Hacker News Reader

Comment by exp1orer | Hacker News Reader

This was the bit that got me:

> People have this aspirational idea of building a vast, oppressively colossal, deeply interlinked knowledge graph to the point that it almost mirrors every discrete concept and memory in their brain. And I get the appeal of maximalism. But they’re counting on the wrong side of the ledger. Every node in your knowledge graph is a debt. Every link doubly so.

View on HN

One idea suggested by Antinet Zettelkasten is to set up an analog system that acts as a "second brain." Interacting with these boxes of notecards is supposed to be a form of discourse, enabling surprising associations and strengthening existing memories.

The argument against a digital form is that this kind of interaction occurs at a neural level that just is impossible without deliberate reflection of handwritten material.

It's important to mention this system is worthless to merely contain information. The point is to publish works that synthesize these ideas. Otherwise, it's just a form of knowledge Pokemon.

Feel like the fresh take is really that you can’t just synthesize new ideas by rearranging the ideas that you suck up from the inter-nets, no matter how much offline fermentation you put them through. Similar to how “publish or perish” merely results in incremental, nearly worthless ideas being sold as breakthroughs. Maybe people need to internalize twitter as a source of jokes amd entertainment, not insight. Maybe alcohol and psychelics need to be seen as brain damaging instead of vision inducing.

The same can be said for using an "antinet" (insert "stop trying to make it happen" meme).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com