Building a Second Brain

Posted by Dellu
Nov 6, 2022 at 01:04 PM

Daly de Gagne wrote:
Dellu, in light of what you wrote I wonder what your thoughts are on the
>German sociologist Niklas Luhmann and his Zettlekasten note-taking
>system. On one hand, his system removed from his brain the burden of
>using the kind of note-taking approach which is burdensome because of
>its inherent deficiencies, but on the other hand his system allowed him
>to write prolifically at a world class level.

Dear Daly;
I honestly cannot comment on a renown scholar like Luhmann. I am not a sociologist. So, I have barely anything to say on him. His method also seems appealing for his situation:
- He has access for a limited amount of books: so, he takes all the relevant points out of those books

But, I recently read a blog on his wring. This blogger said his writing is jumbled with disconnected idea; and his writing lacks coherent flow. I cannot confirm that. But, if that is the case, it is possible that his zettels made him write that way.

But, I think the how people are trying to emulate his method is just trash. What people call zettel method now just small pieces of text hyperlinked to another small piece and that one again linked to another piece. I don’t think that is very effective method of thinking or writing. I think it is very shallow: much such similar to Tiktok where highly compromised brains relief stress by jump from one link to another. Compromised brains cannot concentrate on one issue more than a couple of minutes: they seek constant stimulus—therefore, they jump from one link to another. That is why the media that feed/exploit these compromised brains are so popular these days: Tiktok, Twitter, Zettel: they are all made to feed this impulse.

A nice quote from Nicolas Carr:

“Hyperlinks also alter our experience of media. Links are in one sense a variation on the textual allusions, citations, and footnotes that have long been common elements of documents. But their effect on us as we read is not at all the same. Links don’t just point us to related or supplemental works; they propel us toward them. They encourage us to dip in and out of a series of texts rather than devote sustained attention to any one of them. Hyperlinks are designed to grab our attention. Their value as navigational tools is inextricable from the distraction they cause.”

- I had a conversation about this exact topic recently in Obsidian forum, by the way: https://forum.obsidian.md/t/why-use-links-over-hashtags-discuss/45560/10