How to make a complete map of every thought you think (2003)(users.speakeasy.net)
users.speakeasy.net
How to make a complete map of every thought you think (2003)
https://users.speakeasy.net/~lion/nb/html/
29 comments
Completely agree, I had a really hard time following through with reading this because it seemed so opinionated and at times inconclusive.
On another note, trying not to talk out of my own opinion, if you ask certain people with philosophical, spiritual, meditation practice etc background, this is somewhat expected. When the mind has nothing to think about but thoughts, and you deeply identify with every single one, you lose touch with reality. Thoughts are generated after the fact, by themselves, feeding off the universe of your own neural connections. Even when they say “I”. Raw concepts swap from the subconscious into the conscious mind, and the conscious mind assumes them as coming from itself. In a way you would be thought, and don’t think, identity is imagined after the fact, the only free will is in observing and focusing..
Personally, I believe this could be comparable to feeding DALL-E a description, taking the generated image, feeding it into a image-to-text classifier, and then the generated description back into DALL-E, ad infinitum.
Like an endless game of telephone where the conscious mind can influence the participants bias to some degree, yet both the imagined concepts and perception of reality slowly drift further and further away from the initial neuronal activity, and in the meantime we filter out all the actual new thoughts and perceptions, despite them being much closer to the current moment, initial perception and/or neuronal activity and thus also much more rational and functional. Focusing the stream of thoughts in a certain direction seems possible, but only through being aware of it, not being it, as that would imply firing up the telephone game again and getting lost it in it again.
On another note, trying not to talk out of my own opinion, if you ask certain people with philosophical, spiritual, meditation practice etc background, this is somewhat expected. When the mind has nothing to think about but thoughts, and you deeply identify with every single one, you lose touch with reality. Thoughts are generated after the fact, by themselves, feeding off the universe of your own neural connections. Even when they say “I”. Raw concepts swap from the subconscious into the conscious mind, and the conscious mind assumes them as coming from itself. In a way you would be thought, and don’t think, identity is imagined after the fact, the only free will is in observing and focusing..
Personally, I believe this could be comparable to feeding DALL-E a description, taking the generated image, feeding it into a image-to-text classifier, and then the generated description back into DALL-E, ad infinitum.
Like an endless game of telephone where the conscious mind can influence the participants bias to some degree, yet both the imagined concepts and perception of reality slowly drift further and further away from the initial neuronal activity, and in the meantime we filter out all the actual new thoughts and perceptions, despite them being much closer to the current moment, initial perception and/or neuronal activity and thus also much more rational and functional. Focusing the stream of thoughts in a certain direction seems possible, but only through being aware of it, not being it, as that would imply firing up the telephone game again and getting lost it in it again.
I would not be suprised if this approach backfired to a certain degree as it would just increase the amount of thoughts, thus distractions.
Most philosophers just end up with even more questions than they started with and end up dying miserable and frustrated.
This is a stark contrast to, for example, Krishnamurti's teaching which could be summed up as "observe your thoughts without trying to analyze them, just sit still and observe them, and notice that each time you try to analyze the thoughts it's the thoughts trying to analyze thoughts, so you will just spin in circles: so just observe, and something magical will happen.", which eventually leads to some kind of an eureka moment in the mind which magicaly resolves this issue and this thought doesn't appear again.
So now this is really not a thought anymore but a instinctive understanding. Eg first you had to thought and concentrate when you walk, but now you never think about walking, it's instinctive.
The more you focus on walking down the stairs the more likely it is that you will trip.
The author's mistake, from eg Krishnamurti's perspective, is that he belives that thoughts are good: but the best understandings that you have, the things that you do best, you don't actually think about at all. So this more eastern style "no mind" philosophy tries to move one away from these schizophrenic thoughts that constantly invade one's mind and towards "understanding" (cessation of intrusive thoughts by understaing what causes a thought to intrude the "stream of consiousness" and disturb the human).
Most philosophers just end up with even more questions than they started with and end up dying miserable and frustrated.
This is a stark contrast to, for example, Krishnamurti's teaching which could be summed up as "observe your thoughts without trying to analyze them, just sit still and observe them, and notice that each time you try to analyze the thoughts it's the thoughts trying to analyze thoughts, so you will just spin in circles: so just observe, and something magical will happen.", which eventually leads to some kind of an eureka moment in the mind which magicaly resolves this issue and this thought doesn't appear again.
So now this is really not a thought anymore but a instinctive understanding. Eg first you had to thought and concentrate when you walk, but now you never think about walking, it's instinctive.
The more you focus on walking down the stairs the more likely it is that you will trip.
The author's mistake, from eg Krishnamurti's perspective, is that he belives that thoughts are good: but the best understandings that you have, the things that you do best, you don't actually think about at all. So this more eastern style "no mind" philosophy tries to move one away from these schizophrenic thoughts that constantly invade one's mind and towards "understanding" (cessation of intrusive thoughts by understaing what causes a thought to intrude the "stream of consiousness" and disturb the human).
> I would not be suprised if this approach backfired to a certain degree as it would just increase the amount of thoughts, thus distractions.
I've been developing a system similar to this for the better part of a decade now, and my experience has been that while I have significantly more ideas, they're less distracting precisely because I'm writing them down.
Like David Allen says in Getting Things Done, your brain will bother you with things it thinks are important until you "resolve" them somehow. If you develop a sufficiently robust logging/todo system such that you can convince your brain that you won't forget it if you put it in the system, then it'll let go of it after. (and, conversely, if your brain believes that the system isn't reliable, it'll keep bothering you with the ideas and todos that you put in there anyway)
I've been developing a system similar to this for the better part of a decade now, and my experience has been that while I have significantly more ideas, they're less distracting precisely because I'm writing them down.
Like David Allen says in Getting Things Done, your brain will bother you with things it thinks are important until you "resolve" them somehow. If you develop a sufficiently robust logging/todo system such that you can convince your brain that you won't forget it if you put it in the system, then it'll let go of it after. (and, conversely, if your brain believes that the system isn't reliable, it'll keep bothering you with the ideas and todos that you put in there anyway)
The balance I've found between the two approaches can be summed up in this quote: "If a thought arises, I let it go. If it comes back, I write it down." [in a place I know I'll see later, per GTD]
An interesting portrayal from the book The Untethered Soul by M. Singer ... Imagine the thoughts you have are a guest sitting on the other end of the couch from you, who just won't stop chattering and commenting. How much attention and credence are you going to give to hearing that?
Do you remember the Microsoft Research project, MyLifeBits?
The guy wore a camera with a recorder (SenseCam). It would record his entire day, his interactions with people, etc.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/mylifebits/
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/sensecam/
The guy wore a camera with a recorder (SenseCam). It would record his entire day, his interactions with people, etc.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/mylifebits/
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/sensecam/
Interesting. But how does the author expect anyone to implement a grand scheme of organizing their thoughts when they can't even be bothered to organize the implementation guide, by their own admission?
At the risk of projecting here, perhaps the author created such a system precisely because of a weakness in this area.
Wow, blast from the past! I can't believe I'm seeing Lion Kimbro on Hacker News. "How to Make a Complete Map of Every Thought You Think" went very mildly viral in 2003 or so and I was in school at the time. I became kinda fascinated with his speakeasy.net page (which never changed, even to this day) and his advocacy for RDF and web ontologies, which was totally foreign to me at the time. I always thought his quote "Data and Algorithms are not Aware. Time is an Invention of Awareness" was so badass in 2003. This page is part of what lead me to study computer programming. Dang. What a nostalgia rush.
It’s been nearly 20 years. I’d love to read a followup. Was it all worth it?
Apparently, you're welcome to ask him directly: https://communitywiki.org/wiki/LionKimbro
I read the Introduction and would love to try a compromise. I'd start writing things down more and revising them for clarity. I wouldn't go all-in.
Wise! Thanks for posting this.
I am very intrigued by this system which smacks of Getting Things Done (he even mentions how to integrate it) but its so disorganized and all over the place it seems a bit schizophrenic.
I'm working through it and I can almost physically hear his voice through it. It's brilliant writing. I know this style and can see how it works, and I can imagine a person giving it as a very enthusiastic lecture. It's a rhythmic patter that uses spaced repetition and diversions that make you go back and re-read the important parts. Just like comedy, it sets things up and knocks them down in stacks, and so if you go with it, you will remember it just the way you would remember a joke. This is a really fine example of persuasive writing. Cheers.
>Even if the computer is fast, you still need software that won't get in your way
This still strikes true today
Also, the idea is fascinating but everyone thinks differently and the method he described isn't universal.
And taking notes with such granularity is likely less useful than just recording the "best" ideas that come to mind (though noting every even somewhat useful thought would be an interesting short term experiment).
This still strikes true today
Also, the idea is fascinating but everyone thinks differently and the method he described isn't universal.
And taking notes with such granularity is likely less useful than just recording the "best" ideas that come to mind (though noting every even somewhat useful thought would be an interesting short term experiment).
For the interested, there is a PDF: https://users.speakeasy.net/~lion/nb/book.pdf
See also Hack 17 in Mindhacker: 60 Tips, Tricks, and Games to Take Your Mind to the Next Level (not the best link but you'll get close: https://books.google.no/books?id=kh8NbTzaalwC&printsec=front..., at the end of the section he recommends not following the 2003 book...)
See also Hack 17 in Mindhacker: 60 Tips, Tricks, and Games to Take Your Mind to the Next Level (not the best link but you'll get close: https://books.google.no/books?id=kh8NbTzaalwC&printsec=front..., at the end of the section he recommends not following the 2003 book...)
I find it interesting to try and create a system for mapping your thoughts in this manner, but the way it's presented here makes it somewhat not approachable.
On the other hand, one of the great pleasures in life is sorting out your ideas on a piece of paper, and I find that that's not a process I would necessarily want to over engineer. The structureless search after the refined form of your own thoughts is a huge advantage at times.
On the other hand, one of the great pleasures in life is sorting out your ideas on a piece of paper, and I find that that's not a process I would necessarily want to over engineer. The structureless search after the refined form of your own thoughts is a huge advantage at times.
At 107 pages, roughly, this is a lot to digest. Fortunately, I found someone made an awesome one-page summary illustration. https://sachachua.com/blog/2013/10/visual-book-review-how-to...
This reminds me of another note taking system of a more successful writer. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23386630
ADHD brain would like a word.
A few friends have brought this to my attention, and one said that I should share some updates, which I am happy to do.
It'd take another book to write a re-treatment of notes and notekeeping, but three major emphasis would be:
1. Time, or rather, "epoch" or "period," are more important than subject. Subject is secondary to epoch, but still important.
2. Proper placement is more important than the capacity to link distances via page numbers. Page numbers are valuable, but the page numbering scheme I used was overboard. Valuable for mapping out every thought, but not valuable for living a life and getting benefit from notekeeping. Page numbers and links are exciting at first, but a poor substitute for things being where they belong in the first place. So I keep much more white space now, and I structure things as I develop, such that there are places for information to be integrated in.
3. "Don't write letters to dead people." This is about a principle of action. It is important to think about: "Who is going to read this note?" Yes, you, of course. But you -- when? I now take a much more mission-centric approach to my projects and my research. YES, sometimes you really are working on a twenty year mega project. I have projects like that. Other times, it's: "This is valid for 6 months." Or even just 1 month. This relates to pre-deleting, but it's important to have a sense of -- like in Death Stranding, you are preparing for a trip. What are you bringing? What are you not bringing? What is disposable? What will you need? My notes are far tidier than they were back 20 years ago.
Zettelkasten I think is a good path -- as far as I understand it, it is: "networked islands of structure." I'm all for it.
Today, I do a lot of research into networked data, and mediums for expressing code and data.
For example, I wrote a system called "Minicubes," which I intend to redo in Python+Tcl/Tk -- you can see a demonstration at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvPyLDXZlb4
I think a lot of the promise of computer notes and programming and such, would do well to focus on the medium that we use. I would like to see text files replaced with an easily parsable "schematic" medium, for example: https://communitywiki.org/wiki/SchematicMedium
If anybody would like to talk, I encourage you to find "Lion's Internet Office" on the Internet, and come and stop by. I'm happy to answer questions, learn about people's projects, and I love collaborating with people on things. We have a somewhat monthly group discussion chat in real-time, too, where you can introduce yourself, or ask questions, etc.,.
Thank you for your attention, I deeply appreciate the comments from people -- the positive ones are profoundly appreciated, and the "negative" ones are -- I kind of grin, because I think that they are also correct! Thank you.
It'd take another book to write a re-treatment of notes and notekeeping, but three major emphasis would be:
1. Time, or rather, "epoch" or "period," are more important than subject. Subject is secondary to epoch, but still important.
2. Proper placement is more important than the capacity to link distances via page numbers. Page numbers are valuable, but the page numbering scheme I used was overboard. Valuable for mapping out every thought, but not valuable for living a life and getting benefit from notekeeping. Page numbers and links are exciting at first, but a poor substitute for things being where they belong in the first place. So I keep much more white space now, and I structure things as I develop, such that there are places for information to be integrated in.
3. "Don't write letters to dead people." This is about a principle of action. It is important to think about: "Who is going to read this note?" Yes, you, of course. But you -- when? I now take a much more mission-centric approach to my projects and my research. YES, sometimes you really are working on a twenty year mega project. I have projects like that. Other times, it's: "This is valid for 6 months." Or even just 1 month. This relates to pre-deleting, but it's important to have a sense of -- like in Death Stranding, you are preparing for a trip. What are you bringing? What are you not bringing? What is disposable? What will you need? My notes are far tidier than they were back 20 years ago.
Zettelkasten I think is a good path -- as far as I understand it, it is: "networked islands of structure." I'm all for it.
Today, I do a lot of research into networked data, and mediums for expressing code and data.
For example, I wrote a system called "Minicubes," which I intend to redo in Python+Tcl/Tk -- you can see a demonstration at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvPyLDXZlb4
I think a lot of the promise of computer notes and programming and such, would do well to focus on the medium that we use. I would like to see text files replaced with an easily parsable "schematic" medium, for example: https://communitywiki.org/wiki/SchematicMedium
If anybody would like to talk, I encourage you to find "Lion's Internet Office" on the Internet, and come and stop by. I'm happy to answer questions, learn about people's projects, and I love collaborating with people on things. We have a somewhat monthly group discussion chat in real-time, too, where you can introduce yourself, or ask questions, etc.,.
Thank you for your attention, I deeply appreciate the comments from people -- the positive ones are profoundly appreciated, and the "negative" ones are -- I kind of grin, because I think that they are also correct! Thank you.
I didn't read the article, I'm just here to point out how weird and wonderful it is that it's 2022 and I'm looking at a URL with a tilde in it, like my first URL ever had.
Oh, the old Internet. He even tells people to call him:
> 206.440.0247 <- YES, you can CALL! Just say "I read your notebooks book."
> Call at whatever crazy hour. Let me know.
> 206.440.0247 <- YES, you can CALL! Just say "I read your notebooks book."
> Call at whatever crazy hour. Let me know.
I stopped reading when I noticed I started missing the actual descriptive information of his attempt to capture all of his thoughts. It is buried in a whole lot of strong opinions about details like what paper to use. At some point somewhere at the beginning he says he'll just spit the text out since it is better if he serves any readers with this than providing nothing. And actually that he spits this text out is kind of a perfect summary of how I feel when reading.
I wish he had been slighly more relaxed when writing this text. But I guess he practised his approach to get a complete map of his thoughts in a equally unrelaxed manner. In his defense, he says somewhere he is 25 (at the time of writing) and that is probably were some part of his energy comes from. I am not much older and multiple times while reading I asked myself whether - or to what extend - his text is a look in a mirror. And promised myself to take care to be less convinced of my own conclusions.