing our ZK not just as a repository of information but as a partner that helps with thinking, learning, and creating. These are some of the ways I think a ZK is a mentor.

• It provides mentoring guidance. If we pay attention, we can often make connections to new ideas and see thought chains that are headed nowhere. These paths may not have been seen without a ZK.
• Like a mentor, the writing and connecting done while zettelkasting challenges assumptions and biases. Its bottom-up approach to organization forces us to approach problems from unique angles.
• A mentor encourages reflection and this is an essential part of tending a ZK.
• Good mentors foster free thinking. The ZK is perfect for independent thinkers and learners, not just for storing information but also for generating new insights and ideas.
• Mentors are not in it for the short haul. Like mentorship, a ZK's value and impact grow with time and tenure.

Here are a few example notes from my inbox that I think represent how to use a ZK for self-mentoring. We've discovered the secret sauce for self-mentorship: The Zettelkasten.

Don’t Read More, Read Better 202403170804
Explore-Exploit Problem 202403150609
Portraying the Visually Impaired in YAL 202402081925
U-EDCI445 Young Adult Literature 202312070644
The Philosophy of the Ambient 202403092040
Writing Skills Face Off 202403130807
Optimize For Thinking, Not Processing 202403120808
ChatGPT for Psychological Growth 202312291758
Defending Your Surface Area 202401170715

Will

@c4lvorias wrote:

I see Zettelkasten as proof of know-how and will include it in my doctorate application as . ZKs can be evaluation criteria for knowledge workers. That was it. I am inspired by your thoughts, actually.

It is beautifully framed, "a showcase externalizing my brain." But it is more than an item in your application portfolio. It is the source of interconnected knowledge. It is a trump card that others lack. Sure, it will help with a doctoral application, but it also sets you apart from the masses. And here lies the use case for disadvantaged populations. The barriers to entry for creating and tending a ZK are low, and there are no gatekeepers. Different fields offer different opportunities to shine and showcase an externalized mind.

Andy

@Will said:

These are some of the ways I think a ZK is a mentor.

The mentor analogy is helpful to some degree (especially if framed as "self-mentoring"), but for me there's a big disanalogy: I think of a mentor as someone who is experienced in an autonomous way, that is, someone who has a different point of view due to having lived a different life, a life that is in some way like the life I want to live in the future. In contrast, a Zettelkasten has no experiential know-how gained from having lived an autonomous life; all the information in it is a result of my own activity.

phykas

Few topics I've found useful for my zettel's that I can share:

• I'm currently exploring LLM's to find related notes while I'm working on a note, looks helpful since it's searching by document similarity using some Obisidan plugin called SmartConnections, LLM models are local so works offline as well
• I've finally moved all my GTD to my Zettelkasten - I find that my projects are actually very much related to knowledge work that I'm doing, even doing things around the house needs some knowledge research upfront and why should I keep them apart
• I'm currently exploring using a tickler system within my notes, I already kinda see how it boosts my awareness for upcoming days, since notes are in free form it's much richer than calendar app
• I've worked on setting my goals and making them visible on the daily note - going back now - i think just having them visible helped me achieve them, which sounds ridiculous, but! if it works for me I'll just keep doing it
• I've used GPT's a lot to help me build templates for notes, they can give a generaly good starting point which I refine as time goes by

If I remember anything else, I'll add them here.

Will

@Andy,
Thanks, I've added Hayes's book to my to-read list. The excerpts you shared are easily connected with the ZK method.

I'm reminded of a book, which I read in the 1990s, for people without formal credentials (although I'm not without formal credentials), which is one kind of disadvantaged group:

When I first read this, I thought you were saying (with a double negative) that having formal credentials puts you in a disadvantaged group. Maybe in some cases, but surely not you.

The Me, Inc., philosophy: "In essence, proving you are qualified means taking back some of the power and quality of life that has been lost to credentialism. It means thinking of your talents and skills as strengths, as capital assets, which must be continually developed and upgraded. Proving you're qualified means turning your anger at the injustice of credentialism into strategies for positive action. The concept of portfolio development works nicely for educational credits, but it is a fundamental strategy in a Me, Inc., mindset."

Thanks for describing a philosophy/mindset that I think can empower disadvantaged groups.

Erich

I decided to tryout ChatGPT for the first time tonight. I started to wonder how I might incorporate search results of GPT-3.5 (current free version) or possibly GPT-4 (current paid version) into my Zettel files I create in IAWriter.

I plan to check the forum for Q&A on ChatGPT that might have surfaced.

I may start using 3.5 to gather basic information on topics where I lack familiarity, determine how to cite sources (seems like 3.5 doesn’t have feature), and then to puzzle together my Zettels using the 3 Layers of Evidence Model I previously read about in this forum. No doubt this will be an ongoing effort on how to use/incorporate this technology.

chrisaldrich

Sertillanges, A. G. and Ryan, Mary. The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods. 1987.

@Will I'm curious to hear your thoughts when you finish. I want to circle back around on it as a comparison with

Mills, C. Wright. “On Intellectual Craftsmanship (1952).” Society 17, no. 2 (January 1, 1980): 63–70. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02700062.

Erich

@phykas I noticed in your post you referenced using GPT to help build templates. Do you use the basic messaging prompt in 3.5 to do this or some other feature?

phykas

Yes, I would start a new GPT4 session and write a short explanation of what the note template is about. And then, I would end the prompt with something like:

"If you need any additional information to clarify what this template is about, feel free to ask, but only one question at the time".

It will then start questioning you about the template.
Once it gets all the info it'll generate the response.

But then you can guide it to optimize the result with something like the following:

"Repeat the following 2 steps 5 times:
Step 1. Identify 1-3 points from the previous output which are missing.
Step 2. Write a new, improved output of identical length which includes the missing points."

It will the go through a recursive process of improving the result.

Then you'll have a starting point of the template which you can use and improve as you wish. I've changed it a lot since the first version, but it's a good starting point. GPT is helpful to brainstorm, and useful to give a good headstart.

ctietze

In the spirit of thinking inside the Zettelkasten, I made a breakthrough playground the other day (March 13th) -- a term I chose because I'm regularly adding things to it.

It's a structure note, an overview, of a certain kind. It's both a personal record called "My PHP learning journey in the Zettelkasten", but instead of a mere timeline, it's also grouped by "levels of detail" in the sense that @Will shared recently: https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/comment/19706/#Comment_19706

# 202403131055 § My PHP atom, molecule, organism learning journey in the Zettelkasten
#zettelkasten #php #atomic-design

I observe the progress of learning a programming language in 
atoms/molecules/organisms[[202403131051]] in my Zettelkasten, 
e.g. when I learn (or rather refresh my knowledge of) PHP for simple web applications.

## Atoms: language primitives
- destructuring associative arrays[[202403131056]] and objects[[202403141409]]
    - I also have this for Ruby objects[[201809280841]] and hashes [[201706060817]]
- anonymous objects from arrays[[202403121624]]
- `array_column` to map an array of associative arrays to a key[[202401041303]]
- promoted properties[[202403211434]]: syntactic sugar
- MySQL PHP PDO connection with UTF-8[[202401260934]]

## Molecules: idioms, patterns
- bridging `snake_case` SQL table columns to `camelCase` object attributes[[202403121633]]
- creating PHP 8 enums with pattern matching[[202312191932]]
- displaying PHP errors in the browser[[202103261559]]
- fetch single value like count or existence check from PDO[[202403231346]]

## Organisms
- project structure conventions[[202403220940]], paths and folders commonly used

I'm using this to see whether observing how I'm re-learning a programming language with this tool can help plan teaching it. The note above is a selection of my inventory of PHP. I don't cover all language primitives there but already filtered out some in the past week to prefer an interesting and varied selection over mere completeness. For didactic's sake.

Will also become relevant to teach learning a programming language in the Zettelkasten, one level of abstraction higher.

So that's what excites me: all these meta levels!

1. I'm learning the language and conventions to actually get work done,
2. I'm collecting my learnings in the Zettelkasten to remember language syntax and approaches,
3. I'm structuring these learnings to get insights into the process (e.g. I'm missing more idioms and whatever 'organisms' will contain)
4. I'm relating these to other topics to form generalizations (e.g. the atom/molecule/organism distinction, and whether this procedure is useful at all)
5. I'm deriving material to teach how to employ a Zettelkasten as a programmer

Will

@ctietze, I love your 'thinking tool'—atom/molecule/organism. This is a way to get to the various layers of understanding. Our friend, @Sascha, wrote a nice post recently about this.