FailForward @FailForward@social.cleverlibre.org

# My quest towards a public scrapebook

## Objective

At the beginning of the year, I embarked on this social network journey. The actual motivation is to find a semi-public place to collect some of my thoughts, bookmarks, quips and other trivia. The immediate inspiration was the description of thoughts summarizing/exploration workflow (creative soup there) at [Ribbonfarm](https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2020/12/31/2020-ribbonfarm-extended-universe-annual-roundup/) by @vgr.

Objective: _I am trying to establish a public personal scrapbox in which half-baked and nuclear ideas can be kept, sharpened, collected and from time to time something smarter might emerge and that I want to properly publish in a polished form._ Kind of a wiki, editing of which would be strictly additive (because I think that way, I don't feel an urge to edit) and extremely simple using established and low-friction tooling.

Why I feel a need for it at all and for it to be somewhat public is a discourse for another time.

My starting point actually was an idea to start a simple static blog (Jekyll?). Privately, since more than a year I anyway keep a whole zoo of hudnreds of private notes in Markdown written in QOwnNotes and Obsidian (because since many months I cannot decide which I like better) synced by QNAP Sync (and OwnCloud) between my devices. Footnote: actually I am a paper person and since more than 10 years I keep paper notebooks with notes for work.

The problems with maintaining a plain static blog were for me twofold:
1. I am looking for a very low threshold posting experience (e.g., while I am walking - and I do a lot of that - and want to remember something, or note a silly thought - i.e., must work with desktop/laptop and phone). Static blog requires a workflow via editor, generator, git, publishing, etc. Lots of hasssle there.
2. I am looking for at least some minimal feedback. Otherwise the exercise would be a pure self-satisfactory aggrandisement and I do not need that any more. I.e., I would like at least some basic commenting facility.

## Path to Mastodon

Then I stumbled upon the [blog post about adding Mastodon comments to static blog](https://carlschwan.eu/2020/12/29/adding-comments-to-your-static-blog-with-mastodon/) by @carl. That led me to Mastodon.

Mastodon in general and the setup at qoto.org instance specifically, looked to me as a potentially useful direction to explore. Mastodon user timeline/wall can be treated as the public face of the scrapbox, while the comments inside could enrich the scrapbox content and provide either entertainment, intellectual sharpening, or both. At the same time qoto.org allows me to write lengthy entries with rich formatting (and much more on top, but these two features are relevant for my objective). Fedilab, toot and Qoto web interface are easy tools making the whole process easy for me. And I do not care much that sometimes it's not exactly elegant, or nice, it just works(tm).

So far, the experiment led to interesting insights and yet more questions including: shall I run my own instance? (really?), instance of what? (writefreely, friendica, qoto clone, pleroma, etc.), etc. When I arrive to some conclusions, I might write it up at some late point.

## Keeping more permanent records

The scrapbook/shoebox place is meant to be more of a log and a collection out of which some more coherent ideas shall emerge. Question arises where to put those better worked out ideas? Of course I already have a couple, but I keep them private and therefore also somewhat less polished. A blog would be indeed in order.

So here I am again at the static blog idea, but this time only for the worked out ideas and/or with less friction:
1. record into Mastodon easily from anywhere; and
2. automatically archive my account's public timeline in some more permanent place under my control.

### Design sketch

Enter extration of toots from Mastodon and further processing. I started to explore how to extract public toots from Mastodon into my own archive. Apart from directly using Mastodon API, people obviously solved that problem already:
- [Mastodon Archive](https://github.com/kensanata/mastodon-backup): involved script which can do a lot. The problem here is the Mastodon API rate limiting. TODO: Needs more exploration.
- [MastoUserScrape.py](https://gist.github.com/FlyMyPG/2e9d4532453182ada0da78e74980193b)]: small Python script scraping the public HTML side of the Mastodon's user profile. No login, just very basic HTML parsing. With little effort, I made it work against qoto.org. Some minor issues remain, like embedded toots, etc. _Very promissing!_
- of ourse I could also scrape the RSS feed of the user profile. Easy too, but only a limited number of toots can be exacted that way (front-page+).

I could extract toots every couple of hours and then use Jekyll/git to push them to the static page at my space.

## Forgetting

Now, the author of Mastodon Archive tool is @kensanata and in the tool he built in also an interesting feature to [delete/expire toots](https://github.com/kensanata/mastodon-backup#expiring-your-toots-and-favourites). He mentions there other tools and links to his own write-up about [record keeping](https://alexschroeder.ch/wiki/2017-04-27_Record_Keeping).

That turn out to be a whole new interesting direction. Alex is right there, old traces of one's digital past shall be under one's control. I agree with his policy (also on his profile) to automatically delete old toots. If I stick with Mastodon, I think I will implement it too - besides scraping and keeping for myself, or potentially keeping them published under my own control.

Future does not end with punching somebody in face. You also need to live with yourself afterwards.

@iiqof@mastodont.cat Well, I have a feeling that you ended up with a crooked picture of me as a person. On the one hand I feel an urge to correct it, on the other, here on Intertubes we need to accept that people get a wrong picture of oneself. Whatever.

But if you'd perhaps be into taking a deeper dive into what I actually stood for in that conversation, I invite you to read the rest of my exchange with @jens from here onwards: https://social.finkhaeuser.de/@jens/105652344405773557

I hope you will understand that my point was not that it is "not right to punch someone" (I am no extreme pacifist, mind you). I was merely arguing that it is not a constructive nor a helpful action. It's perhaps subtle, but very important difference if you care for better future. Because future does not end with punching somebody in face. You also need to live with yourself afterwards.

Take care.

# Timelapse of the Future: A Journey to the End of Time

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uD4izuDMUQA


> We start in 2019 and travel exponentially through time, witnessing the future of Earth, the death of the sun, the end of all stars, proton decay, zombie galaxies, possible future civilizations, exploding black holes, the effects of dark energy, alternate universes, the final fate of the cosmos - to name a few.
>
> This is a picture of the future as painted by modern science - a picture that will surely evolve over time as we dig for more clues to how our story will unfold. Much of the science is very recent - and new puzzle pieces are still waiting to be found.

Fascinating video telling the story of what today's physics knows about how the future of the universe unfolds. Even if I knew bits and pieces, it's cool to see it put together in a visually captivating manner. And the timescales are just staggering. I think the video conveys the ideas very well, even if it becomes somewhat speculative near the end.

@nanko Start a poll.

@jwildeboer Yes, we could use more [empathy](https://qoto.org/@FailForward/105578915682690101).

@marathon Thanks for advice. Indeed, slowly I am discovering the emergent dynamics of this space. I am patient.

One thing I noticed is that crawling the social graph is interesting. Apparently going to places, following people, engaging and then disengaging is a random walk, but slowly I am sifting through the crap and I already discovered couple of interesting and thoughtful people. In the end, no wonder - even odd people know normal people who in turn know smart folks. It just takes a while to discover them. I am looking at what they do and learn quickly. Still interesting.

Let's see. The experiment continues...

# Crony beliefs

Notes from reading [Crony beliefs/Melting Asphalt](https://meltingasphalt.com/crony-beliefs/).

The blog post deals with (loosely paraphrased) the following problem:

_We believe we hold internally consistent beliefs. At the same time, we quickly see that others often tend to believe falsehoods. Assuming they see it the same way, the world is inconsistent. What the heck?_

The author finds a very interesting and I also think useful way to analyse the problem by introducing a small conceptual framework identifying two types of beliefs:
1. **Meritocratic beliefs**, which we judge for their accuracy out of fear that we'll stumble by acting on a false belief; and
2. **Crony beliefs**, where we don't care about accuracy so much as whether our beliefs make the right impressions on others.

Both are useful in their own right. The first deals mostly with physical reality, while the latter with our social realities. This (coincidentally) feeds into [the quip about two levels of reality](https://qoto.org/@FailForward/105652797745648749) (note to self: needs more exploration).

A more precise dissection of the two types is summarised in the following table:
<img src="https://meltingasphalt.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/merit_vs_crony_beliefs.png" width="100%"/>

In the remainder of the post, the author goes on with the framework and explores consequences and nuances of it. There are two remarkable points there:
1. the author introduces an example of climate change belief and points out that whatever we do, as critical thinkers, in this framework we identify this belief as a crony one (not wrong, just crony!); and
2. at the end, it seems to me, he argues that we shall strive for identifying crony beliefs and try to improve our situation to have less of those.

On the first, I realized that most of our beliefs about future have this nature. The author also lists several such beliefs, but I would generalize it: whenever we try to predict future while at the same time we face huge amounts of uncertainty, we either end up nowhere, or with a crony belief.

## Grounded crony beliefs as drivers of societal change

To the second, I agree that we shall create pressure to improve our situation and try to get less crony beliefs. At the same time, I would argue, we need significant non-zero amount of them, otherwise it would cripple our social action. While crony beliefs are often wrong, I claim, they often serve a good purpose. First, however, we need to distinguish between grounded (truthful) crony beliefs and ungrounded (false) ones - as in how correlated they are with the underlying reality. Note, these beliefs are crony for a reason: we are probably not able to get to their substance in physical reality. To most (if not all) people who believe a crony belief, their physical reality essence is inaccessible. That is the definition of crony belief.

The interesting thing about some crony beliefs (those I call grounded - probably this term needs more work!) is that over time, their nature is malleable. They can change/morph into meritocratic beliefs. Think slavery, or flat Earth stuff. While you have no tools to evaluate a merit of a certain belief it remains crony. Over time, however, new tools become available and the belief can turn into a meritocratic one.

So as a social swarm we act on our crony beliefs. Some of them are grounded, some are not - neither of which matters to humans, as we cannot see the difference at a given time and space. However, these grounded beliefs, over time reveal themselves as such and turn from crony to meritocratic. An example of such is climate change. Whichever way you act on it, in about 100, or 300 years, we as humankind will discover what was the grounding of that particular belief.

In this sense, the potentially grounded crony beliefs are useful as drivers of societal change. They compete with each other in our society and some of them turn out non-grounded and some yes. People standing for these beliefs struggle and fight with each other, all for the sake of improving the society's future (even though the competing group probably does not believe so, and sometimes rightly so). Those who (completely arbitrarily at their time and space) turn into heroes in the end and prevail, while the others (again completely arbitrarily) turn into villains of history. **_A grounded crony belief is a bet we make with the world. Sometimes we win, sometime we win. Either way, the objective is to survive._**

So shall we strive to eradicate crony beliefs entirely? I believe not. World without crony beliefs would be a stagnant one, a paralysed one.

At the same time, do crony beliefs kill people? Absolutely. Do I mind? Absolutely! Do I accept it as one of the mechanisms of how human reality? Yes (with a sigh).

(Do I want to be killed by a crony belief? Absolutely not! Would I adopt a crony belief protecting me from such killing? You bet! But that is an entirely different story...)

There are two levels of our social experience:
1. That what is said; and
2. That what is done, i.e., what changes reality.

The latter is the only which really matters.

(with all the common-sense qualifications, when words lead to acts, or when they truly harm others)

@jens Let's leave that for another day's interesting discussion. We probably agree more than it seemed 2 hours ago.

@jens

> They've moved the overton window. That's what their attrition warfare is all about.

I agree. But such is the nature of liberal democracy. We don't want to prevent that. It was calm, now we are arguing a lot. But facts (as in laws) are not changing.

> But I guess we won't come to a conclusion here.

Probably, because now it's only about subtleties. Let me thank you for a great exchange. I enjoyed it immensely. Sparring with you is a joy. I've got my dose of intellectual entertainment this evening, I can go to bed happy :-D.

@IngaLovinde To you I apologise to finally taking over the thread, but this turned out to be way more fun than I imagined. Thanks.

@jens
> I mean, neither Germany nor the USA has managed that in the last decade.

So name please a single important law having to do with how people can interact which changed for worse in Germany in the last decade. I am following German politics quite closely, but maybe I missed something.

In the US they did a lot, but already are fixing. Will take another 20 years and will be messy, but I am confident it will work out. Majority of people said so.

@jens

> You're basically arguing from a position that needs complete and unwavering solidarity on the side opposing the bully, which is statistically unlikely.

And I believe that is exaclty what is happening. Except it's not 100% solidarity - societies are always messy. In legals terms, we still protect each other well. It just got a bit shaky the last years. We'll fix that, I am sure. I am an optimist. In the meantime, I am going to physically protect all the gay people (who want to burn Nazis), as well as the right of those Nazis to say BS they do (I am not happy about it either).

@jens

Of course it is workable. So far the populists achieved nothing. I gather you are from Germany. So far, AfD achieved exactly nothing precisely because the majority of people still stand firmly against them. And that is a good thing. Do they express opinions which I don't like? Absolutely. Do they have a right to do it? Yes. And it needs to be defended too, whether we like it or not. Such is the nature of liberal democracy we built.

In the US, populists had a run for 4 years and look how much real change they achieved? Not much (well, there are some aspects where I would disagree with myself, but those are relatively fixable things).

I think our societies are proving very resilient. I am confident.

@jens

**Don't have fear in your heart! **

That is the true strength (and requires shitloads of hard work).