Calibration Session

An intellectual production system that combines chat and Scrapbox with a once-a-month, two-hour 1-on-1.

• Tomoya Tachikawa and Nishio spontaneously started in late 2018, has continued for three years, and both parties have found it a very beneficial association.
• see Calibration meeting generation process

It is hard to imagine that this beneficial system would only work for the Tachikawa-Nishio pair. Therefore, the purpose of this page is to pick up “elements necessary for the system to function” from “(Tachikawa and Nishio’s) calibration meeting” as a proper noun, and to create the concept of “calibration meeting” as a general noun that other pairs can try.

elements

• 1on1
• (Internet) chat
• Scrapbox
• Two people.

1on1

• Must be 2 people, no more than 3 will be accepted.
  • I’ve tried many times, thinking things like, “It would be a shame to keep this meeting to just the two of us,” but I’ve failed at all of them.
• Highly flexible in format
  • Face-to-face oral conversation, conference room with whiteboard, walk in the park, video conferencing, walk on one side with only audio connected
  • Can’t chat be substituted?
    • Maybe you can do it if you try?
      • Is it important to share the thought process?
      • But that’s only if we can decide, “Let’s focus on chatting for two hours from now.
        • …I’d have a conversation with you if that was a possible situation.
        • So you’re saying you value it more than chatting.
    • PS: I don’t think symbolic modeling can tolerate chat lag.

(Internet) chat

• Written means of communication
• No need for complex functions.
  • I use Facebook Messenger for historical reasons.
  • I didn’t even think a search was necessary until I decided to check the process of occurrence this time.
• Typical use case: the night of a 1-on-1, or the next day, or a few days later, “Isn’t XX YY? or “I thought we talked about ZZ, but I think it’s not…” or “I thought we talked about ZZ, but I think it’s different.

Scrapbox

• A long-term repository of discussion summaries
• Probably plays a very important role.
  • But, even in the current situation, it is probably not the optimal way to do things, so future improvements are needed.
  • Other means tried
    • Write on a whiteboard, discuss, take pictures and share.
      • When you write on a whiteboard and discuss it, of course you say, “Let’s take a picture before we erase it.
      • But this is a lack of functionality, it doesn’t read back.
      • Another drawback is that it’s an image, so it’s not searchable.
    • Record and transcribe all conversations.
      • Nishio said, “It would be a shame to lose the conversation, so let’s make it searchable,” and we outsourced the human transcription for a while.
      • I don’t read it back because it’s too much.
    • Handwritten notes on iPad
    • While I was doing these things, Nishio was working in parallel to put them together in this Scrapbox.
      • Interesting notes based on 1-on-1 discussions
      • It wasn’t even intended to be a “record of the meeting.”
        • So it is often Nodes of Thought.
          • Case: Nodal Point of Thought2021-08-06 Nodal Point of Thought 20200825
          • There is no appropriate title for the whole, because it is written on a single page with seemingly unrelated topics that are difficult to disentangle because they lead to common keywords with the previous topic, or because there may be a connection that you have not yet noticed because the story has turned out that way, although you have not found a particular connection. So it’s “Nodal Point of Thought”.
            • In hindsight, “Calibration Meeting 2021-08-06” would have been fine.
        • Some “stand-alone pages” may be cut out after the fact
          • Example Nodal point of trial2019-12-05.
      • It’s being done on a public project.
        • 1on1 is basically done with the assumption that it will not be open to the public.
          • So, if you want to publish it, you need to get permission.
        • That was tedious, so it occurred in the form of “my thoughts generated by the conversation” on the page.
          • So the purpose is not to “record the conversation”, but rather not to write down what Mr. Tachikawa’s side said.
        • There are good and bad points to this.
          • Good point, it will be a dense mass of information reconstructed by your subjectivity.
            • Filtered by subjectivity, low-density conversations are discarded.
          • Bad point, there is probably information that is useful but discarded because of the public assumption.
      • Should we do this in a private group?
        • In fact, there is a proper private group.
          • I’m putting up transcripts and whiteboard photos.
            • Warehouse of dead texts.
        • I once did a “Let’s do it while co-editing a private group page.”
          • I just looked back and realized the level of
• Keywords created during the conversation become links on Scrapbox.
  • Example - human bug - Properly subjective - People have individual differences.
  • This causes [passage of time
    • Parable of the Ropes
  • By using keywords repeatedly over time in monthly 1-on-1s, useful keywords will branch out and grow.
  • If we had used a non-Scrapbox tool (e.g. Google Docs), I don’t think this effect would have been possible.
    • Read-backs are triggered by connecting links.
      • I just now read passage of time and found the key words Social Triggers.
      • 1-on-1s and chats are Highly Concentrated Social Trigger Sources.

Two people.

• What conditions are required of the two people who are the components?
  • I think there’s a strong constraint, because two random people would definitely not work first.
  • On the other hand, I don’t think it’s limited to the Tachikawa-Nishio pair.
  • They both find this meeting interesting.
    • So it’s been repeated.
    • Intellectual production occurred after it was repeated, and you wouldn’t have expected it from the start.
  • Why do you two find this meeting interesting?
    • The core value of a calibration meeting in my subjective view is not the production or discovery of knowledge The core value of a calibration meeting in my subjective view is not the production or discovery of knowledge
      • Tachikawa-san is the one who pulls the trigger of the meeting and provides the topic in the first place.
        • I don’t have much desire for voice conversation, so I don’t say, “I want to talk!” I don’t want to talk.
        • I send it to chat when it comes to mind.
      • In the early days, I used it as a laboratory for symbolic modeling.
        • I thought it would be interesting to draw out the mental model in Mr. Tachikawa and verbalize it.
        • He is a science major, has a similar thought pattern to me, and yet he is the director of a dating service, a path I would never have chosen in my life, and he must have had experiences that I have not had, so it is beneficial to draw information from him.
        • I still often observe that Tachikawa-san often brings a list of “things he wants to talk about,” and I often ask, “What is it?” Why? I think I’m more likely to say something like, “That’s not what I want to talk about.” I think I tend to say something like that more often than not.
      • As we were doing that, with the help of Scrapbox, a common language began to emerge between the two of us.
        • There is only one person in the world with whom you can have a high-density conversation using this common language.
        • This makes the 1-on-1 and subsequent chats a driving force that makes the branches of thought powerfully overgrown.
          • [I used to be someone who thought it was “interesting.
    • Tachikawa’s Point of View
      • - Originally, I was in the habit of arguing with my father until about high school. - The term "calibration meeting" was an afterthought, and this was a "lifestyle" in the first place. - I find it interesting to hear about "what he/she has been through." - My father's sources of information became less interesting as they became mainly television and other sources of information. - Mr. Tachikawa finds it interesting that "it varies from person to person," and I wonder if experience is part of that.
      • The interesting thing that Tachikawa finds in the conversations he regularly has with others is whether they are the same or different, and if so, how are they different?
      • When I talk to everyone except Mr. Nishio, I “expect to be cheered up by them”. I do not expect to be cheered up by Mr. Nishio.
      • Is being “energized” by “someone you meet expecting to be energized” done by hearing about “an experience that person has had?”
      • Yes
      • As a thought experiment, what do you think if I don’t talk about my experiences at all, but only ask questions that encourage structuring thoughts like I am doing now?
      • I think you’ll find it interesting.
      • (In other words, I wanted to do symbolic modeling, and Mr. Tachikawa found it interesting to do symbolic modeling.)
      • Read “The Nishio Perspective.”

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      • The core value of a calibration session, in my subjective view, is not the production or discovery of knowledge, but the process of getting to know each other and the trial-and-error process of how to have a good time together.
        • It’s interesting that there is intellectual excitement or new discoveries, but those are also in the big picture of “play”!
        • Calibration meetings feel like a “lifestyle”.
        • Playing is a way of life.”
        • I think “playing” includes “communicating with others” completely.
      • Why did you still try to have another meeting after the BMOT monthly event experiment was over?
      • Because it’s fun. It’s a good deal to do something fun that might lead to some kind of event planning or job! I might have thought like that. It’s a hazy memory because so much time has passed.
      • I see.
        • (The fact that he explicitly denies that the experience of the other person is not the goal or the production of the intellect means that he is strongly uncomfortable with that as a reason.
        • The abstract concept of “play” that was brought up after the denial is a raw concept. It is highly possible that it was invented to give a reason after the fact for the “denial because it is uncomfortable.
        • At any rate, I’ve learned that “the other person’s experience” and “production of knowledge” from my point of view are not common ground, and I’m feeling sleepy, so let’s end it here.)
      • I was trying to verbalize how others do the same thing, but in summary, there is no reproducible way to do it because “you just happen to find a pair that meshes well.” I came to the conclusion, “Find someone you click with.”
      • If you think about it, isn’t there a clue as to why Jun Kuikei wanted to bring us together?
      • I see!

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      • summary
        • A mutual friend Jun Kuikei thought it would be interesting to bring them together.
        • We hit it off as we worked on a joint project (an experiment in giving a talk at BMOT and subsequent monthly events).
        • I keep doing it because it’s fun.

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This page is auto-translated from /nishio/キャリブレーション会 using DeepL. If you looks something interesting but the auto-translated English is not good enough to understand it, feel free to let me know at @nishio_en. I’m very happy to spread my thought to non-Japanese readers.