 Got that all set. Hey, this is the Neobooks call for Monday, February 26, 2024, our last call of February. Pita turned off the auto summary. And then in the settings, they now let you, as a setting, they now let you turn it on by default when you start recording. So I'm going to see if that works because I just turned on recording and it says, and it will also do the AI summary. And actually, there were a couple other options, including auto captioning. No, auto chaptering or something like that, which I'm hoping means it'll, because it's already doing the summary and it knows the breaks in conversation, it'll actually set those up with titles that I can drop into the details, which would be super magic cool. That would be really, really neat. So thanks for, thanks for telling me that people were having trouble with it. For what it's worth, because I came in right after you started recording, I still had that pop-up for the recording. And this still didn't let you do anything? You know, actually, that's probably not true. I just clicked through it so fast. I don't know, I'm seeing a question. Give it a test next time. I'm curious whether it's still the same user experience once I've turned it on. So yeah. Hmm, hmm. How is everybody? Yeah. Pete, you have moved again. This is the nice sticks you have there. I know. It's gone really modernist now. Yeah. Thanks, guys. Both of you guys. Yeah. Boss, are you back home? No, no, I'm still in deal. Oh, okay, cool. Cool, cool, cool, neat. Nice long trip. Where should we start? Should we check in on Neo Bookage? What, Pete and I have talked a little bit about the backend stuff, but I'm curious about, and then I think Pete, you and Jose talked about some of the structure stuff, which I'm curious about. Jose, you shared the spreadsheet with me and others for those structures. So we can go there. Where would we like to start? I have a quick thing. And I don't mean to start off the meeting with this because I think we should talk about other stuff, but Darden and I are in our publishing a book month and we got the print one. Darden actually received a print one through private purchase. It's not available for public purchase quite yet, but anyway, got a print one and it's nice. Today we did the ebook version. So when you go to published books, you publish the print edition or the ebook edition, but not together. So we did the ebook. It went pretty smooth. Actually it was nice. And we were going through Lulu, so. Just a quick question on that. What's the format that Lulu needs? PDF for print and DocX or ODT or RTF for an ebook. Even RTF or, okay. Well, then you have to play around with whether or not you're happy with the results. I was actually expecting it to barf on the DocX one because we didn't do anything. We were just running fast and like, okay, well, we're gonna upload it without even reading the guidelines. But it just worked and it looks good. One of the interesting kind of gotcha things. Jordan had used the Lulu has an AI covered generator now. It makes a nice picture. So he didn't actually have the cover image. He had no cover art that he was uploading. Wow. So that meant when we went to do the print one, he had to go find the PDF for the cover with the folded out paper version with the back cover and the front cover. So we went through and clipped out the front cover and then uploaded that. As we were uploading it, it asked for a very specific size like 619 by 792 or something like that. And it took the one that we gave it, which I'm sure was not the right size. So it's gonna scale it and probably crop it or something like that. But anyway, just to go, this is one of those things where it goes through the whole process once with a fake book and then write down all the places where, because now it's like, great, we have an image that's not ours because we didn't generate it. And it's probably the wrong aspect ratio. And so now to do it the next time, well, I would generate the image locally or with Canva or something like that. And then use that instead of kind of trying to get it around. Sweet. Pete, I'm not sure I'm gonna be able to unsee this, but the abstract painting behind you, when your head is in the right place, it looks like you have Mickey Mouse ears. I'm okay with that. Okay, okay. Stuart, go ahead. Yeah, so I wanted to say something also before we began. So right after our last meeting, I once again offered to do an agreement for us. And the reason that I offered to do that, and nobody responded by the way, it's okay, I'm not at all personally attached. The reason that I offered to do that is, and it took me two days to think of these words, to remember these two words that I used to use all the time. We have been engaged in some wonderful, what I'd call divergent conversations, okay? Divergent. And I think if we're really get this off the ground as a useful project, it's time to have a convergent conversation in terms of detailing just what it is that we're doing. So that's all I wanted to say, okay? The offer is out there, if somebody else has got a better model or what have you in terms of project management, that's okay, but I think it's time for a convergent conversation to get something done, okay? That's all. It will be a fine. I think there's background noise from your microphone if you don't mind muting, because I'm hearing a conversation happening. Thanks, Voss. Go ahead, Pete. I want to say yes, and I think we are probably more than one group, even. So I think it's not just one agreement, it's probably multiple agreements. Maybe it's multiple agreements. You're muted, Stuart. And I think Jerry might have more information. I think that many of the things that we're talking about would get fleshed out in the process of actually doing that, okay? Yeah. And, okay, and Stuart, if you want to, in a sec, if you want to flesh out what it would mean to do the agreement and share whatever docs you should before, because I know that we've mentioned these before. A slight thing, Stuart actually said we should have a convergent discussion rather than let's have the agreement. Well, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, the convergent discussion would be the agreement, Pete. I think we would converge to more than one agreement. Yeah. Which would be a thing we would discover through having that conversation, I totally get that. I've been, Stuart, it feels to me like we've been doing the diamond sort of walk in that we occasionally do the expansive divergent thing. Then we come back and we're like, well, shit, what do we do here? So I don't feel like we've completely walked past convergence but I agree with your spirit to do more of that. I agree with you and I think it's time to create a container for all the convergence and divergence so that we have a container for moving the project forward. Though we only diverged so much but not like outside the container. Hey, Chris, thanks for joining us. Later to be here. Well, I think what you're talking about is how do we define the totality of the space that's been explored thus far so that you know what it is for new people coming in as well as for yourselves and maybe then focus in on smaller pieces. The only word of what you just said that scared me was totality, but go ahead, Stuart. No, absolutely, it would create and that's one of the pieces new people come in and out creating a container so that new people can see what we're up to. But I still can be talked last week. We talked about maybe a platform to move this on some form of a if that's the container platform, a web page, a website. So to showcase what has been developed in terms of Neo Books, where are we with that discussion? I think you're right, we started that because the question last week was is Neo Books a press, a project or a process? And I think we ended up on, hey, it's sort of more of a platform. I'm unclear that we would all agree on what that means and I think we should discuss that more to sort of figure out what that is that would help. Anybody who wants to refresh us on that would be useful at this point. I had suggested a OGM Neo Books and then gets you and you have an invitation and introduction text on that and then there is some form of categorization where you can create folders. You may have like in one case you may have a nature-based solutions. You have Garden World in there. You can have the my Neo Book in there and then David Witzel has a book that he's working on. So we can, and then you can have other folders now that are thematically divided. And then in those themes, you find people who have published something. So I'll interpret what you're saying is that like we need a something that organizes our thinking online so that we can find our way through the topics et cetera, et cetera, correct? Exactly, yeah. So by the time you try to organize this, you know, you're organizing. And I will come back and answer it after Pete jumps in. Klaus, I think that's a great, it's a clear vision. So I take that as a proposal. You know, somebody will run a platform. Maybe it's you, Klaus, maybe it's not. But I kind of take your thing as a proposal, you know? Let's create a platform. Let's have somebody running the platform so it's actually exists on the web. And who's with me? Who's in for that? And can we make an agreement that that's the next thing to do? So the part that we're up to as Stuart kind of kicked this off is would people agree that's the next thing to do? And who would agree to it? Sounds great. We'll save and me. Oh, you keep pushing. I know, I'm sort of deferring myself in the queue a bit. But I want to hear what you have to say before I come back in. So I personally feel the idea of a platform suits what we've been talking about. Our conversations have kind of led to that. I think the platform as Klaus described it from sort of the reader end and possible future writer end. Having themes and a structure and organization on that end, I think makes sense. I've also last week was talking with Pete about an organization for what a neobook might be as far as a possible way of thinking of how to structure it from a first principles perspective. And so that's yet another way to add some structure to what this platform might look like. So both I think are necessary and I think having that conversation would be an interesting conversation to have as well as I think a direction that we'd want to at some point through stewards or whatever other means agree to being something that we are doing so that we can move on to doing it. Guess what, Stuart, then me. Yeah. So by platform, I mean my somewhat Luddite brain in the area of technology, they're not really a Luddite, just not really conversant. Do we mean a website of some kind where we would define ourselves as the neobook project of the open global mind network or something like that? Is that what we're talking about? I think that's a piece of it, Klaus. Would that satisfy some hunk of what you're thinking of? Well, absolutely. I mean, you could, your idea of writing this major book, you know, you have played a little bit on the website saying, here's what it is, but that requires some more elaboration. So there could be an introduction on this website. I mean, an introduction to, here's what a neobook's all about. And then come in and enjoy. And then you go in and then you see the themes that are laid out to explore. And in regard to Pete's question, how do you manage this? We have to find a way to generate some revenues. We can pay somebody to manage this. And thanks, Klaus. Go ahead, Rick. Yeah, I just want to pick up on the themes of domains of convergence. I mean, you know, the idea of divergent convergence, I tend to feel somewhat similarly that we've been more divergent than convergent. And, you know, I think that's a normative process. It's just a question of what people's tolerances are, is to say, okay, I've had enough. I want to dive in, you know? And we'll have different incarnations for that. The thing that we spoke about last week, actually, was what is the convergence over the domains of the digital platforms, whether that's discourse or Wiki, whatever it is. And I feel like I would like to play in that a little bit. Say, if it is discourse, how can we play in it? Can somebody bring a little mini project that can show what it's like to play in that domain? Or a Wiki platform or whatever? Because I think until you know what the scope of possibilities are on the platform, it's very difficult to envision how you're going to create, you know, collaborative and transformational communities. Because I'm involved in another group and I've been looking at their Sutra platform. And, you know, it's not so good. I mean, you know. Take your tail around. Yeah, the hype of it is greater than the substance. And I participate in one of the things. And I said, well, I just don't see it. And so, unless you have something where people can, I mean, actually, I find WhatsApp very easy to do things with people. If you have a project, it's easy to, you know, and, you know, keep up with things. And if you have a thought, you put it in there. And I found the ease of WhatsApp can be very good for, you know, exchanges. So the question is, what's the ideal platform? And how does it accommodate different people's preferences for communication? So I'd like to be convergent on something where people brings a project or a micro project on that platform when we play with it. So I'd like to have that experience. Awesome. Pete, are you smiling a little inside? Because, like, everybody's asking for the thing we've been trying to get us to talk about? Yeah. I like it too. So I'm gonna screen share and talk a little bit about what I think we've got going. You may all may not like it, but this is the structure and the platform parts that we actually have in place today, plus a little bit of the dream we have of funding some code that will actually glue these things together a little bit more and make them look and work a little bit better. So if I share screen, so this is my Obsidian app. And these are nuggets that I've been creating. And here are, so I'm gonna fold up the Jerry's Nuggets thing. So here's, you know, Klaus's Neo Book has a spot in here, but Klaus is not using these apps. Here's the idea of Neo Books in progress. And here's the page to Klaus's Neo Book. Here's mine. Stuart, Rick, if you wanted to create Neo Books, we would create basically landing pages here. This is a light, light, light outline structure for the OGM Wiki. So here's Neo Books operations. There's a bunch of other OGM-y things here from a couple of years ago when Pete and I started this Wiki. There are people involved. We don't have a lot of people who filled out profiles, but the idea was to have a Wiki. And then one interesting thing that shows up is that these sub-directories in the Obsidian vault sort of don't matter. And there's this philosophical debate about whether one should have a lot of nested folders or not. My preference is to have a lot of things just with almost no folders so that there's a big space. So you'll see that the way I'm going about doing my particular project is there's no sub-folders in here. I have everything, all the pages that I'm working on are in one flat name space under the folder Jerry's Nuggets. And that way I can steer clear of naming things the same way somebody else is naming them, but I kind of want us to share pages because that's a piece of the Neo Books idea. But when I write a page, so I'm over here writing, let's say, I guess I didn't put it much about. So here's defining tools for thinking as a page. For example, this is Obsidian now. Obsidian is a markdown editor. The cool thing about Massive Wiki and Obsidian is that markdown is the simple format that is like a lingua franca that can travel any place. When I push this file, so this is not auto-saving like Google Docs, I have to push a file over onto GitHub. When I do that, it shows up over on the inner tubes. And for example, let's go to Neo Books. So here's Neo Books table of contents. This is one of, blah, blah, blah. I'm going to the wrong, here we go. Neo Books introduction. So this page right here, this is what it looks like over here. I have a keyboard shortcut so I can go to it here. This is what it looks like on a webpage. So Neo Books introduction, thank you for buying this souvenir. This is in fact the first introduction to my Neo Book, but it's meant to function also as an introduction to all Neo Books. It may not in the end be able to lift the weight to be both things, but that's my goal is was to write something that could explain what Neo Books are. And then in the middle of this page, there is a little include that says nuggets are really powerful. Over here on Obsidian, that other page is actually included because Obsidian has this cool way that if you put an exclamation point in front of a link, you can actually pull in, see the little, the little bank mark here, that actually pulls in the contents of the other page. That feature isn't enabled in the static site builder that Pete has created, the massive wiki builder app. And Pete will correct what I'm breaking in explaining this, but the idea is that these nuggets would kind of flow together into some text that people could use. And I would love to myself and with anybody who wants to play along, expand this into this, into the manual on the platform that we're talking about. So that's one sort of small set of pieces of what I'm talking about. Then let me stop screen sharing for a second. And I also queued up that link so that you can go to that page yourselves and look around. Then Pete and I were talking about using Discourse, which is a well-developed open source threaded discussion forum software using Discourse as the chat or comment system connected to massive wiki. So that this nugget, this Netbooks intro page could have a chat below it, but that chat, we wouldn't have to write, Pete wouldn't invent a whole chat, chat software, he would embed Discourse in the page. And that first nugget of the page, it turns out that Discourse has a feature where the first post in the thread can actually be revised, can be editable, which is sort of wiki-like. So you can kind of smell that there's an editable nugget and then there's comments on the nugget and that could work out. So that's kind of where we're looking at having commentary connected to pages on a platform, people working on different projects on the same wiki platform by just creating their folder and then naming pages and so forth. I'm not sure we want or need to have a taxonomy of folders that says this is nature, this is this, this is that. I think that's just gonna confuse, I know that that would confuse me and I think that negotiating what goes where would be really hard. All of that is what we've been sort of thinking about in some of the plan, I'm probably forgetting a bunch of details. So say when I looked at your spreadsheet, I didn't know what to do with it. I looked at it and I tried hard to figure out how would I write what I wanna write within your framework? I had zero traction. I was like incapable of making a match between the different philosophical kinds of structures that you would like to see and what I had done. I would love for massive wiki to enable you to do and use the framework that you just proposed and to attract other people to use that framework also. That's kind of a design goal that Pete and I talked about a little bit like how do we make it so that Jose can have that structure and then anybody else who likes it can use it but it doesn't become the fundamental structure of the whole wiki because I would be lost. Unless you can teach me and convince me to build from your structure, I would stop writing. So that's important because I think your structure is important and you've clearly thought about it in depth. I looked and I was amazed. I was like looking inside the Sistine Chapel and okay, there's paintings on the ceiling, somebody got up there and stayed on his back for a while, that kind of thing. Like you've really thought about this deeply. I just didn't know how to engage. So that's how conceptual ideas might actually lay on top of a very gentle, simple structure that doesn't have too many folders or nesting or whatever else allows the wiki namespace to fill up with a whole bunch of interesting things that are then shareable across authors. And the problem with my having my nuggets in my little folder is that it doesn't interrupt our namespace where somebody will start creating a page with the name in Neo Books Introduction and go, oh, Jerry's already got a page by that name. Now, the way obsidian works, you will find that in the same vault. But once you cross vault, there's a whole bunch of funny little technical issues that kind of crawl in there along the side. And I know I just said way too many things all at once, but I'll pass to Pete. And then we can sort of answer whatever questions that raised. Great summary, Jerry. Probably it's going to take a while to unpack it all. Real quick, you were kind of insistent about not having folders like, this is all about biology and this is about chemistry or whatever. In the structure that you've got there, what you would end up with is a topic page or something like that or a topic book or something like that. Here's a book about all the things. Here's a book about general chemistry. Here's other pieces and nuggets and books that accrue to general chemistry. So you can still have that foldery feel. It's just that it's yet another node in a network. Awesome. I'll say please. Yeah, so not everybody knows about what I shared with Pete the other day and then shared with you. So if you give me a minute, just to really quickly walk through it, not to convince anybody of anything but to show what I've done. That'd be great because I just kind of mentioned it and nobody has background. Do you guys see the spreadsheet? Yes, yes, it is sharing properly. So basically the idea was, how do we build a first principles framework that allows us to all of us, if we wish to, work from a similar framework of understanding? So a knowledge system, here's the scientific system. So I threw in a bunch of blocks that are specific to the fine, essentially the scientific system as a bedrock. And so that's the knowledge system that I choose to use when I'm writing. Here's the ground. The ground is our physical systems. Here's all of the physical laws that apply and hopefully support whatever it is that I'm working on. If they don't apply to these physical laws, maybe I've got some problems with what I'm writing about. Here's a foundation that sits on that ground and this is a philosophical view. So in this case, I'm writing from a physical perspective. Matter and energy are real things and therefore that's what I'm writing about. I'm not looking at it from some dualistic view. This would be someone else would be able to write from a dualistic view and choose to say that mental or spiritual things are separate and apart from our physical world. So the physical view is supported by this ground which is supported by this bedrock. And then I move on to structure. The structure sits on top of the foundation. In this case, it's life systems. So the life systems are different principles that are upheld by these physical view of the world upheld by this physical systems and talk about things like holistic interconnectedness and evolutionary theory and a continuity of life only stasis and so forth. These are all principles of life that are bound to these three different columns. And then living area, I was trying to figure out how to keep it in a structural metaphor. And now we're talking about human systems that sit within the living systems that sit within so on and so forth. And the human systems then are specific principles that apply to human systems. In this case, the dual process cognition, which is if most of you are probably familiar with thinking fast and slow, you know, economic and so forth that describe these two ways of human beings being able to make sense of the world. System one, system two is very common. So there's a whole bunch of principles that are human-based but are supported. So this is supported by evolutionary theory. It's supported by a number of other homeostasis, life-sustaining evolution and so on and so forth. And I don't have all the links in between each and every one, but you get the gist of it. And then finally, now we're talking about the decor. You know, the furnishings and the color and the stuff in the room, this living area. And that's the place where I get to play with my nuance. Everything else has been there to support this. I now wanna put some furnishings and my furnishings are unique to me, my colors, my shapes, my style. So that's where the narrative comes in. So I'm describing something here that's supported by a whole bunch of these principles back here. But each and every one of them has a set of principles that are supporting it. And so I've got a bunch of different narratives which break up into paragraphs, into sections, into chapters, whatever it is, however fragmented I want it to be. But everything I read here is supported by these principles back here. So it could be that they're supported by, simply by these structural systems or they are supported by these living area principles depending on what it is that's being described. And of course, if they're supported by either structure or living, then they're also supported by the other ones because those are directly supported by the subsequent or the preceding principles. And so when I write any of this, I go, okay, this is what I wanna say, but what is it being tied to and how does it fit? And then I imagined the idea of having images and graphics and videos and so forth that are tied to all of these narratives but also tied to the principles. So that's just a real quick view of what I was looking at. If Neo books were to be created from a first principles perspective, what would that look like? And for me, it feels like a good framework for keeping us in a first principle mindset. I say, thank you very much. That was a super fast, really, really good tour. So am I right in saying that that means that if I were to write a narrative, it would rest out on the far right of your spreadsheet and it would have to be supported by blocks all the way to the left. Like every assertion I would make would need to rest on something in each column all the way to the left. So I think there would be two decisions you'd make. What is my, am I grounded, go to the ground and go, what am I grounded in? Oh, okay, I'm not grounded in physicalism. I'm grounded in dualism and I've got this other idea of this thing that's not normally described by physicalism. Okay, so fine. And you kind of know that, right? Like you know where you come from and if that thing that you come from exists outside of these pre-existing things, you set it out. Then you start writing and you start thinking, okay, what's the evidence I have for this? What's the principle by which I'm what I'm writing? And then you fill back and you go, well, the principle that I have for this is this and therefore I feel fall back until I meet that philosophical system that I've chosen to use. And yes, so I don't think you have to sort of like write everything backwards every time you write a word but you kind of need to say, okay, what's the first principle I've got? Let me set my ground. Now, with that being my ground, let me work back from my narrative to get to the same ground that I'm proposing that I'm writing from. Thank you. And just to complicate matters a tiny bit, what if my first principle were the wholeness and interconnectedness of everything which you have in a far right column? What if that's my starting point? And I think that other assumptions about what a first principle is are a Western way of seeing and I might disagree with that. Perfect. But doesn't that blow up the system? No. You've got the columns in order. You've chosen to say, we don't need a scientific view of the world. We don't need a physical view of the world. We don't need a lens of the world. We simply make this assumption that this principle is the thing that's doing. And it's a human principle. It's not based on any scientific thing. We just chose this principle that I've come up with that I choose to say, it's the principle that I've got and that's the principle that I'm gonna use. And I don't need a system of support for it. If others agree with that, that's fine. Cool. Thanks for saying, thanks for that exposition. Let me go to it. We've got lots of people in the queue. Klaus, Rick, Pete, Stewart. Yeah, so my struggle always is a two-step approach. It's a two-step approach. One is I have to clarify in my own mind what my narrative is, just like Osage has did. This is how I lay out a hypothesis and I will substantiate it and bring it into a frame that seems to be cognizant and logic and so on and so on. The next question then is who are you gonna tell that to? Who are you gonna communicate with? And what's the purpose of writing it in the first place? So in my case, it's pretty obvious. I'm talking with the food industry, with farmers, aggregators, processors, retailers and to make transparent a complex system that has a great deal of pathologies and is amazingly difficult to change. And so what does a farmer need to know about the story, the narrative that is in this new book to have that resonate with him or to have an impact to create a change in mindset. So I think a new book is fine if the intention is a personal elaboration or an extension of my own understanding and knowledge. But if the purpose is to actually make an impact on a target group and bring knowledge to bear actionable knowledge, knowing, understanding, then we need to translate that into the language of the recipient. And that's the core principle of spiral dynamics. So I actually run every text through my GPT. How would you reframe this to a, let's say, orange-blue audience or a blue-red audience and so on and the language changes, the symbolism changes, the idioms change. And so that really, I think we need to add into the equation who are we talking with, right? And what about and what's the intended outcome of that conversation? I like that a lot. I think that's a good addition to the narrative piece, right? Thank you, Rick. Yeah, thank you, Jose, for sharing some of your work. Obviously, Joris had some time to look in advance and I think for future events, if we do this, it may become nice to have time to digest it first because what I heard was that this is a very helpful, heuristic for you for thinking about first principles and ways of thinking. The thing is that we all come with different mental models and maps and so they don't jive necessarily to the same degree because you're the creator of it. I don't know what the origin of this and the influences, the history behind it, the meta-thinking, even how you define first principles. I mean, talk about convergence. I think many have some convergence defining what a first principle is or simple rules are so that we have a common framework for thinking about it because I think there may be some differences between it. So it's really clarification of language. So I found it very helpful just to sort of get a window into your way of thinking. And this comes back to the issue of Stuart's earlier point. Let's get down to doing, we're starting to do it and I like that. And I think with a little bit more planning, we could, whatever the group wants to do next week with the extension on this, what are the upsides and downsides of the frame you have because for me, the thing that came to mind was my immediate reaction, which is true of any spreadsheet. Sort of reductionistic and whatever. And that's not necessarily how it plays out. And the metaphor that was coming to my mind was, well, these aren't boxes, they're domains and the domains are dynamic and they're moving and shifting and whatever. And to me, the issue is, well, how do you zoom in and zoom out at different levels? One is reductionism appropriate. One's it totally counterproductive. One is important to go to the meta level and having the agility and adaptability to apply these things, particularly when we're trying to deal with our complex web of self-inflicted wicked problems in the 21st century, which we're not doing a very good job of. And we need to have a better way of dealing with the chaos of our meta crisis, which we're not making much progress on. So we'll hand this over to Pete to see what he might have to add to this conversation. Thanks, Rick. Thank you, Jose. I love a good framework. And I also kind of hope that we can get... And thanks, Jerry, for giving Jose kind of the floor space to do a great presentation. I kind of hope we get back to where Stuart kicked us off, which is it would be nice to have a proposal that we can say, yes, I'm in, or I need a different proposal or I need more about that proposal before I can say, yes, I'm in. Really frankly, really frankly, I've kind of come... I'm getting to the end of my time with NeoBooks unless it starts doing a thing where I can either help it or advise it or be a massive part of it, no pun intended or whatever, right? So every time, every meeting we go into philosophy rather than an agreement and some homework for the next meeting or whatever, it gets harder and harder for me to attend. Jose, real quick, I kind of want to underline Jerry's question. I feel like I love your framework and I love the rigor of it. For me, I love that it looks kind of like a pattern language. Chris said it looks kind of like a FedWiki the way it's linked together. I like all of that. I kind of worry about the primacy of that left column. And I apologize for my cultural illiteracy here. I'm going to tell stories about a culture about which I know almost nothing and I have legends about. But if I'm in the headspace of an Aboriginal Australian, my answers have lived here for 10, 20, 30,000 years. I probably count time differently than you do. I count my ancestors differently than you do. When I say that it's not knowledge unless it's expressed in a song line and the song line is woven into people walking back and forth for thousands of years over hills and valleys and whatever and singing the songs. And for them, that's their left-hand column, right? I mean, you could say while you're telling a narrative that's grounded in blah, blah, blah. And it's like, eh. And you could say that it's not scientific. And then they were like, eh. But the left-hand column is a knowledge system. So that system that you've just described would be explicitly laid out as the principles that whatever is bound to that system would be there. So that system, that first column isn't only science. That first column is any knowledge system that you would choose to base whatever you're working with. Okay, thanks. That's super helpful. Thanks, and that's good enough for me now. Let me, so Pete, I'm a little puzzled. You and Jordan and I are kind of waiting for you to put together a project plan where we have funds to fund you to write some software that would fix some of these problems and get us moving forward. And I'm like, I'm very eager to have that stuff done. Yeah, so it feels like I'm 100% on that. I'm 100% on that path. And this is gonna sound snippy and I really don't mean it to be. I could be spending the hour and a half here talking about whether or not NeoBooks is a project or have agreements about it or something like that. I could be coding the transclusion thing for Massive Wiki, right? Just to note, so I am full speed ahead on that part of what I think in NeoBooks is and I think what you think NeoBooks is, there isn't a consensus that we're either using Massive Wiki. There isn't a consensus that, you know, so, so yes, I am gonna continue to do Massive Wiki. Yes, I am going to continue to do very NeoBook-y things with the NeoBooks project and team and with other people. And that's different from showing up here for, you know, this team, whatever agreements this team, this team could very well say, okay, we want a platform. The platform is Signal to pick a random example that wouldn't work. The platform is Signal and everybody's gonna get a Signal account and we'll have some sessions getting us all up on Signal and then we've got our platform, we're good to go. I might not be part of that, you know, and that's fine. So thank you for that. I think you know you have one extremely willing collaborator and sort of participant and colleague in me for doing exactly what you are building and the stuff that I think I'm proposing we build with you for Massive Wiki that I think goes in the general direction we both agree in. Part of the reason for me to explain the moving parts to everybody here and I probably should have stopped before adding Jose your piece of it because I think that I can, I can flexify the conversation too much that way is to find out if we have buy-in on, hey, this seems like a reasonable architecture for sharing knowledge in a more interesting and fruitful way. And if not, should we go to some other platform should we open up that can of worms again? But I'm all in on this particular architecture for how to do things. And as we were working through classes manuscript and Google docs and other sorts of things like that and Rick's posts and so forth, Pete and I were sort of looking at each other going how do we break this up into markdown because the piece of it that we're really interested in is how do we co-think? How do we co-manage idea space and how do we repurpose these nuggets as people write brilliant nuggets that wanna find their way into other manuscripts for example, then whatever other platform we might look at to be a Neo book I think would have to meet that purpose, would have to be able to do that kind of thing that I just described. And there's FedWiki out there. I just don't know how to use FedWiki. It doesn't make sense to me, but there's notion. There's a bunch of other things we might use where we made a couple of architectural choices that like Pete just said, I'm not sure we're all kind of on board with and it would be really lovely to know that. And so any clarifying questions you need to ask or any wishes that something are different, please declare them. Go ahead Pete. It may be, Jerry, that what I kind of heard you say, I don't think you use these words but what I kind of heard you say is you did a tour through OGM Wiki and the Neo books parts of it and a living Neo book-ish kind of thing going on. You've got a bunch of nuggets, right? Kind of what I heard you said is or imply is this could be the new books platform instead of this is the new books platform, like it or leave it. And by the way, if you're leaving it, I'm gonna be really sad and let's talk about where are you leaving and if it needs to be a different platform than Massa Wiki, let's have that discussion. But I didn't quite hear that from you. It was more like this could be and you know you're pointing out a perky aspect of my personality and leadership style which is to not force things. And Pete and I also had the conversation of should I declare myself BDFL of Neo books which is the benevolent dictator for life with extenuating circumstances like it could be turned it doesn't have to be life but that's the term that's sort of thrown about in open source communities. And then just say, here's our platform like it or not. And this is how we're marching forward into it. Which I, if there were consensus on hey Jerry, you steer the ship and just tell us which way we're heading I would happily do that. The thing that's right in between there maybe and it's closer to what you just said you don't have to declare this is the platform or leave it. It would be totally fine to say, hey, I've done a presentation. Let's hear some other, you know let's hear the people who wanna do Notion or let's hear the people who wanna do Fedwick or whatever. And then let's have a vote. And then I'm gonna, you know me, Jerry, I'm gonna decide, you know I'll decide, you know, after weighing some options I don't wanna be, I wanna be a benevolent dictator rather than a tyrant. I want to be loved. Sorry. Stuart then Rich, you're muted, you're muted. Jerry, when you were talking about nuggets, okay? My thought was nuggets are great, okay? How do we tie them to bigger concepts? How do they flow? Because sometimes the little nugget is brilliant but then what's the context and what's it really mean? Okay. So that's entirely the mechanics that we're talking about in how to use nuggets how to write through lines how to roll them up into a chapter. That's the nuts and bolts of it. Great. Number two, Jose, I was wondering why you presented that at this point in time. And my wonderment was, is this a kind of a template that you're suggesting that all of us write from? Or is it your Neo book? That is an explication of your cosmology for thinking about large, important concepts, i.e. how do we fix the world? I'm just- Yeah, I think it's a really good question. So the first is the idea of nuggets as simply narrative pieces. I can't wrap my head around how a narrative piece written in a certain voice written by someone with a certain mindset and all of that stuff gets reused by someone else. I don't understand how that can happen, right? What I can understand is that that nugget of narrative represents what it's supported by can get reused by someone else. So in other words, a narrative to me as the framework sort of shows, it's sort of the color on the wall, how you write it, the carpeting, the furnishings and so forth, how you write it, it's your choice. But what it represents is something that you can substantiate whatever the words, however the words are put together, right? So for me, I can't wrap my head around the idea of us working with narratives because every paragraph is a narrative, every sentence is a narrative, right? And so where do we start? Where do we grab my 1500 narratives and start reusing them somewhere else or that I start reusing somebody else's 1500 narratives or 2000 or 5000 or 10,000? So this was in my mind a way of thinking, oh, if we can articulate it as first principles and use these first principles as a way, one to actually start thinking more similarly, start talking more similarly, not to force anybody to do any one way of thinking, but to say, hey, what's behind the thing that you're writing, let's talk about that. And now let's negotiate those things, let's argue about those things rather than arguing about my narrative. I don't think that arguing about my narrative is all that helpful if it's not clear about what is behind it. And so that's what I thought that would be the interesting part, not for people to say, Jose, I don't like your narrative, but for people to say, I don't like what your narrative is supported by. And let's discuss that. And I don't think that's the right thing. So I think I might be throwing a bit of a wrench into the conversation that you folks have already had because I'm the latest to jump in here. But it seemed to me, and this is the way that I wrote the book, it just wasn't explicit like this. It wasn't until I started doing the Neocalls where it's like, oh, I need, and I can do an explicit framework for what I was doing, but maybe it's helpful as a way to organize our conversations and the conversations of future Neobooks authors by actually bringing this concept, the first principles to it and the concept of actually having things bound to the narratives that you're talking about. So yeah, so I'm back to what Jerry said. Very initially, him saying, when he saw the spreadsheet, he could tell how much incredible work went into it, but he didn't know how to use it or where to begin or how to jump into it. And just hearing your explication of it, it would take a lot more time for me to digest it, okay? In other words, I'm feeling lost right now with what you've said. Let me jump in for a sec and then we'll go to Rick and Klaus. Sorry, do I have to wait? And I just, there's some, I wanna share the brief overview of the agreement model that I use so that everybody can understand what I'm talking about, okay? When we talk about an agreement of a divergent thinking to create a container for what it is that we're doing, okay? Do you wanna do that? I'm getting into Pete's camp. It's like we come and we have all these wonderful discussions and I love you all and you're so bright, but what the fuck are we doing? Okay. Let me address some of what's here for a second. Jose, I totally understand that narratives have a tone, a whole bunch of other funny things that make them quirky and maybe only part of one particular longer work and that's entirely true. So how do we reuse nuggets? One example, for example, is I imagine a whole bunch of books are being written right now that need an explanation of what GPT is and where it came from. That could be a nugget. Now, with GPT, we can, for example, translate any text into, make this into second grade language, make this into college PhD language, make this funny, make this third person, make this first person. So any nugget, sort of, to me, the nugget is the conceptual gem in the middle and there's gonna be 500 people writing their own individual nuggets about how GPT came about and what it is and what it's good for and those are separate nuggets. That's not one big nugget, for example. So I'm trying to figure out, and this is still formative, how do we converge those things a bit so that your nugget explaining, thinking fast and slow, is connected, linked close to my explanation of thinking fast and slow in this thing I wrote four years ago, except gosh, this is like, how do we converge those ideas so that other people can build off of the network of things that we're thinking about? Then you're making explicit the backward chain that I think I'm hoping people will actually go through provoked by Neo Book Nuggets, meaning, gosh, I don't agree with what your nugget says, but that's because my worldview says this and this and this and you're actually sort of X-raying the world in our philosophical outlooks and saying here are the things, here are the piece parts that you might differ on and I can see a world in which, coach properly and with some time, I would make my way through your spreadsheet. And by the way, I collect principles and other sorts of things in my brain, I have hundreds that would fit under several of your columns, hundreds. And so I don't know how to do that exactly, but I could see a world in which I would sort of pick and choose and say, these are the core things that represent my worldview and that could be really helpful because then if you and I decide to have an argument or a debate, we could then know that, oh, we're differing because we have a huge difference over here on this set of blocks. And I get that and I see that. And for me, I'm hoping that that emerges and tumbles out of fruitful debates around things like nuggets and narratives. And to me, a narrative is a composition of nuggets, is a sequence of a chain of logic or a story told that brings up a variety of nuggets which are hopefully reusable. So that's kind of what it got me thinking about. Rick, then Klaus. Yeah, I just want to maybe challenge the notion of nuggets because to me, nuggets, you've got to be clear what you mean by it. And what I'm hearing, which may not be what you're meaning because that's where we have to have negotiated share meaning, is that what I'm taking away from it is focusing more on content than process. You also use the word gem. Where's the gem within the nugget? And we get locked into sort of metaphorical frameworks. And I think there are other metaphorical frameworks for thinking about collaborative and transformational learning. So what would be the counterpoint to a content nugget, i.e. a process nugget? Now nugget may not be the right word for it, but to me, when you're focusing on process, it's much more trying to help people not only understand how to think, but understand why they think the way they think. Metacognition is mental learning. And when you have clashes of worldviews about heuristics or frameworks, you're often getting into the conversations about what underlies those differences. And I'd like to pick up on Stuart's point about convergent agreements because one of the things I'm finding about the conversation here is that the agenda is so all over the map that we don't dive deep. And so, for example, one thing I did nudge both to Jerry and Peter, I said, well, come and show us a little bit of what's your secret source of your digital platform. I want to experience it. And unless you co-opt, I don't know whether I'm in or out. I'll get in if I feel like, hey, this digital stuff really resonates with what I want to do. Now, if you can create a digital platform where it creates that type of learning community that people want to come to because they get so much out of it and it's so enriching that they can't not go, that's what you need. And if you can create that, now, I'm quite happy to give you lots of feedback on whatever it is you're developing. And if you can share with some of your secret source, but we need to have a devoted session to it. We can't have these sort of potpourri shooting agendas going all over the map. We've got to do a deep dive into some of this stuff. So my plug from last week still stands and just nudge you guys. Show us what, strut your stuff and let us see it. So we know what work what we can play with. So over to Klaus. Go ahead Klaus. Yeah, so I'm also, I think we are meandering again, a bunch of topics. So to me, narrative is actually sort of the end of a process. I mean, I don't even think about narrative until I'm ready to express a concept. So I'm starting this concept, I'm starting with hypothesis and then explore this topic. And then this topic may now splinter into five or six different target groups. Let's take soil healths. So it looks different for a farmer than it does for a consumer or for an aggregator or a food processor. And so I'm sorry I'm being very technical again, but I think you are any topic you crap, right? You will have multiple audiences for it because if you want to go deep, then you have to branch out. So when I talk about narrative, then I'm looking at here's my learning so far. My hypothesis has evolved into this is what I know. How do I explain this to this group, right? And then it's like a hologram, right? I mean, this group looks at the phenomena from a different perspective than the next group. So you change the narrative accordingly. So there is this way of thinking that you may start with a narrative for yourself to explain stuff to yourself so you can wrap your mind around it. But then you have to go to why am I interested in this? What value is in this information to what group and then modify your narrative around it? And then also, I think we have to have really an opinion. I mean, in every Thursday meeting, Doc Carmichael comes up and all you guys are talking about everything and nothing because climate change is a huge disaster and you don't pay any attention. You talk about all kinds of stuff that has nothing to do with any solution at all, right? It's just stuff. It's intellectual stuff. And but it does, there is no practicality associated with it. And so I think if we want to assist and be of value to the process of reinventing ourselves, our economy, our society and maybe have a tiny little bit of input on that, then we have to craft something that we can muster. So something that we can process, understand, research and explain in ways that helps people to move along and understand the world around them and what it all means to them, right? So narrative is at the bottom of all of this because it's simple, actualizing all of your intentions and all the research that you have done so far. Thanks, Lars, Stuart. So I'm going to take a minute and share what an agreement for results is and I don't know why I can't get this thing to move where I want it to move. But now you can all, okay. So this is the suggested template when I talk about agreement going forward. So what is our intent and vision? Slash, what are we doing? And what's it look like if we're successful? What are we up to here? What role does each one of us want to play? And what roles do we need? What roles do we need to make it successful? Stuart, I wonder if we, maybe you want to scroll down to the, where you have the definitions. Yeah. Okay. I know it's a little bit smaller, but it'll help me track better at least. So where are we going? What does success actually look like at some moment in time? The role that each one of us is going to play slash, what role do we need to make that vision a reality? Promises is what are we going to do? What is each one of us going to do actually to bring that vision into reality, to manifest that vision? What action are we going to take? Time and value? How long are we in this? And what value does each one of us perceive we're getting out of this project? I don't mean necessary financial stuff, but what is the value that you're going to get out of it? Metrics, measures of satisfaction, number five. How do we know where we're successful? How do we know we accomplished what we set out to? What are some of the things that we might look to to measure that? Six concerns and fears. We all have things in the back of our mind of that actually moving forward in a group project. What are they so that we could address them on the front end? Renegotiation, just a way of saying we know what we know at the beginning, we don't know what we don't know as we move forward. So the capacity for renegotiation is built in. Consequences at stakedness. I'm actually revising this one. By at stakedness, I mean, what's at stake here? For us, for the communities we wanna serve, for society at large, what really is at stake here? Conflict resolution, how are we gonna resolve any conflicts that come up along the way? And the last one is agreement, question mark, trust. So, which is, are we on board? After we've articulated all of the above, is this a group that you're willing to trust and make a commitment to? One of the things that I've noticed in a bunch of my own work recently is that you cannot substitute time together and engagement with each other for creating trust. You cannot hurry that process. Reminds me of the line from the song, you can't hurry love. There's no substitute for it. And in some ways, all of the convergent conversations that we've had over the past many, many months have created connection, have created appreciation, have created a level of trust. At least that's my take, okay? So that, and the one more thing that I wanted to say is that the notion of the vision, I don't know why I can't stop my share. Do you wanna stop your share? Yeah, I do, thank you, Pete. J-Kid or J-Kid? J-Kid share and then unshare. Yeah. You're on mutual. Stop the share? Yeah. Good, well, which is really timely because I sat and I took the outline that Stuart has in the book and I made a spreadsheet with some of our names across the top. I'm going to basically make this anyone with a link and we'll access anyone with a link is an editor, copy link done and put this in the chat. I'm thinking... And that's, let me just say one thing, Jerry. Yeah. And that's actually perfect because the idea of vision, okay? It's not something that I would suggest that we kind of wordsmith and come up with two sentences of purpose because each one of us has a slightly different purpose of what this is and the cumulative is where the real value in is especially in the articulation of it. Jerry, thank you for creating this in a place where people can come along and add to it because especially since I'll be gone for the next three weeks and how much I'm going to be here. I'm not sure. China, China. You know, so that's a good way of doing this as opposed to me sitting here facilitating and creating texts that of what each person has to say. But that's what I mean by the agreement process. Okay. So Stuart put the document in the chat here so we can all download and look at the document that is much more descriptive than just the headlines. It seems like some of these things are probably longer than a spreadsheet cell. So I don't know exactly how to handle longer concerns or longer thoughts but let's just start someplace. And if we can sort of fill this out and work on it, I think it'll help us out. Thank you, Jerry. Thank you, Jerry. I can almost only see that as divergent. Really? I'd rather have you propose something or maybe somebody else propose something and then I can say yay, nay, or I need more of this to it. So I'm happy to go through it first and then have everybody else edit that or whatever. Yeah, that sounds good. I mean, that's a starting point. Yeah, that's what I might normally do also, Jerry. So that's perfect, okay. And I use Google spreadsheets kind of on purpose because everybody knows how to wrangle spreadsheets. I know it's clumsy, but we at least know what we're doing. We can either do edits or comments. If you wanna not change the text on whatever somebody's written, then just use comments or notes on the cells and we'll all go find those, but I think that'll work. Yeah, my suggestion would be not to edit other people's work because you might get rid of what something is important but to just add additional. And I really like brevity, so I will try to be as succinct as I can with just as few words as I can in there. That will mean that it will be purposely a little laconic instead of like lengthier explanations, but we can sort of do that elsewhere. There's probably a lot more that happens around here. Stuart, I've not been through your process before you have. You can guide us with what you know. With Stuart's approval, I wonder if we can change consequences on the left column towards the bottom to what's at stake. Yeah, please do that. Thank you. Sounds great. Any other changes, any other suggestions? Cool, I will take a swing at this and I will post to the Mattermost channel for these calls when I've done so. I have a little time in an aircraft coming up. So that'll help. I think maybe, Jerry, you wanna send an email as well as something in the Mattermost channel? Sounds good, not everybody's in the Mattermost channel. Good point. That, by the way, is from the Book of Agreement, which has had the endorsement of a lot of thought leaders. It's a great framework, Stuart. Thank you. And this contains about 35 sample agreements from all kinds of different contexts, you know? And it's the difference between ready, fire, aim and ready, aim, fire, sure hand. Mm-hmm. At one point I owned the domain fire, aim, dot, something, because my concept was that in this new era, we're never ready. So you need to fire, adjust, fire, adjust, fire, adjust. And the ready is obsolete. The ready is a quaint relic of the past. And in some ways, the book was my rant against the legal profession. Or at least a piece of it, at least a piece of it. Of which there should be many. Yeah. Cool. Other thoughts, we're down to 15 minutes before this call officially wraps. Chris, you haven't been in too many of these calls. I'm wondering if you have any thoughts, suggestions, feedback, things we've missed entirely? Um, I think I'm in Pete's camp of let's do the thing or make the thing. I presume the base spec is raw text, markdown or HTML of some sort for distribution purposes. And it's either text, audio, video or photo or variations of those four, three or four. And then it's really about what kind of containers do you put those in in a distributable online form? I presume that's the minimum. And from that, I can at least begin making things and or plugging them into, you know, the 40 tools that already support that as at least a minimum. But I totally get the, hey, let's start building something or physical examples. And then once we've got some of those physical examples, the mixing and remixing and, you know, dealing with context collapse or context building can then proceed to pace. But I think I hear a lot of what happens when when we haven't had anything happen yet. If that makes sense. So. It does. It does. Because I can build something as well too and I'd like to start doing that. And I have an idea of what Pete's building and that I could build something that will dovetail with what Pete's doing and maybe be dramatically different than what Pete's doing, but still work with that at the end of the day. Which is why we made choices like markdown on GitHub. Yeah. Exactly. Although, you know, storing images on GitHub is a much hairier thing. So I presume we're special casing some of those as here's where the container for that thing lives that's not I can't get home. But I know how to solve those problems. So I'm not gonna worry about that. Awesome. I didn't even know that was actually an issue with GitHub. So I need to lean on y'all's expertise. Any other thoughts, questions, comments, wishes, desires? Yeah. One thought I had is in terms of the technology I completely trust you guys. Okay. And number two. And the other thing I wanted to say was Jose, I had no intention of making negative comments about your detail models. Oh, I didn't feel that it was negative. I thought, thanks. Okay. Excellent. Thank you. Other thoughts, comments, questions, jokes, funds? Well, maybe we'll have to call here. I think that gives us, I will be back in the saddle next Mondays. I return, for those of you who missed it at the start of the call, I have a junket coming up. I travel tomorrow to Bahrain to be on a panel where I am the metaverse skeptic. Very happy about that. It's a tiny panel at a tiny conference that's connected to the Bahrain Grand Prix, which is the first Grand Prix of the season, apparently. I didn't know this. So all the cars are new and YouTube has figured out because I Googled some of these things. It's now feeding me all the analysts who are busy saying, here's what's up with the new cars, et cetera. But mostly I think they're gonna take us out to the race course and we get really nice access. And it's a night race. Bahrain turned into a night race some years ago and they race in the evening. So I don't know, should be pretty cool. Our class, go ahead, have fun. Yeah, just to mention, my knack is sort of marketing. So if anyone wants to just brainstorm how do you take your material and what are the potential target markets? Or let's say audiences, sounds maybe less structured. And how would I communicate what I'm wanting to say and what is it that I wanna say to these audiences? Give me a call. I mean, I'm glad to sit down and bounce around and see where you could take this. Sounds great. Thanks, Klaus. Anything else? Sounds good. Well, Stuart, you look like you're just about to say something but maybe not. Well, I was about to say that I'm appreciative of the fact that you guys bought into this process that I suggested because it seems like it's time to do that now. We're drinking the steward aid. Well, that's maybe a terrible, that might be a bad analogy. You have tried a few times. All right. With that weak humor, I will see y'all, some of you on a later call, et cetera, et cetera, but thanks. That's great. I can't make it next week, by the way. I'm away. Happy trails. Okay, bye.