what is this?

• It is external brain of NISHIO Hirokazu.

What is an external brain?

• A system that performs some of the functions of the brain outside of the living brain
  • This improves the intellectual and productive capacity of the system as a whole, including the living brain
• Thinking does not take place only in the brain.
  • For example, “Fireworks to think about” by Jiro Kawakita, a kind of Intellectual Production “KJ method”.
    • Thinking outside the brain by spatially arranging thoughts in opening sentence or paragraph on a small piece of paper.
    • This methodology can overcome the low short-term memory that the living brain can retain.
• Memory and associative stock
  • Fragments of units finer than books and articles - The information card introduced by Tadao Umesao in The Art of Intellectual Production is used by writers to stockpile fragments in units smaller than a book before writing. - - Not only him, but many authors have used similar mechanisms, e.g., zetterkasten. - Once it was written on paper and placed in a private study. - It was not a final work, but to assist the person in the intellectual production of the work at the stage of creating it. - So only he could see it. - A small portion was published in fragments in the form of posthumous arrangement of manuscripts, etc.: fragmentary writing.
    • This could be interpreted as an information card that Yasukazu Nishio uses for his own intellectual production.
      • As of 2024, there are 2,000 cards.
      • [Information should be made public unless there is a reason not to make it public.
  • Compared to paper cards, there are advantages to being digital
    • A system that makes it easy to create and follow links between fragments
      • Scrapbox], which was the foundation for the construction of this external brain, devised a mechanism
        • Knowledge Network is represented by a mechanism for [Structuring information with links
        • Link formation is facilitated by link to an unexpected destination and [Scrapbox’s link suggestions are useful
      • Link formation or 2-hop link allows you to discover other pages that think about the same thing - Comparing similarities is a new way to learn.
        • resolution of thoughts.
  • The links between thoughts are suggestion and derailment.
    • It makes sense that this is not done only in the brain, but externalized as stock of associations.
    • If you externalize it instead of keeping it in the brain, external mechanisms such as computers can interact with it.
    • We believe this is important in the context of future LLM development.

What is Scrapbox/Cosense?

• Web services we started using in 2017
  • Provided by Nota (now Helpfeel)
  • Name changed to Cosense in 2024.
• Well-thought-out specifications significantly facilitated the development of Yasukazu Nishio’s external brain

Guide for New Scrapbox Readers

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• The best way to understand Scrapbox is to use Scrapbox yourself

  • I’ve written a lot of verbal explanations here Increased skill in using tools leads to a more detailed perception of the world, so the understanding of those who don’t use them doesn’t lead to those who do.
  • As a function of Scrapbox, when you search within your own Scrapbox project, a cross search is also performed against the Scrapbox projects you have viewed, giving you the opportunity to discover other people’s ideas about what you are thinking.
  • Since this service is focused on “growing your network of knowledge”, it is best to try to grow your own network of knowledge

• Meaning of the color of the links in the page

  • Red links are “doors that don’t lead anywhere yet” and therefore not useful to click on.
    • Think of it as highlighting keywords.
  • Blue links are links to other pages in Scrapbox
    • This page can be EMPTY.
      • empty is also useful because it displays a card at the bottom of the page with a list of “pages linked to that keyword”.
    • Example: [Philosophy of /shokai/Scrapbox]
      • This is a link to Scrapbox’s “Other Projects” page
      • This example links to a page in the shokai project that is developing Scrapbox
      • For English reader, currently auto-translation supports only in this project. Links to other Japanese project may broken because of translation of title.
  • Blue underlined links are links outside Scrapbox

• Meaning of the green and gray lines on the left edge of the page

  • They are called “telomeres.” For a detailed description, see /shokai/telomere.
  • Unread lines (= lines that have been updated since the last visit) are green
  • The more recently updated, the thicker.
  • Click here to get the permalink to the line so you can mention it.

• Q: Where do I start reading?

  • Option 1: Search for keywords of your interest
  • Option 2: Follow the links by clicking on the links that interest you at the bottom of each page.
    • Here’s a starting point for readers: Links for Readers.
      • nishio-en is the start point for English reader.

About Quotations and Licenses

. - Anything published can be cited. - We think it is a very good thing to cite, mention and develop

• We believe that it is a bad idea to make it difficult to utilize information because it is not clear who inherits the rights upon the death of the copyright holder
  • The information on this Scrapbox is licensed under a CC-BY license upon the death of NISHIO Hirokazu

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This page is auto-translated from /nishio/これは何？ 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.