111–120 of 202 posts
Knowledge is messy and doesn't really conform to a database schema. Certainly not one you would want to write :) I think a better approach would be to find a way to insert all these notes into something like ChatGPT.
I have a blog post that I've been sketching out in my head about this whole area of Tools for Thought, future of computing, cybernetics, etc. Basically I find that the thoughtleaders of this space seem to always claim that the true manifestation of their ideas is just out of reach (Project Xanadu, memex, object oriented programming, etc.), but then never deliver this true manifestation. Indeed it's rather remarkable…
When a core tenet is making things other people want, you tend to uplift folks who have no great thoughts of their own to sell.
I can imagine an Orwellian doublespeakessay on Steve Jobs called, “Saying No As The Only Act of Creation”.
Manager, meet thy Master.
PS: Was reading some Thiel approved Girard today, he mentioned something about the nihilism in society in which the secret of success being all about signaling success.
This was the bit that got me: > People have this aspirational idea of building a vast, oppressively colossal, deeply interlinked knowledge graph to the point that it almost mirrors every discrete concept and memory in their brain. And I get the appeal of maximalism. But they’re counting on the wrong side of the ledger. Every node in your knowledge graph is a debt. Every link doubly so.
One idea suggested by Antinet Zettelkasten is to set up an analog system that acts as a "second brain." Interacting with these boxes of notecards is supposed to be a form of discourse, enabling surprising associations and strengthening existing memories. The argument against a digital form is that this kind of interaction occurs at a neural level that just is impossible without deliberate reflection of handwritten ma…
Maybe the whole networked thought/Zettelkasten thing is just something that's only useful for a small subset of endeavours, and more of a hindrance for most. Niklas Luhmann became one of the most productive sociologists of the 20th century with the help of his enormous paper-based Zettelkasten. If you look at the stuff he wrote, you can see why. He ties together publications from the fields of sociology, philosophy,…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Real Artists Ship.
+1! The danger of not shipping is not that it allows you to demand purity of vision, but that it completely removes any user feedback mechanism. And no one, no matter how brilliant, is right about 100% of things, 100% of the time. Reality is simply too complex. Real Artists Ship. Truly Great Artists Ship, Listen, and Adapt.
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About once every year or two, I remember something I read maybe 15 years ago and realize it would be absolutely perfect for some reason, but I can't find it. And being an engineer and an HN poster, my brain immediately leaps to "Oh, if only I ran a system that archived everything I browsed so I could build my own personal search engine that could search on just what I've ever looked at." Then I smack it down, because…
Photos are the worst. I'm through at least three complete reorganizations where I even dusted off old backups and collected all photos (because I felt I was deleting photos too liberally last time), de-duplicated (and de-quadruplicated) them all, and built the new "forever" structure. It sucks that I just know I'll do it again at most five years from now.
~/pictures/2022/202212/20221225
Earlier quoted context omitted.
+1! The danger of not shipping is not that it allows you to demand purity of vision, but that it completely removes any user feedback mechanism. And no one, no matter how brilliant, is right about 100% of things, 100% of the time. Reality is simply too complex. Real Artists Ship. Truly Great Artists Ship, Listen, and Adapt.
I am glad that Van Gogh didnt have a user feedback mechanism? Or maybe God was his only User?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
+1! The danger of not shipping is not that it allows you to demand purity of vision, but that it completely removes any user feedback mechanism. And no one, no matter how brilliant, is right about 100% of things, 100% of the time. Reality is simply too complex. Real Artists Ship. Truly Great Artists Ship, Listen, and Adapt.
I am glad that Van Gogh didnt have a user feedback mechanism? Or maybe God was his only User?
I have a blog post that I've been sketching out in my head about this whole area of Tools for Thought, future of computing, cybernetics, etc. Basically I find that the thoughtleaders of this space seem to always claim that the true manifestation of their ideas is just out of reach (Project Xanadu, memex, object oriented programming, etc.), but then never deliver this true manifestation. Indeed it's rather remarkable…
Kay and his collaborators shipped Smalltalk, which was pretty widely used at one time, and which was also highly influential on Objective-C, the language of choice for OS X/macOS and iOS from 1996 to the introduction of Swift in 2014 (many devs are still using Objective-C).
I have a blog post that I've been sketching out in my head about this whole area of Tools for Thought, future of computing, cybernetics, etc. Basically I find that the thoughtleaders of this space seem to always claim that the true manifestation of their ideas is just out of reach (Project Xanadu, memex, object oriented programming, etc.), but then never deliver this true manifestation. Indeed it's rather remarkable…
Take Alan Kay. Smalltalk shipped. It's still shipping to this day. Right up until 2018 he was working: http://www.vpri.org/ Is it his fault that Smalltalk didn't conquer the world?
Is it Engelbart's fault his demo hasn't been taken seriously for fifty-four years?