Requesting a proof that the zettelkasten method does not work by using the zettelkasten method.
If the zettelkasten method works, and free, atomic ideas are its core, then the zettelkasten method can be used to prove that it's not working.
I would like to request such a proof.
If I were able to create a proper zettelkasten, then I would and wouldn't be asking for this.
My current view is that it's a nebulous body of nebulosity akin to astrology.
How would a zettelkasten look that helped me think about how correct I am in my assumption that it's all BS?
Can you create one?
Can not you create one? If so, why? I reckon too much of a pain. I find trying to use zettelkasten to be too much of a pain.
I see people wax on wax off and rarely show a full zettelkasten.
Thus, I request a fully featured zettelkasten, in fact, I would like many of them, from as many users as possible, not a collective one.
And it's a clear topic, too. So you actually have something to work with. Otherwise, everyone is just cooking their own little soup and no wonder no consensus seems to be able to be reached.
Thus, this clear topic. Prove that the zettelkasten does not work by creating a second brain zettelkasten to converse with that gets you there.
I'm very interested in how the notes for that look.
Perhaps it would prove it to be working too, but that's not the goal. It should prove that it doesn't work, that it's BS.
Math can do that.
"Math is completely arbitrary it doesn't work on its own, we have to make it work, but it doesn't work on its own."
I think that's pretty correct. The heavy lifting is all done by people who set it all up.
And math works. But it's nonsense. And math can admit it.
Can the zettelkasten pull something off like that? Use itself to showcase that it's nonsense?
There is no time limit to this. I'll check back every now and then.
If you truly believe that the zettelkasten is watertight working and cannot be disproven, create a zettelkasten that thinks it's nonsense anyway.
That's the point of a zettelkasten, as a partner to think with. Right?
Howdy, Stranger!
Comments
P.S.: If you "Don't know what to do with this topic!"
Well, again, that's where your zettelkasten will help you out. Your partner in thought.
Your second brain! Your meal ticket to book publishing and insight!
So of course you don't have to know anything about this right now. Except how to use the zettelkasten system.
If you do, then you'll be able to fulfill this. Even if it doesn't make sense to you right away.
The sense making is the job of the ZK that allowed Luhmann to publish books, so to speak, even after his death.
No way he knew about those books at that point, cause he was dead. So, even for an unthinking entity, the zettelkasten can come to a conclusion.
Anyway, double posts are bad netiquette, so that'll be it from me, for now.
Looking forward to any entries...although again I also expect none cause, why do a completely realized zettelkasten for someone if it's a pain..and I do believe it's a pain. The fact that I don't wanna deal with the suss out work anymore because of it is the proof I have for that.
I'll leave the "I know how to do that' to those who (claim to) know to do it.
Very nice: this is quite an interesting experiment.
Using the Zettelkasten to build a Zettelkasten that doesn’t work.
Actually, it’s really easy.
I can take my zettel regarding the basic principles of the Zettelkasten, invert them (do → do the opposite), so apply them, and see what happens.
Ah, I’ve already done that — that was me in my first 100 notes three years ago. And those notes worked much worse than they do now :-)
When I have some time, I’ll try to build an Evil Zettelkasten — applying the Zettelkasten method using the anti-principles of Zettelkasten.
I like to think, however, that the Evil Zettelkasten eventually turns into a Good Zettelkasten, since our brain will tend to find new ways to compensate for its malfunctions. Who knows.
Reflecting about this, perhaps, is that the Zettelkasten is not a tool that works or doesn’t work, but a medium that amplifies the state of the user’s thinking. An Evil Zettelkasten simply mirrors unstructured thought — but through repeated interaction, it nudges the user toward structure. So even an "Evil" Zettelkasten becomes good, not because the method fixes itself, but because thinking is reflexive.
Update
I’ll leave this small note for myself (a fleeting note?)
To build the Evil Zettelkasten, I’d probably need to reflect on two aspects:
Yeah I think that's ultimately the true core of a zettelkasten and the kind of note taking it represents.
Luhmann was a sociologist, which is a highly nebulous field. To put it short:
The original zettelkasten was a self compounding BS tracker where the notes and indices had only one true purpose, not to repeat oneself.
Step 1.) Search zettelkasten on some thought.
Step 2.) If the thought was already in it, write something related to it, don't repeat (the fabled atomicity)
Step 3.) Diligently done, you can work in a field of nonsense with as little self sabotage as possible.
In a field where anything goes, a thought might never be re-thought the way it was in some moment.
That's why Luhmann had to write it down and categorize it and focus on connections. Connections strengthen any old nonsense and by having an index of already written down things... you don't double lie/BS.
So yeah, to me, the original purpose of the original ZK was a BS tracker to prevent repeats, it's really hard to keep track of lies, and while I'm not saying sociology is all lies, it's not exactly a 'hard' science, a lot of malleability.
In any 'real' topic, a handful of notes suffice to create a product.
I'm sad that the ghost of this, dressed up in a sheet has misled many a people. Thinking they are knowledge working by linking things but...it's a misuse of a lying tracker.
The atomicity is lies, lies work best if they're atomic, but at the same time have a lot of supporting arguments (religion for example is full of that, cults, marketing, sociology :P etc)
So having a non repeating, 'connection focused BS generation engine' is great for that.
For true reality, you don't need a candy bowl full of 02348230483 different things.
If I gave you 100 high quality notes on linear algebra, you'd be able to write at least a short book of it.
And once you have that book, those notes can go.
Then you have people using that book to create real things, and those real things reinforce the knowledge, not the notes.
Design and invent a crude computer, build a million of em, give them away to a million people along with a manual on it and you can destroy your designs, your blueprints, your notes.
Those million people using your real product will be your knowledge work.
I bet you can design a steam engine thanks to collective knowledge and ubiquity in the past.
Sociology, Luhmanns metier, has no such things, 100 people thinking of the same sociology topic might come up with 100 different angles.
Thus, a ginormous tracker of atomic 'thoughts' is beneficial for that.
Not for anything else. Well, maybe not 'not' but, little.
That's why I expect people who ask questions like "How do I ZK the pythagorean theorem? a² = b² + c²?"
And get answers like "That's dead data...please think of something in your own thoughts (aka something potentially silly) and write that as a ZK note."
And yes, that makes sense, in the realm of the ZK being a BS tracker. If you can't just use 'dead data' (aka something concrete) then you'll need a BS tracker because philosophizing about the concrete is malleable, so...better have 'atomic notes' to help you not to repeat yourself.
I have this thought about pythagoras, let me check my ZK ..ah yes, already a note..mh mh yeaht makes sense, but it's similar to what I am thinking now, so maybe I can think of something else but connect it...
nah man, the 'dead data' was the real deal all along.
You could have written a book with it, or an article, why save it for later to ruminate about with 'thoughts'?
To self fufill the ZK which was born as a BS tracker.
P.S.:
An example:
I can't find it right now but I think "Sascha" wrote, in some topic asking keeping separate ZKs, if that makes sense, that he keeps his dog training journal, nutrition stuff, etc all together.
I do not believe that.
What I instead believe is that he (or the team) have a zettelkasten with its true purpose, BSing.
With topics like "how to make things more appealing" (which is not a hard science) and maybe one of those thoughts is "Add something like dog walking to something sciencey like nutrition for some sort of appeal and curiousity etc"
With a unique tag for later looking up and compounding, and not repeating because trying to sell the ZK as a one candy bowl on a different day on a different headspace, might...be different.
I also believe they track all the marketing thoughts in the zettelkasten, all the philosophical stuff, all the analogies and other malleable stuff in the ZK...for the purpose of selling it (the coaching which will be misleading like the rest) and the application they made.
A dance of making the ZK system look generic but it's actually a fly trap, unless it's used for a nebulous topic to track thoughts about that.
Aka, a BS generator.
"I keep my dog journal along with my nutrition!" is meant to evoke sparkly eyes and a feeling of "I can make the knowledge soup and publish 40 books too!"
Nope..you can buy an application, and try to use a BS generator for something real, fail at it, buy coaching, get hoodwinked on a laser focus .. and then the farce continues.
I watched "You have a Zettelkasten, Nori!" and it, at some point, devolved into talk about hand holding or something... yeah..nah man.
But! I stand behind my opinion an that's why I think my topic is legit, for that is the original soul of the ZK.
BS me! Think of stuff, write it down, carefully index it to minimize self sabotage, think of additional compounding BS to try and pull the wool over my eyes harder and harder!
I think the ZK is fully suited for that.
And I think that anyone will have the most actual fun with a ZK if used that way.
Keep track of you BSing me, atomize the angles of hoodwinkery and save them and index them so you don't repeat yourself. Then rationalize the hoodwinkery with supporting point.
I think that's the most fun you can have with the ZK and that's cause that is the original purpose and soul.
That's what it facilitates the most. Keep track of BS, in nice little attack angles, and supporting attacks. That's how you publish 40+ books or something on sociology.
Philosophical analysis would likely conclude that any "proof" of failure derived from the Zettelkasten method itself would risk self-reference paradox, calling into question the coherence and reliability of the proof, not just the method. Reflexive and meta-methodological critique could further reveal the limits of such self-contained arguments.
These tools enable a nuanced interrogation of whether a method can be used to prove its own inadequacy, but typically demonstrate that such tasks reveal more about the limits of logical systems and language than about the method's effectiveness in practice.
For me, Zettelkasten is a tool that supports a simple seven-step cycle:
Edmund Gröpl
100% organic thinking. Less than 5% AI-generated ideas.
I'll bite: this is provocative BS. You're pushing the epistemological principle of refutability a notch too far, and it would seem, in bad faith (you just joined the forum). Moreover, nobody here says the method is watertight, if anything, the forums prove the contrary as we collectively figure out how to integrate the principles ourselves.
Scientific ideas must indeed be able to disproven, but nothing says you should disprove them using those very ideas. Actually, that goes counter to Gödel's theorem, which formulates that a coherent theory necessarily features affirmations that cannot be proven. To go further: math does not admit that it's nonsense, it admits that the base assertions cannot be proven by math itself, but math is coherent (which is nothing like "true" or "real", things that don't exist in science).
Furthermore, math can be used to build models of the world that generally and reliably work, which means that it's a reliable model of the world. Which is nothing more than what a scientific theory is: a model that can be disproven, but which has so far stood the tests thrown at it enough to form solid enough ground.
You have plenty of proof online saying that the Zettelkasten method doesn't work for them. Therefore, it's refutable. Proof done. Good night.
"A writer should write what he has to say and not speak it." - Ernest Hemingway
PKM: Bear, tasks: OmniFocus, production: Scrivener / Ableton Live.
I'll reply in kind with the original sentiment
https://niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_2_NB_9-8j_V
English:
Author at Zettelkasten.de • https://christiantietze.de/
This is a false contradiction. I can do both, keep everything in my ZK and use it for bullshitting.
But I appreciate the trolling.
I am a Zettler
I live in a world where truth tables and Karnaugh maps are not unknown.
If I can prove Zettelkasten methods don't work with Zettelkasten methods, then I will have a proven example of Zettelkasten methods deriving truth from evidence.
In proving ZKs don't work I will have disproven the premise.
If this were Star Trek, we would see blinking lights and smoke from control panels. Logic is a wreath of pretty flowers that smell bad, if you're a trekkie (and we all should be).
Frankly, having read what everyone has posted in response to your original question, I have no idea what this statement means. Perhaps @Sascha 's recent comments are to the point.