I am correcting my remarks about Bob Doto's A System for Writing. Bob does not use Obsidian's "Daily note" plugin; I had assumed this. Bob disabused me of this in a private email.
Footnote 137 in Chapter 9 of my Kindle edition makes it clear (had I read it) that Bob Doto uses a single file for his daily journal.
I record my daily entries in one year-long running file with the latest day's entry always added to the top. This setup allows me to easily access the previous days' work, while keeping my most recent activities and thoughts in plain view.
(Doto 2024, p. 205)
Happily misreading A System for Writing, I thought I would emulate Bob Doto's system and configure the Obsidian core plugin for daily notes to keep these notes out of the way in a subdirectory called Daily-Notes. I also configured Obsidian to open the current daily note on startup. Here is the screenshot.
Since you don't admit to the possibility you could be wrong, my unoriginal criticism of virtue ethics on the ground of vagueness notwithstanding, I haven't seen much evidence of epistemic humility. I think you think you're right.
If intellectual humility is simply descriptive—a profile of traits correlated with wisdom—it becomes a loose, observational label rather than a distinct "virtue" with actionable guidance. A virtue traditionally implies a normative claim about excellent conduct. The normative claim is lost if, as you say, "... I don't see it as prescriptive: I would never say to someone, 'Be intellectually humble!'..." and go on to say that "the concept of intellectual humility is descriptive." When intellectual humility is purely descriptive, it provides no substantive guidance beyond reinforcing pre-existing temperamental tendencies.
Psychological measures may summarize correlations between behaviors and traits, but they do not establish these traits as norms in a philosophical or epistemic sense. We could call beauty a virtue, or even IQ a "descriptive virtue," provided it’s high enough, but it would be incoherent to claim that a merely "descriptive virtue" could guide conduct. I have never accused anyone of making a category error, but I might start.
Post edited by ZettelDistraction on
GitHub. Erdős #2. Problems worthy of attack / prove their worth by hitting back. -- Piet Hein. Alter ego: Erel Dogg (not the first). CC BY-SA 4.0.
Since you don't admit to the possibility you could be wrong, my unoriginal criticism of virtue ethics on the ground of vagueness notwithstanding, I haven't seen much evidence of epistemic humility. I think you think you're right.
I'm not proud of it, but I may be the example of unvirtue that supports my own position. I don't think I'm wrong that it's meaningful to talk about intellectual virtues and that intellectual humility is one of them.
A virtue traditionally implies a normative claim about excellent conduct. The normative claim is lost if, as you say, "... I don't see it as prescriptive: I would never say to someone, 'Be intellectually humble!'..." and go on to say that "the concept of intellectual humility is descriptive." When intellectual humility is purely descriptive, it provides no substantive guidance beyond reinforcing pre-existing temperamental tendencies.
OK, you've convinced me that there must be a prescriptive aspect to it as well. So I'm wrong about that and perhaps a little virtuous for admitting it. I think the concept of intellectual humility does provide guidance, but not enough guidance to substitute for epistemological knowledge and understanding.
Psychological measures may summarize correlations between behaviors and traits, but they do not establish these traits as norms in a philosophical or epistemic sense. We could call beauty a virtue, or even IQ a "descriptive virtue," provided it’s high enough, but it would be incoherent to claim that a merely "descriptive virtue" could guide conduct.
I just granted that intellectual humility must be prescriptive. You're right that psychological tests don't establish psychological concepts/traits as prescriptive. By the way, another intellectual virtue for which there's a psychological measure is rationality: the Rationality Quotient of Keith Stanovich et al.
@Andy said:
By the way, another intellectual virtue for which there's a psychological measure is rationality: the Rationality Quotient of Keith Stanovich et al.
It's nice to have a descriptive measure of rationality. I imagine a dispassionate psychometrician FAXing the purely descriptive, non-normative rationality assessment of an anonymous patient to the office of the ordering psychiatrist, who waits for the next session with his mess of a client to scold them for their abysmal rationality score.
GitHub. Erdős #2. Problems worthy of attack / prove their worth by hitting back. -- Piet Hein. Alter ego: Erel Dogg (not the first). CC BY-SA 4.0.
@KillerWhale said:
This has to be the nerdiest flame war that ever graced an Internet forum since the BBS days. I absolutely love you guys.
I am also impressed - the heat comes across well even through the barrier of automatic translation :-)
When the temperature starts dropping in the Northern Hemisphere, we need to burn some Zettelkästen to keep warm.
I started arguing because I thought I disagreed with @ZettelDistraction's agreement with Rachel Fraser, but, as can happen in such discussions, my interlocutor helped reveal problems in my position. I have since learned that Walter Kaufmann coined a word that better describes what I think is the relevant virtue: "humbition", which in the realm of knowledge would be "epistemic humbition". Also relevant: It appears that psychological research on intellectual humility has jingle-jangle problems, which does not surprise me because one of my disagreements with Rachel Fraser was with her very conception of intellectual humility, and it turns out that psychologists have the same kind of disagreement amongst themselves.1
I've just finished the book, now I give a look to this discussion :-)
My evalutation is heavy influenced by my previous knowledge of Zettelkasten.
I've already read and processed a lot of zettelkasten theory before this book (many articles of Bob Doto itself, too), so it can't represent a turning point in my case.
I think it is a good book for beginners. It's clear and it doesn't have the obscure explanations that often surround the zettelkasten storytelling.
There are many useful things (almost all of them aren't new for me, anyway).
Perhaps some parts could have been developed further. I would have liked to read much more pages.
There are the right things, absolutely, but expressed in a "too dry" way for my taste.
Just an example, eufriction (a term I've learned by Doto in his site), interstitial journaling and structure notes are described with only few sentences, while there is a whole world behind them.
It's a starting point for many researches, in my opinion, in that sense.
@Edmund Doto's book is the best and tightest yet for explaining both how to implement a Luhmann-artig zettelkasten as well as why along with the affordances certain elements provide. He does a particularly good job of providing clear and straightforward definitions which have a muddy nature in some of the online spaces, which tends to cause issues for people new to the practice. Sadly, for me, there isn't much new insight due to the amount of experience and research I bring to the enterprise.
I do like that Doto puts at least some emphasis on why one might want to use alphanumerics even in digital spaces, an idea which has broadly been sidelined in most contexts for lack of experience or concrete affordances for why one might do it.
The other area he addresses, which most elide and the balance gloss over at best, is that of the discussion of using the zettelkasten for output. Though he touches on some particular methods and scaffolding, most of it is limited to suggestions based on his own experience rather than a broader set of structures and practices. This is probably the biggest area for potential expansion and examples I'd like to see, especially as I'm reading through Eustace Miles' How to Prepare Essays, Lectures, Articles, Books, Speeches and Letters, with Hints on Writing for the Press (London: Rivingtons, 1905).
I could have had some more material in chapter 3 which has some fascinating, but still evolving work. Ideas like interstitial journaling and some of the related productivity methods are interesting, but Doto only barely scratches the surface on some of these techniques and methods which go beyond the traditional "zettelkasten space", but which certainly fall in his broader framing of "system for writing" promise.
Doto's "triangle of creativity", a discussion of proximal feedback, has close parallels of Adler and Hutchins' idea of "The Great Conversation" (1952), which many are likely to miss.
For those who missed out, Dan Allosso has posted video from the sessions at https://lifelonglearn.substack.com/ Sadly missing, unless you're in the book club, are some generally lively side chat discussions as the primary video discussion was proceeding. The sessions had a breadth of experiences from the new to the old hands as well as from students to teachers and everywhere in between.
No piece of information is superior to any other. Power lies in having them all on file and then finding the connections. There are always connections; you have only to want to find them. —Umberto Eco
@chrisaldrich said: @Edmund Doto's book is the best and tightest yet for explaining both how to implement a Luhmann-artig zettelkasten as well as why along with the affordances certain elements provide. He does a particularly good job of providing clear and straightforward definitions which have a muddy nature in some of the online spaces, which tends to cause issues for people new to the practice. Sadly, for me, there isn't much new insight due to the amount of experience and research I bring to the enterprise.
Yes, I share your assessment. Once you have read Sönke Ahrens' book, there are few new insights from reading the new one. And for me, it ended with some new questions:
Is there a difference between „Permanent Notes“ from Ahrens and „Main Notes“ from Doto?
Is there a difference between „Hubs“ from [Schmidt 2016] and „Hubs“ from [Doto 2024]?
What is the benefit of ZettelIDs in a digital Zettelkasten like Obsidian?
What is the benefit of „Folgezettel“ in a digital Zettelkasten? Or is it just another structure for the same purpose?
My collection of structures is still growing:
Is there a need for having more structures?
Edmund Gröpl
Writing is your voice. Make it easy to listen.
@Edmund said:
And for me, it ended with some new questions:
Is there a difference between "Permanent Notes "from Ahrens and "Main Notes "from Doto?
Yes. Every Main Note in Doto is a Permanent Note in Ahrens, but not conversely. Somewhat like Ahrens, Main Notes and Reference Notes in Doto correspond to Permanent Notes and Literature Notes in Ahrens. My evidence: "This main note cites the reference note in Fig. 17." (Doto 2024, p. 43, Figure 18). Ahrens uses the term main note in precisely one place: "The only permanently stored notes are the literature notes in the reference system and the main notes in the slip-box" (Ahrens, 2nd Ed, p. 42). The Main Notes in Doto are identical to those in Ahrens, but those in Ahrens are Permanent non-literature Notes.
Is there a difference between "Hubs "from [Schmidt 2016] and "Hubs "from [Doto 2024]?
No.
What is the benefit of ZettelIDs in a digital Zettelkasten like Obsidian?
Since IDs are supposed to be unique and immutable, it's possible to edit a Zettel's title without changing its Wikilinks. However, old titles that annotate links in Zetteln other than the modified Zettel will remain the same unless the user edits them.
What is the benefit of "Folgezettel "in a digital Zettelkasten? r is it just another structure for the same purpose?
It's another coordinate system, meaning an arbitrary additional structure. Folgezettel contains some ordering information and an indication of the contents of a note; however, A System for Writing does not follow Luhmann on ID assignment. According to JFK Schmidt, if a new Zettel continues a previous Zettel with ID XXXXXXY, Luhmann will assign the ID XXXXXXY+1. If the new Zettel comments on an earlier Zettel, Luhmann will append a letter or number to the ID; e.g., XXXXXXY goes to XXXXXY1 if Y is a letter, or XXXXXXYa if Y is a number. (Doto 2024) does not follow Luhmann's prescription; his examples suggest that his ID assignment is closer to section and subsection numbering. However, he chooses another ID in cases where there might be a "missing" ID.
I've switched from Zettlr (too slow on my machine) to Obsidian, and I'm beginning each day with the Daily Notes feature in Obsidian (when I remember, though this is becoming a habit). The result is that my "fleeting notes" end up in Daily Notes. To some extent, adding Main Notes has stalled.
I am interested in what writers do. My mother was a writer who locked herself in her bedroom to write during the day. I don't know her process other than to write all day and to prioritize writing; she declared she had "abdicated motherhood." Many people don't have a process; Bob does. He starts by updating his daily journal and tracks projects in CLOG notes; CLOG is an acronym for "creative log." The heading of a creative log states the purpose of the writing for the writer and the writer's audience--a helpful reminder.
@chrisaldrich correctly points out that Bob Doto emphasizes "using the zettelkasten for output;" his link points to the need for more examples (I agree). The title is A System for Writing, after all. Aside from that, there is the Paris Review.
Post edited by ZettelDistraction on
GitHub. Erdős #2. Problems worthy of attack / prove their worth by hitting back. -- Piet Hein. Alter ego: Erel Dogg (not the first). CC BY-SA 4.0.
@Edmund@ZettelDistraction I appreciate the discussion of "coming to terms" (Adler & Van Doren, Simon & Schuster 1972 / Touchstone 2011) going on here as a means of attempting to determine the differences between authors and discerning precisely what they mean as well as what the actual affordances of these systems are.
No piece of information is superior to any other. Power lies in having them all on file and then finding the connections. There are always connections; you have only to want to find them. —Umberto Eco
@chrisaldrich said: @Edmund@ZettelDistraction I appreciate the discussion of "coming to terms" (Adler & Van Doren, Simon & Schuster 1972 / Touchstone 2011) going on here as a means of attempting to determine the differences between authors and discerning precisely what they mean as well as what the actual affordances of these systems are.
Perhaps we ought to do this with references. My brief answer "no" to the difference between (Schmid 2017) and (Doto 2024) on hub notes should have included pull quotes with citationscitation needed. It would help to have a Leitfaden anyone could consult to find out who says what about permanent notes, literature notes, source notes, main notes, point notes, fleeting notes, fleeting literature notes, project notes, and so on, along with relationships among these terms.
As for affordances and differences between, e.g., IDs in digital versus analog systems, Zettelkasten versus commonplace books, and so on, this is an extensive research program where it would be an advance to have the questions one would want answered in one place, let alone answers to them.
GitHub. Erdős #2. Problems worthy of attack / prove their worth by hitting back. -- Piet Hein. Alter ego: Erel Dogg (not the first). CC BY-SA 4.0.
@ZettelDistraction said:
I am interested in what writers do. My mother was a writer who locked herself in her bedroom to write during the day. I don't know her process other than to write all day and to prioritize writing; she declared she had "abdicated motherhood." Many people don't have a process; Bob does. He starts by updating his daily journal and tracks projects in CLOG notes; CLOG is an acronym for "creative log." The heading of a creative log states the purpose of the writing for the writer and the writer's audience--a helpful reminder.
I love this idea of a CLOG. It sounds like an annotated structure note. It is an innovative way to track projects. Another is to use project tags. To make this idea sticky, an acronym has to be catchy. Not my forte. How about these ideas:
TRAP - Tagged Record for Annotated Projects
PIGLET - Project Index Groups in Linked Entries and Tags
PTAG - Project Tags
Seriously, this idea of project tracking with a ZK is intriguing. Can you say more?
Will Simpson
My zettelkasten is for my ideas, not the ideas of others. I don’t want to waste my time tinkering with my ZK; I’d rather dive into the work itself. My peak cognition is behind me. One day soon, I will read my last book, write my last note, eat my last meal, and kiss my sweetie for the last time. kestrelcreek.com
FWIW, I believe UIDs serve multiple purposes in a digital Zettelkasten – I've tried without (after all, most apps rename links these days) and I think it makes the system more brittle.
The two main interests of using them are:
If you mix transient notes and project notes with your Zettelkasten, having a UID in a note immediately shows that this is a special type of content – a building block of thought which can be used in a variety of contexts (contrary to project notes). It promotes it in a way.
Linking from other contexts. Most people will use other apps for their work, and it's trivial to reference your Zettelkasten from them using the UID (my writing notes are interspersed with comment like "avoid doing this in this situation, or you will stumble onto this problem, see 202411071446" and such – I immediately know this is a Zettel, obviously) . If you change systems, or apps, these comments will remain usable, while your old Evernote links will have broken two centuries ago.
"A writer should write what he has to say and not speak it." - Ernest Hemingway
The elements to build up structures: folders, links and tags. The digital option of using properties is still missing.
What is the benefit of "Folgezettel "in a digital Zettelkasten? r is it just another structure for the same purpose?
It's another coordinate system, meaning an arbitrary additional structure. Folgezettel contains some ordering information and an indication of the contents of a note; however, A System for Writing does not follow Luhmann on ID assignment.
If we change the ID assignment, we may change the type of structure. I've started some experiments by using properties for "note sequences" in Obsidian in the frontmatter section:
sequence_id: Folgezettel
note_id: "1.0"
It's now easy to filter connected notes
dataview
TABLE WITHOUT ID
note_id as ID,
file.link as note,
lead as lead,
continue_to as "continue to"
FROM #structure/sequence
SORT note_id ASC
Where:
continue_to:: [[Elements to Organize and Structure Zettelkasten]]
is an inline key used to create a link within the "note sequence".
Edmund Gröpl
Writing is your voice. Make it easy to listen.
@Edmund, thank you for introducing me to the Dataview plugin for Obsidian. As for hubs in Schmidt versus Doto, Schmidt writes:
The cards containing a collection of references are furthermore of interest because they represent so-called ‘hubs’, i.e., cards that function as nodes that feature an above-average number of links to other cards so that these few cards provide access points to extensive parts of the file (Schmidt 2016, p. 17).
Hub notes in (Doto 2024, pp. 114-115) are lists of links annotated by title (or some indication of the content). They aren't the "elaborated outlines" that differentiate the structure note from the hub and serve as the outlines for writing projects, though the difference for me is one of degree rather than kind. For Luhmann, there was no difference between a hub and a structure note.
"... Luhmann’s structure notes were brief lists of ideas related to a specific topic ... "
(Doto 2024, p. 116).
"Structure notes provide a foundation for writing" (Doto 2024, p. 127). This is the main reason I would use them.
GitHub. Erdős #2. Problems worthy of attack / prove their worth by hitting back. -- Piet Hein. Alter ego: Erel Dogg (not the first). CC BY-SA 4.0.
The idea that this is a matter of degree and not kind resonates with me.
I refer to the range from a simple list of links to a highly annotated outline of links as "structure notes," but label them with an "H" as shown in the image below.
Will Simpson
My zettelkasten is for my ideas, not the ideas of others. I don’t want to waste my time tinkering with my ZK; I’d rather dive into the work itself. My peak cognition is behind me. One day soon, I will read my last book, write my last note, eat my last meal, and kiss my sweetie for the last time. kestrelcreek.com
I love this idea of a CLOG. It sounds like an annotated structure note. ...
Seriously, this idea of project tracking with a ZK is intriguing. Can you say more?
Bob Doto's book A System for Writing p. 142, refers to a blog article, How I Use CLOGs to Organize My Writing Files, which gives examples and also mentions (I did not know this) that CLOG stands for both "catalog" and "creative log." The noun "catalog" appears in the blog article as a reading of "CLOG," but in the book, the word appears as a verb:
The notes section below the purpose is the most active area of the creative log, typically used to catalog three types of comments:
A record of what I did and when
Thoughts about what needs attention
Suggestions on what to work on next
(Doto 2024, p. 174).
The link provides details on this very practical system, which I am on the verge of adopting. I have already started using Daily Notes in Obsidian. Daily Notes go in a subfolder of the Zettelkasten directory, so they don't interfere with the main notes.
GitHub. Erdős #2. Problems worthy of attack / prove their worth by hitting back. -- Piet Hein. Alter ego: Erel Dogg (not the first). CC BY-SA 4.0.
"A System For Writing" with a literature map as a result of analytical reading. It shows a list of key terms and and some of the key propositions from Doto's book.
I'm still trying to figure out which problems the author solved and which he didn't. For me, there is no clear answer to the question of whether it is necessary to use Folgezettel in a digital Zettelkasten. What problem could be solved with this structure that remains unsolved by using other concepts?
Post edited by Edmund on
Edmund Gröpl
Writing is your voice. Make it easy to listen.
@Edmund said (sorry, Grammarly intervened):
For me, there is no clear answer to whether using Folgezettel in a digital Zettelkasten is necessary.
The question seems general enough that the answer is no; Folgezettel is unnecessary, if only because necessity is a high bar. For me, the question, like any engineering question, involves tradeoffs. Given the tradeoffs, the question is whether they are desirable.
The first tradeoff is whether IDs, Folgezettel or otherwise, are desirable. The best argument I've seen for assigning IDs to notes is @KillerWhale's observation: "... having a UID in a note immediately shows that this is a special type of content... ."
@chrisaldrich mentioned affordances; let's list some ID properties and their affordances in a digital Zettelkasten. (These should be separated, but I leave that for when I become immortal.)
A note ID is unique and immutable. (I am making this assumption for simplicity. We can argue over this choice, but that will involve other complicating tradeoffs.)
The ID of a note is in the note. The presence of the ID in the note is an assignment of type. As @KillerWhale points out, an ID distinguishes a note from other files.
If it is not explicitly designated as an ID (either within a Wikilink or as the value of a YAML variable), an ID within a note must be distinguishable by other strings of characters in the entire collection of notes or related files by its form.
For example, in Zettlr, IDs are 14-character timestamps by default. This decision reduces the likelihood that an ID will match another string in the collection of notes in a Zettelkasten. A typical Folgezettel ID is shorter than this.
Since shorter Folgezettel (one, two, or three characters) will tend to match more strings that may or may not be IDs in a digital Zettelkasten, Folgezettel IDs are more suited to analog systems unless they are required to be long enough to avoid spurious matching when searching by ID as strings (without any additional context or means of distinguishing them from other strings they might match otherwise).
IDs form part of the structure of a note intended for storage within a Zettelkasten. Notes are presumed to follow a standardized format, which includes an ID assignment.
IDs can be filenames, indicating the file's content (which is the point of having filenames).
If an ID is the filename of a note, it is both in the note and the filename of the note. This decision overloads the syntax and semantics of filenames with the syntax and semantics of IDs. This means that an ID must satisfy operating system constraints on filenames and any imposed on IDs.
Wikilinks between notes link notes by filename.
IDs as filenames occur in Wikilinks.
Ordinarily, ID Wikilink will be annotated by the note title (unless it is the note title) or by indicating the note content and reason for linking the note.
IDs do not have to be filenames. They could be the values of YAML variables or logseq properties.
IDs in YAML variables facilitate software analysis using, e.g., Dataview, as in @Edmund's example.
Ideally, I would separate the various concerns. I would need to mention at least different kinds of IDs: timestamps, note titles, Folgezettel, combination IDs (keyword+timestamp), UIDs, and so on. If I mention IDs generally, then we're discussing affordances (which I will identify with tradeoffs until someone sets me straight) of IDs without mentioning the type of ID. (I am not sure I want to write a book.)
Bob Doto never runs out of Folgezettel since his ID assignments don't necessarily follow Luhmann's rules for assigning IDs. Also, Luhmann's system was analog, so it did not have the tradeoffs that digital systems introduce.
Post edited by ZettelDistraction on
GitHub. Erdős #2. Problems worthy of attack / prove their worth by hitting back. -- Piet Hein. Alter ego: Erel Dogg (not the first). CC BY-SA 4.0.
Thank you, @Edmund, for sharing your literature map, which resulted from your analytical reading of "A System For Writing" above. It has inspired me to attempt an analytical reading of Part 3, "Writing With Your Zettelkasten." I'm fascinated by the terms "Lumps" and "Triangle of Creativity."
Will Simpson
My zettelkasten is for my ideas, not the ideas of others. I don’t want to waste my time tinkering with my ZK; I’d rather dive into the work itself. My peak cognition is behind me. One day soon, I will read my last book, write my last note, eat my last meal, and kiss my sweetie for the last time. kestrelcreek.com
@Edmund said:
"A System For Writing" with a literature map as a result of analytical reading. It shows a list of key terms and and some of the key propositions from Doto's book.
I'm still trying to figure out which problems the author solved and which he didn't. For me, there is no clear answer to the question of whether it is necessary to use Folgezettel in a digital Zettelkasten. What problem could be solved with this structure that remains unsolved by using other concepts?
I think that many benefits of using Folgezettel (I'm refer to the luhman method and similar, not to the more general use of IDs or title/filename conventions) can be obtained using structure notes, map of contents or similar constructs.
They need a little of discipline, anyway. If you adopt the model of Folgezettel, this "imposes" you to connect and think how to connect notes, and browsing notes is a specific way. Without folgezettel you need to impose the same requirements on your own, it's not the system that provides these rails. using other constructs you need to build an habit.
A different expression of the same opinion is, if you don't use folgezettel you must use at least on of the other constructs for modeling chains, clusters, structures.
During time I've identified small peculiarities of folgezettel that can be considered:
folgezettel is a physical construct, you find its representation coded into filenames. So, its chains remains if you navigate your notes using a file explorer, or if you export them in another system.
folgezettel is automatically supported by autocomplete searching of software, if present: you can have a chain of thought directly during a simple search.
folgezettel is built in an emergent way as you create a note, you only need to identify the closest note to attach. Using structures note you need to to find, edit and maintain the involved structure notes too.
These three aren't great advantages, in my opinion, I haven't found other "exclusive" benefits of Folgezettel, so I don't use it, preferring structure notes with a little of discipline.
My opinion of course.
The point of "discipline and rails" is not to be underestimated, anyway.
Different people could have different attitudes and comforts regarding how to build a folgezettel vs how to build a structure note, so someone could prefer the first construct, finding the latter too prone to inconsistencies or too heavy to handle.
Strictness and very simple rules of Folgezettel rails for me are the most important benefits of the model, for some of us that are in comfort with them (it is not my case...)
Edit
I have not described the advantages due to the fact that the Folgezettel codes are also note IDs, they are tangible (IDs are immutable and unique, so if I use them as the filename of the notes I get a portable and stable network over time), but this is a benefit that they also have other ID models, like use of timestamps for filenames, which I see often used. You can obtain the same benefit using another kind of ID.
Comments
I am correcting my remarks about Bob Doto's A System for Writing. Bob does not use Obsidian's "Daily note" plugin; I had assumed this. Bob disabused me of this in a private email.
Footnote 137 in Chapter 9 of my Kindle edition makes it clear (had I read it) that Bob Doto uses a single file for his daily journal.
Happily misreading A System for Writing, I thought I would emulate Bob Doto's system and configure the Obsidian core plugin for daily notes to keep these notes out of the way in a subdirectory called Daily-Notes. I also configured Obsidian to open the current daily note on startup. Here is the screenshot.
Since you don't admit to the possibility you could be wrong, my unoriginal criticism of virtue ethics on the ground of vagueness notwithstanding, I haven't seen much evidence of epistemic humility. I think you think you're right.
If intellectual humility is simply descriptive—a profile of traits correlated with wisdom—it becomes a loose, observational label rather than a distinct "virtue" with actionable guidance. A virtue traditionally implies a normative claim about excellent conduct. The normative claim is lost if, as you say, "... I don't see it as prescriptive: I would never say to someone, 'Be intellectually humble!'..." and go on to say that "the concept of intellectual humility is descriptive." When intellectual humility is purely descriptive, it provides no substantive guidance beyond reinforcing pre-existing temperamental tendencies.
Psychological measures may summarize correlations between behaviors and traits, but they do not establish these traits as norms in a philosophical or epistemic sense. We could call beauty a virtue, or even IQ a "descriptive virtue," provided it’s high enough, but it would be incoherent to claim that a merely "descriptive virtue" could guide conduct. I have never accused anyone of making a category error, but I might start.
GitHub. Erdős #2. Problems worthy of attack / prove their worth by hitting back. -- Piet Hein. Alter ego: Erel Dogg (not the first). CC BY-SA 4.0.
@ZettelDistraction said:
I'm not proud of it, but I may be the example of unvirtue that supports my own position. I don't think I'm wrong that it's meaningful to talk about intellectual virtues and that intellectual humility is one of them.
OK, you've convinced me that there must be a prescriptive aspect to it as well. So I'm wrong about that and perhaps a little virtuous for admitting it. I think the concept of intellectual humility does provide guidance, but not enough guidance to substitute for epistemological knowledge and understanding.
I just granted that intellectual humility must be prescriptive. You're right that psychological tests don't establish psychological concepts/traits as prescriptive. By the way, another intellectual virtue for which there's a psychological measure is rationality: the Rationality Quotient of Keith Stanovich et al.
It's nice to have a descriptive measure of rationality. I imagine a dispassionate psychometrician FAXing the purely descriptive, non-normative rationality assessment of an anonymous patient to the office of the ordering psychiatrist, who waits for the next session with his mess of a client to scold them for their abysmal rationality score.
GitHub. Erdős #2. Problems worthy of attack / prove their worth by hitting back. -- Piet Hein. Alter ego: Erel Dogg (not the first). CC BY-SA 4.0.
This has to be the nerdiest flame war that ever graced an Internet forum since the BBS days. I absolutely love you guys.
"A writer should write what he has to say and not speak it." - Ernest Hemingway
PKM: Bear + DEVONthink, tasks: OmniFocus, production: Scrivener / Ableton Live.
I am also impressed - the heat comes across well even through the barrier of automatic translation :-)
immer am Rand der Sammlerfalle
@rl911 said:
When the temperature starts dropping in the Northern Hemisphere, we need to burn some Zettelkästen to keep warm.
I started arguing because I thought I disagreed with @ZettelDistraction's agreement with Rachel Fraser, but, as can happen in such discussions, my interlocutor helped reveal problems in my position. I have since learned that Walter Kaufmann coined a word that better describes what I think is the relevant virtue: "humbition", which in the realm of knowledge would be "epistemic humbition". Also relevant: It appears that psychological research on intellectual humility has jingle-jangle problems, which does not surprise me because one of my disagreements with Rachel Fraser was with her very conception of intellectual humility, and it turns out that psychologists have the same kind of disagreement amongst themselves.1
Tenelle Porter (2023). "Jingle-jangle fallacies in intellectual humility research". Journal of Positive Psychology, 18(2), 221–223. ↩︎
Jingle-jangle fallacies! I concede if that would get the thread somewhere near Bob Doto's book.
GitHub. Erdős #2. Problems worthy of attack / prove their worth by hitting back. -- Piet Hein. Alter ego: Erel Dogg (not the first). CC BY-SA 4.0.
I've just finished the book, now I give a look to this discussion :-)
My evalutation is heavy influenced by my previous knowledge of Zettelkasten.
I've already read and processed a lot of zettelkasten theory before this book (many articles of Bob Doto itself, too), so it can't represent a turning point in my case.
I think it is a good book for beginners. It's clear and it doesn't have the obscure explanations that often surround the zettelkasten storytelling.
There are many useful things (almost all of them aren't new for me, anyway).
Perhaps some parts could have been developed further. I would have liked to read much more pages.
There are the right things, absolutely, but expressed in a "too dry" way for my taste.
Just an example, eufriction (a term I've learned by Doto in his site), interstitial journaling and structure notes are described with only few sentences, while there is a whole world behind them.
It's a starting point for many researches, in my opinion, in that sense.
@chrisaldrich Do you have some results from your online sessions? New insights from reading Doto's book?
Edmund Gröpl
Writing is your voice. Make it easy to listen.
@Edmund Doto's book is the best and tightest yet for explaining both how to implement a Luhmann-artig zettelkasten as well as why along with the affordances certain elements provide. He does a particularly good job of providing clear and straightforward definitions which have a muddy nature in some of the online spaces, which tends to cause issues for people new to the practice. Sadly, for me, there isn't much new insight due to the amount of experience and research I bring to the enterprise.
I do like that Doto puts at least some emphasis on why one might want to use alphanumerics even in digital spaces, an idea which has broadly been sidelined in most contexts for lack of experience or concrete affordances for why one might do it.
The other area he addresses, which most elide and the balance gloss over at best, is that of the discussion of using the zettelkasten for output. Though he touches on some particular methods and scaffolding, most of it is limited to suggestions based on his own experience rather than a broader set of structures and practices. This is probably the biggest area for potential expansion and examples I'd like to see, especially as I'm reading through Eustace Miles' How to Prepare Essays, Lectures, Articles, Books, Speeches and Letters, with Hints on Writing for the Press (London: Rivingtons, 1905).
I could have had some more material in chapter 3 which has some fascinating, but still evolving work. Ideas like interstitial journaling and some of the related productivity methods are interesting, but Doto only barely scratches the surface on some of these techniques and methods which go beyond the traditional "zettelkasten space", but which certainly fall in his broader framing of "system for writing" promise.
Doto's "triangle of creativity", a discussion of proximal feedback, has close parallels of Adler and Hutchins' idea of "The Great Conversation" (1952), which many are likely to miss.
For those who missed out, Dan Allosso has posted video from the sessions at https://lifelonglearn.substack.com/ Sadly missing, unless you're in the book club, are some generally lively side chat discussions as the primary video discussion was proceeding. The sessions had a breadth of experiences from the new to the old hands as well as from students to teachers and everywhere in between.
website | digital slipbox 🗃️🖋️
Yes, I share your assessment. Once you have read Sönke Ahrens' book, there are few new insights from reading the new one. And for me, it ended with some new questions:
My collection of structures is still growing:
Is there a need for having more structures?
Edmund Gröpl
Writing is your voice. Make it easy to listen.
Yes. Every Main Note in Doto is a Permanent Note in Ahrens, but not conversely. Somewhat like Ahrens, Main Notes and Reference Notes in Doto correspond to Permanent Notes and Literature Notes in Ahrens. My evidence: "This main note cites the reference note in Fig. 17." (Doto 2024, p. 43, Figure 18). Ahrens uses the term main note in precisely one place: "The only permanently stored notes are the literature notes in the reference system and the main notes in the slip-box" (Ahrens, 2nd Ed, p. 42). The Main Notes in Doto are identical to those in Ahrens, but those in Ahrens are Permanent non-literature Notes.
No.
Since IDs are supposed to be unique and immutable, it's possible to edit a Zettel's title without changing its Wikilinks. However, old titles that annotate links in Zetteln other than the modified Zettel will remain the same unless the user edits them.
It's another coordinate system, meaning an arbitrary additional structure. Folgezettel contains some ordering information and an indication of the contents of a note; however, A System for Writing does not follow Luhmann on ID assignment. According to JFK Schmidt, if a new Zettel continues a previous Zettel with ID XXXXXXY, Luhmann will assign the ID XXXXXXY+1. If the new Zettel comments on an earlier Zettel, Luhmann will append a letter or number to the ID; e.g., XXXXXXY goes to XXXXXY1 if Y is a letter, or XXXXXXYa if Y is a number. (Doto 2024) does not follow Luhmann's prescription; his examples suggest that his ID assignment is closer to section and subsection numbering. However, he chooses another ID in cases where there might be a "missing" ID.
I've switched from Zettlr (too slow on my machine) to Obsidian, and I'm beginning each day with the Daily Notes feature in Obsidian (when I remember, though this is becoming a habit). The result is that my "fleeting notes" end up in Daily Notes. To some extent, adding Main Notes has stalled.
I am interested in what writers do. My mother was a writer who locked herself in her bedroom to write during the day. I don't know her process other than to write all day and to prioritize writing; she declared she had "abdicated motherhood." Many people don't have a process; Bob does. He starts by updating his daily journal and tracks projects in CLOG notes; CLOG is an acronym for "creative log." The heading of a creative log states the purpose of the writing for the writer and the writer's audience--a helpful reminder.
@chrisaldrich correctly points out that Bob Doto emphasizes "using the zettelkasten for output;" his link points to the need for more examples (I agree). The title is A System for Writing, after all. Aside from that, there is the Paris Review.
GitHub. Erdős #2. Problems worthy of attack / prove their worth by hitting back. -- Piet Hein. Alter ego: Erel Dogg (not the first). CC BY-SA 4.0.
@Edmund @ZettelDistraction I appreciate the discussion of "coming to terms" (Adler & Van Doren, Simon & Schuster 1972 / Touchstone 2011) going on here as a means of attempting to determine the differences between authors and discerning precisely what they mean as well as what the actual affordances of these systems are.
website | digital slipbox 🗃️🖋️
Perhaps we ought to do this with references. My brief answer "no" to the difference between (Schmid 2017) and (Doto 2024) on hub notes should have included pull quotes with citationscitation needed. It would help to have a Leitfaden anyone could consult to find out who says what about permanent notes, literature notes, source notes, main notes, point notes, fleeting notes, fleeting literature notes, project notes, and so on, along with relationships among these terms.
As for affordances and differences between, e.g., IDs in digital versus analog systems, Zettelkasten versus commonplace books, and so on, this is an extensive research program where it would be an advance to have the questions one would want answered in one place, let alone answers to them.
GitHub. Erdős #2. Problems worthy of attack / prove their worth by hitting back. -- Piet Hein. Alter ego: Erel Dogg (not the first). CC BY-SA 4.0.
I love this idea of a CLOG. It sounds like an annotated structure note. It is an innovative way to track projects. Another is to use project tags. To make this idea sticky, an acronym has to be catchy. Not my forte. How about these ideas:
Seriously, this idea of project tracking with a ZK is intriguing. Can you say more?
Will Simpson
My zettelkasten is for my ideas, not the ideas of others. I don’t want to waste my time tinkering with my ZK; I’d rather dive into the work itself. My peak cognition is behind me. One day soon, I will read my last book, write my last note, eat my last meal, and kiss my sweetie for the last time.
kestrelcreek.com
FWIW, I believe UIDs serve multiple purposes in a digital Zettelkasten – I've tried without (after all, most apps rename links these days) and I think it makes the system more brittle.
The two main interests of using them are:
"A writer should write what he has to say and not speak it." - Ernest Hemingway
PKM: Bear + DEVONthink, tasks: OmniFocus, production: Scrivener / Ableton Live.
Here is my lastest update of "Map of Structures":
Download PDF: https://github.com/groepl/Obsidian-Templates/blob/main/Assets/zettelkasten_structures.pdf
The elements to build up structures: folders, links and tags. The digital option of using properties is still missing.
If we change the ID assignment, we may change the type of structure. I've started some experiments by using properties for "note sequences" in Obsidian in the frontmatter section:
It's now easy to filter connected notes
dataview TABLE WITHOUT ID note_id as ID, file.link as note, lead as lead, continue_to as "continue to" FROM #structure/sequence SORT note_id ASCWhere:
continue_to:: [[Elements to Organize and Structure Zettelkasten]]is an inline key used to create a link within the "note sequence".
Edmund Gröpl
Writing is your voice. Make it easy to listen.
@Edmund, thank you for introducing me to the Dataview plugin for Obsidian. As for hubs in Schmidt versus Doto, Schmidt writes:
Hub notes in (Doto 2024, pp. 114-115) are lists of links annotated by title (or some indication of the content). They aren't the "elaborated outlines" that differentiate the structure note from the hub and serve as the outlines for writing projects, though the difference for me is one of degree rather than kind. For Luhmann, there was no difference between a hub and a structure note.
"Structure notes provide a foundation for writing" (Doto 2024, p. 127). This is the main reason I would use them.
GitHub. Erdős #2. Problems worthy of attack / prove their worth by hitting back. -- Piet Hein. Alter ego: Erel Dogg (not the first). CC BY-SA 4.0.
Thanks a bunch, @ZettelDistraction, for breaking that down so clearly!
The idea that this is a matter of degree and not kind resonates with me.
I refer to the range from a simple list of links to a highly annotated outline of links as "structure notes," but label them with an "H" as shown in the image below.
Will Simpson
My zettelkasten is for my ideas, not the ideas of others. I don’t want to waste my time tinkering with my ZK; I’d rather dive into the work itself. My peak cognition is behind me. One day soon, I will read my last book, write my last note, eat my last meal, and kiss my sweetie for the last time.
kestrelcreek.com
@Will said:
Bob Doto's book A System for Writing p. 142, refers to a blog article, How I Use CLOGs to Organize My Writing Files, which gives examples and also mentions (I did not know this) that CLOG stands for both "catalog" and "creative log." The noun "catalog" appears in the blog article as a reading of "CLOG," but in the book, the word appears as a verb:
The link provides details on this very practical system, which I am on the verge of adopting. I have already started using Daily Notes in Obsidian. Daily Notes go in a subfolder of the Zettelkasten directory, so they don't interfere with the main notes.
GitHub. Erdős #2. Problems worthy of attack / prove their worth by hitting back. -- Piet Hein. Alter ego: Erel Dogg (not the first). CC BY-SA 4.0.
"A System For Writing" with a literature map as a result of analytical reading. It shows a list of key terms and and some of the key propositions from Doto's book.
PDF in Github: https://github.com/groepl/Take-Useful-Notes/blob/main/Assets/A_System_for_Writing_2024-10-22.pdf
I'm still trying to figure out which problems the author solved and which he didn't. For me, there is no clear answer to the question of whether it is necessary to use Folgezettel in a digital Zettelkasten. What problem could be solved with this structure that remains unsolved by using other concepts?
Edmund Gröpl
Writing is your voice. Make it easy to listen.
The question seems general enough that the answer is no; Folgezettel is unnecessary, if only because necessity is a high bar. For me, the question, like any engineering question, involves tradeoffs. Given the tradeoffs, the question is whether they are desirable.
The first tradeoff is whether IDs, Folgezettel or otherwise, are desirable. The best argument I've seen for assigning IDs to notes is @KillerWhale's observation: "... having a UID in a note immediately shows that this is a special type of content... ."
@chrisaldrich mentioned affordances; let's list some ID properties and their affordances in a digital Zettelkasten. (These should be separated, but I leave that for when I become immortal.)
Ideally, I would separate the various concerns. I would need to mention at least different kinds of IDs: timestamps, note titles, Folgezettel, combination IDs (keyword+timestamp), UIDs, and so on. If I mention IDs generally, then we're discussing affordances (which I will identify with tradeoffs until someone sets me straight) of IDs without mentioning the type of ID. (I am not sure I want to write a book.)
Bob Doto never runs out of Folgezettel since his ID assignments don't necessarily follow Luhmann's rules for assigning IDs. Also, Luhmann's system was analog, so it did not have the tradeoffs that digital systems introduce.
GitHub. Erdős #2. Problems worthy of attack / prove their worth by hitting back. -- Piet Hein. Alter ego: Erel Dogg (not the first). CC BY-SA 4.0.
Thank you, @Edmund, for sharing your literature map, which resulted from your analytical reading of "A System For Writing" above. It has inspired me to attempt an analytical reading of Part 3, "Writing With Your Zettelkasten." I'm fascinated by the terms "Lumps" and "Triangle of Creativity."
Will Simpson
My zettelkasten is for my ideas, not the ideas of others. I don’t want to waste my time tinkering with my ZK; I’d rather dive into the work itself. My peak cognition is behind me. One day soon, I will read my last book, write my last note, eat my last meal, and kiss my sweetie for the last time.
kestrelcreek.com
I think that many benefits of using Folgezettel (I'm refer to the luhman method and similar, not to the more general use of IDs or title/filename conventions) can be obtained using structure notes, map of contents or similar constructs.
They need a little of discipline, anyway. If you adopt the model of Folgezettel, this "imposes" you to connect and think how to connect notes, and browsing notes is a specific way. Without folgezettel you need to impose the same requirements on your own, it's not the system that provides these rails. using other constructs you need to build an habit.
A different expression of the same opinion is, if you don't use folgezettel you must use at least on of the other constructs for modeling chains, clusters, structures.
During time I've identified small peculiarities of folgezettel that can be considered:
These three aren't great advantages, in my opinion, I haven't found other "exclusive" benefits of Folgezettel, so I don't use it, preferring structure notes with a little of discipline.
My opinion of course.
The point of "discipline and rails" is not to be underestimated, anyway.
Different people could have different attitudes and comforts regarding how to build a folgezettel vs how to build a structure note, so someone could prefer the first construct, finding the latter too prone to inconsistencies or too heavy to handle.
Strictness and very simple rules of Folgezettel rails for me are the most important benefits of the model, for some of us that are in comfort with them (it is not my case...)
Edit
I have not described the advantages due to the fact that the Folgezettel codes are also note IDs, they are tangible (IDs are immutable and unique, so if I use them as the filename of the notes I get a portable and stable network over time), but this is a benefit that they also have other ID models, like use of timestamps for filenames, which I see often used. You can obtain the same benefit using another kind of ID.