Tinderbox Meetup SATURDAY November 8: ATOMIC NOTES

Tinderbox & Storyspace Events
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Bring your projects and puzzlements! Everyone is welcome. Long-time Tinderbox users, new Tinderbox users, and non-Tinderbox users are very welcome to join in on the discussion.

Special Guest: Sascha Fast. The Complete Guide to Atomic Note Taking and Zettelkasten.de.

Tinderbox Trainers Wanted

We are inviting Tinderbox community members to deliver a “Tinderbox in 10-minute Training” session. We want to kick off each weekly Tinderbox meetup with a 10-minute training that explores a Tinderbox feature and explains how to use it in a specific context. Again, the training should explain what the feature does and provide a contextual example of how the training is using it (sample files are most welcome). If you’d like to provide one of these trainings, please DM @satikusala or @eastgate on the Tinderbox Forum, and we’ll schedule your session on the Tinderbox Meetup Calendar.

9 AM Pacific Time
Noon Eastern time
1300 São Paulo
1600 UTC
1700 London
1800 Paris
2130 Delhi

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/6179249044?pwd=c0szQnZaaGUrWGsxalZKK1dSejFEZz09&omn=81068119678

Meeting ID: 617 924 9044
Passcode: tinderbox

For more details and to join the conversation with the Tinderbox community, visit the Tinderbox Forum: https://forum.eastgate.com/.

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Since we talked about the DIKW Hierarchy (Data, Information, Knowledge, Wisdom), here is an article I might use as scaffolding to explore this hierarchy deeper: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/41125158_The_wisdom_hierarchy_Representations_of_the_DIKW_hierarchy

The video demonstration is in the article, but I thought sharing it directly gives you more convenient access: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkgkKF6908k

I will linger around this thread for a couple of days. So, feel free to ask any questions or request a deeper dive into any aspects.

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Thanks for the link, Sascha. I’ve requested a copy of the paper.

I wonder if you’ve ever read, or are familiar with the Buddhist text The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way by Nagarjuna.

Acharya Nāgārjuna (Telugu: నాగార్జున) (c. 150 - 250 CE) was an Indian philosopher and the founder of the Madhyamaka school of Mahāyāna Buddhism.

If not, highly recommended.

After the meetup, I kept thinking about the discussion and I wondered if “contingency” might be a better way, or another way at least, of looking at the challenge of “infinite regress.”

Aside from that, contingency says that things don’t exist “in themselves.” That is, there is no ideal form of a “chair” because the very idea of a chair is meaningless without the idea of sitting. (Everything is connected.)

It also places the idea of “atomic” notes in a different context, or makes them “contingent.”

We might say that Newton’s laws of motion describe much of the observable universe; but they fail at scales where we’re able to make observations using technological aids. General relativity and quantum theory developed grappling with those failures, and introduced the notions of relativity and uncertainty into our understanding of the systems we use to describe the nature of the atom. That is, there are limits on what we may “know,” or that what we may perceive may be different from that of another observer in a different frame.

Certainly, Newton’s laws are extremely useful for the kinds of day-to-day things that humans observe and need to make predictions about; and similarly an “atomic” view of elements of knowledge undoubtedly has immediate utility in facilitating understanding, analysis and recall, but I think there are limitations that are important to understand or at least consider.

I think Godel had something to say on the matter as well, at least as regards the ability of “consistent” logical systems to “prove” things. I’ve got to reacquaint myself with Godel.

Anyway, these were all things I grappled with a couple of decades ago during my “mid-life crisis,” when questions about “truth” and “meaning” were seemingly vitally important. I still think they are, but I’ve given up any hope of seeing them answered or even explored in a way that makes a difference in the wider world that seems to have abandoned them entirely. So I’m afraid that I remain little more than a somewhat enthusiastic dilettante.

I enjoyed the conversation, thanks for sharing your time with us.

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Tinderbox Meetup 09Nov25: Atomic Notes with Sasha Fast