# Niklas Luhmann - Communicating with Slip Boxes (Highlights)  ## Metadata **Review**:: [readwise.io](https://readwise.io/bookreview/28542540) **Source**:: #from/readwise #from/reader **Zettel**:: #zettel/fleeting **Status**:: #x **Authors**:: [[Niklas Luhmann]] **Full Title**:: Communicating with Slip Boxes **Category**:: #articles #readwise/articles **Category Icon**:: 📰 **URL**:: [luhmann.surge.sh](http://luhmann.surge.sh/communicating-with-slip-boxes) **Host**:: [[luhmann.surge.sh]] **Highlighted**:: [[2023-06-03]] **Created**:: [[2023-06-03]] ## Highlights - It is impossible to think without writing; at least it is impossible in any sophisticated or networked (*anschlußfähig*) fashion. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01h1zzwrzdmwtzd61kay50hx4a)) ^541260171 - One of the most basic presuppositions of communication is that the partners can mutually surprise each other. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01h1zzyw9j3cdkdnfhs67yx56q)) ^541260227 - One of the most basic presuppositions of communication is that the partners can mutually surprise each other. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01h1zzz07zpvfheba4x08ssppc)) ^541260231 - Put differently, the variety in communicating systems increases when it may happen that the two partners successfully communicate in the face of different comparative goals. (This means that it is useful for the other partner.) This requires the addition of randomness (*Zufall*) into the system—randomness in the sense that the agreement of the different comparative schemata is not been fixed, or that the information which is transmitted by communication is correct, but rather that this happens (or does not happen) “at the occasion” of communication. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01h20010s1nbn2wet80kmk1h0e)) ^541260307 - Often the context in which we are working suggests a multiplicity of links to other notes. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01h2009b00pkykpzxjeajhd0kq)) ^541264900 - Therefore we need a register of keywords that we constantly update. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01h200bhc0m20613gb7j33nnzq)) ^541264959 **constantly** - Similarly as epistemology has given up the idea that there are “privileged representations” that allow us to control the truth value of other representations or claims, we must give up the idea in preparing a card index that there should be privileged places or slips that have a special quality of guaranteeing knowledge. Every note is only an element which receives its quality only from the network of links and back-links within the system. A note that is not connected to this network will get lost in the card file and ill be forgotten by it. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01h200g503bs3nq1g2snpfy8rr)) ^541265237 - If, however, we seek communication with the slip box, we must seek internal possibilities for linkings which result in the unexpected (i.e. information). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01h2012v2v5chy4kjb4ew04xpw)) ^541266801 - Memory does not function as the sum of point by point accesses, but rather utilizes internal relationships and becomes fruitful only at this level of the reduction of its own complexity. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01h2013scxm06bhf42q3y2e9ky)) ^541266966 - The role of accidents in the theory of science is not disputed, If you employ evolutionary models, accidents assume a most important role. Without them, nothing happens, no progress is made. Without variation in the given material of ideas, there are no possibilities of examining and selecting novelties. The real problem thus becomes therefore one of producing accidents with sufficiently enhanced probabilities for selection. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01h2017beea7e247z2pkj5m7va)) ^541267313 - This parallel should not be exaggerated; but you will not be mistaken in the assumption that in society and especially in the realm of scientific research order results only from a combination of disorder and order. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01h202w1fcrw6t8a0we25c7ck2)) ^541274629