Tiddlywiki for problem solving

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Thomas Teepe

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Jun 14, 2020, 6:05:23 PM6/14/20
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Hi,

I'm Thomas - 48, background in maths, longtime zettelkasten and note-taking aficionado. I'm new to this group.

For many years I'm tinkering with something like "Computer Aided Problem Solving" - how can computers support problem solving processes in human thinking?
Over the years I've experimented with mind mapping software, note-taking software and with paper-based zettelkasten methods. (I have a background in maths, where paper and whiteboard work seems still highly relevant.)

In recent weeks I've worked with TW, which is a great substrate for zettelkasten-based problem solving.
You can find the demo wiki here:
I would be thrilled if there were points of interest to you, and I would love to get feedback.

Kind regards from Stuttgart, Germany

TW Tones

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Jun 14, 2020, 8:13:45 PM6/14/20
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Thomas,

Thanks for sharing. As somewhat of a professional problem solver I will look into your solution as deeply as possible. The wonderful think about tiddlywiki is how extencible it is and multiple algorithms can be incorporated into it, it effectively allows an "Expert System" or "guided problem solving" to be built around any subject.

A Quick first observation: A Splash screen would stop the long blank screen at load time.

Regards
Tony

Alex Hough

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Jun 16, 2020, 8:28:45 AM6/16/20
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Hi Thomas,

First of all welcome to the group! I hope you will find the community around TiddlyWiki inspiring. 

Over the past decade (!) --- as a user, tinkerer, fan and avid follower of the community --- I have found that my thinking and creativity away from TiddlyWiki are shaped by experience of it and its eco-system. Credit is due to Jeremy (and many other community members) for creating a culture characterised by ego-free generosity. It might not be immediately apparent on the first visit to the homepage that the TiddlyWiki (TW) project as a whole is an example of a very elegant and emergent design. For me the project as a whole helps my creativity and problem solving processes.

I too am a fan of Zettelkasten and over the years there have been several other Zettlekasten fans who have made contributions to this Google group. Jeremy has also noted the influence of Hypercard, an early hypertext / index card piece of software on his thinking. Lurmann's work appears to me as also salient in a conversation around communities, information and systems. His work seems not to attract the attention it deserves in the English speaking systems thinking / complexity science communities, at least from my perspective on the edge of such communities in the North West of England. It has been interesting-- for me--to contrast the culture within systems thinking groups to TiddlyWiki: maybe more of this later!

The zettelkasten concept is a useful one to bring into the TiddlyVerse. Another systems oriented thinker to champion the index card was Ross Ashby. His method or working involved journaling and indexing, his archive is online [2]. For me Ashby's work and his concept of requisite variety are also useful resources to draw on when problem solving.

Finding out more about Lurmann and his work then trying to build something of your own in a community of people building their own thinking and organising tools is marvellous scaffolding solving a problem. Combine elements Luhrmann's social systems and Ashby's law of requisite variety and you'd have a blueprint for solving the most difficult of problems: a suitably diverse group of people all conscious of the learning system they are co-creating! Bingo! 

The TW community is diverse in many dimensions. Career specialisations, interests and geographic location. Where as most open source software projects attract IT professionals categorised by tribes within software or tech, TW is not. I like to see TW as a metaphorical playground or garden where ideas fall into place. While trying to learn how to do something in TW "Ah-Ah! moments" can occur: this reminds me of Synectics [3]

The garden metaphor has been linked to wikis and hypertext for quite some time. Ward's Wiki, the original wiki, was concerned with the transfer of knowledge from architecture into software development: the nature of complex evolving structures and systems, how to manage them, how to design them collaboratively to make a whole worth more than the sum of its parts. I think its worth keeping Christopher Alexander's Pattern Language Book and the (counter) culture in which it emerged and is grounded. TW carries forward a utopian version of how people and communities use the web and the electronic hypertext. TW --to me-- comes from the same history of though as Tim Berners Lee and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, free to use for all, respect for privacy. Read the TW forum and you will notice these values running through the community and the software design. TW is an open garden and with its own Borgesesque Labyrinths. 

TW is  a zettlekasten and a labyrith, both are useful in problem solving.


I subscribe to the argument that thinking and making (and tool making and using) are intertwined. Architect and theorist Juhani Pallasmaa makes this point in The Thinking Hand [1]. I recently came across the work of Kim Sterelny [4] who has applied Richard Dawkins concept of the extended phenotype to culture [5] and the extended mind which leads to a path towards 4e cognition [6]. It leads me to some new areas where I found people like E O Wilson and concepts of reductionism and convergence. Taking these paths is made easier and less intimidating for me because of my experience with TW. I don't mind that I don't fully understand Richard Dawkins extended phenotype or reductionism: I'm made a link to them - they are missing tiddlers. I roughly know how they are tagged and what they are tagging and I have made a decision not to spend my attention reading up on them. 

Decisions on how to spend your own attention are ones I think people are increasingly thinking about. We are living in an era where attention has been commodified (see Zuboff [7], Wu [8]) and the neurological mechanisms of reward are being uncovered [9] and how they influence human behaviour, the need to compete and the ability to cooperate. My recent thinking has taken me towards systematisation and empathy. In part I chose to devote attention to this area because of TiddlyWiki. 

Like many TiddlyWiki fans I have invested attention the AMBIT manual [10]. I became interested in the work of Peter Fonagy and noted that he featured in Simon Baron Cohen's book on empathy. Without prior knowledge of AMBIT and seeing Dickon Bevington's videos and writing I don't think I would have invested attention to Fonagy or Baron Cohen. The decision devote attention to something comes with a very difficult to calculate opportunity cost. The short cut is to make the decision on hunch and to have a rough model or map of new potential cross pollinations. I listened to Peter Fonagy on The Life Scientific [11] because I somehow remembered a connection to AMBIT and TW! I saw the value of investing time in learning more about his work.

A method for developing creativity and general problem solving has to account for opportunity costs and sunk costs. I have sunk costs in the TiddlyVerse, and have learned about sunk costs in the best possible way: spending way to much time solving problems and learning how TiddlyWiki works! (The TiddlyVerse is also a great context to learn and experience wicked problems.)

All of the above was in my working memory before lockdown! The pandemic has sent my information seeking addiction (yes information is addictive -- [12] [13]) into the Twitter feeds of public health specialists. I ended up buying a book by Anthony Costello [14] -- The Social Edge [15]. He talks about the role sympathy group (the smallest meaningful group outside the family) in innovation. Small, decentralised, communities of learning ... its the same underlying ethos and principals which runs though TiddlyWiki and its community.


The pandemic has presented us with a big problem to solve. It's has brought the nature of complex systems, non-linear effects and unpredictable events into the core of everyones life and thier bodies. Add to this the black lives matter protests and the evaluation of the slave trade. These are complex human-made social systems interacting with nature. How do we approach solving problems and issues arising for us as individuals, families, neighbours communities like the TiddlyWiki project? What can we learn? Where do we devote our attention? What do we do when we need to re-charge our batteries?   

Robert Lustig says, "If you don't know what the problem is you can't solve it". The joy of art or any type of creative activity is that there doesn't have to be a problem. The amazing thing is that pursuing this activity somehow helps to find the problem. TiddlyWiki offers a systemisation scaffold. Everything is a tiddler,  the problem is a tiddler, what is the  problem is tagging, what links to it, what the missing links might be tagged as. TW is a thinking technology part of that is the language - it gets out of the way of everyday (unlike technologies like The Brain). 


What has this to do with problem solving? Why have I spent time and attention here? Is the above any use to anyone?

What's the conclusion? I don't know, but i think the labyrinth I am following draws from the people and ideas of people mentioned in this post. 

From Robert Lustic: Dopamine down-regulates serotonin, serotonin is needed for empathy. TW is instantly rewarding but leads to long term happiness!
From Baron-Cohen: systematisation skills are related to empathy. TW is all about organising information, tagging and linking, but this takes place in a community high in empathy.
Back to Ashby. apply requisite variety to empathy and systematisation in a social system in social / technical systems and problems may dissolve. 


Alex
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Wholes and parts



Luhmann
Zettelkasten
Ashby







Alex

TiddlyTweeter

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Jun 17, 2020, 6:28:20 AM6/17/20
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You might want to read this recent thread that (in latter parts) seriously deals with Zettelkasten in the context of  TW actual use.


Luhmann had idea you FIX the resource forever on creation. I think it has great merit. Necessary, also, as he worked on paper.

Anyway, if you read the thread you will see the major practical issues in TW for Zettel.

It both supports it &, maybe, adds more.

Best wishes
TT

TW Tones

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Jun 17, 2020, 7:21:12 AM6/17/20
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Alex and thomas

Alex, very interesting responce to thomas. It will take time to work throught all your ideas along with Thomas's ideas.

Its almost intimidating. I may just make a few points.

I find the reiterative abstraction I use to develop methods or algorithiums on top of tiddlywiki reflects my career in information technology and keen interest in most scientific disciplines, add lay philosophy and critical thinking and the ability to represent troubleshooting and solution algorithums, its molding clay for the mind.

great to how you are exploring tiddlywiki seriously.

Tony

Regards
Tony

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