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I think, I have a hard time seeing the big use from such software, because my work doesn't really require such a reference library. A searchable collection of

I think, I have a hard time seeing the big use from such software, because my work doesn't really require such a reference library. A searchable collection of data is great if you have a use case that actually depends on such a collection, like writing a paper, news article or doing (academic) research on some topic. Maybe to ask a better question, what data do you want to collect and what are you using the data for exactly?

Jeff_Brown 7y ago
I haven't really migrated from Semantic Synchrony[1] to Hode yet. But my use case is almost everything that passes through my brain -- to-do lists, tech notes, things to read, people, places, jobs, companies, economics, artists, music theory, comedic theory, information theory, nutrition, love ... [1] https://github.com/synchrony/smsn/ https://github.com/synchrony/smsn/
Jeff_Brown 7y ago
The details of what I record (in another comment[1]) might be idiosyncratic and uninteresting to you. Those details aren't important. The important point is that so much information belongs in multiple places. A single statement, let alone article or book, might regard all of economics, justice, common sense and beauty. It might be about parsing, Haskell, and keeping data types flexible. I'd like to be able to search based on any of those things. If there were a clean distinction between entities and tags, existing solutions would be enough. But what if you want to draw a relationship between two relationships? Most sentences longer than three words, after all, are higher-order relationships. ("Birds #avoid beetles ##because beetles #are hard to digest", for instance, is a second-order because relationship joining two first-order relationships.) The searches Mr. Borichevskiy imagined are, I think, good arguments for why you would want to be able to encode arbitrary higher-order information. I believe Hode is the simplest solution possible that allows it. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21665698 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21665698
- eXpl0it3r 7y ago
  How often do you look stuff up that's older than say a week? Personally, I'm kind of glad to soak up information as I go and being able to just forget everything else. As opposed to constantly feeling the need to tag, sort, archive, reference, cross-reference, keep track of information, that future self will to 99.9% never actually need. Yet, I wonder whether use cases start to materialize, once you start using it...
  - Jeff_Brown 7y ago
    Projects and how-to notes, pretty regularly. Abstract concepts like comedy, maybe yearly. It's definitely an art, knowing what to bother ingesting into the system. I have erred on both sides. Federation could reduce the hurdle -- both reducing the need to ingest, and the difficulty of doing so. Borichevskiy (author of article that generated this thread) nods at the idea of using someone else's index of books. Such labor-sharing could be much more general. I don't want to suggest, though, that ingesting something is a waste of time if you don't review it. That's true of boilerplate metadata like ISBN numbers. But for original ideas, or for paraphrased insights gleaned from reading online, I find that sticking it into the graph produces value at the moment it's done. The rigor of compressing an idea to a few words, and determining which adjacent concepts it bears on, and how, has helped me understand things. (Teachers often ask their students to state things in their own words. It's like that, but faster and harder. Like punk rock for essays.)

Jeff_Brown 7y ago

I haven't really migrated from Semantic Synchrony[1] to Hode yet. But my use case is almost everything that passes through my brain -- to-do lists, tech notes, things to read, people, places, jobs, companies, economics, artists, music theory, comedic theory, information theory, nutrition, love ... [1] https://github.com/synchrony/smsn/ https://github.com/synchrony/smsn/

Jeff_Brown 7y ago

The details of what I record (in another comment[1]) might be idiosyncratic and uninteresting to you. Those details aren't important. The important point is that so much information belongs in multiple places. A single statement, let alone article or book, might regard all of economics, justice, common sense and beauty. It might be about parsing, Haskell, and keeping data types flexible. I'd like to be able to search based on any of those things. If there were a clean distinction between entities and tags, existing solutions would be enough. But what if you want to draw a relationship between two relationships? Most sentences longer than three words, after all, are higher-order relationships. ("Birds #avoid beetles ##because beetles #are hard to digest", for instance, is a second-order because relationship joining two first-order relationships.) The searches Mr. Borichevskiy imagined are, I think, good arguments for why you would want to be able to encode arbitrary higher-order information. I believe Hode is the simplest solution possible that allows it. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21665698 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21665698

eXpl0it3r 7y ago
How often do you look stuff up that's older than say a week? Personally, I'm kind of glad to soak up information as I go and being able to just forget everything else. As opposed to constantly feeling the need to tag, sort, archive, reference, cross-reference, keep track of information, that future self will to 99.9% never actually need. Yet, I wonder whether use cases start to materialize, once you start using it...
- Jeff_Brown 7y ago
  Projects and how-to notes, pretty regularly. Abstract concepts like comedy, maybe yearly. It's definitely an art, knowing what to bother ingesting into the system. I have erred on both sides. Federation could reduce the hurdle -- both reducing the need to ingest, and the difficulty of doing so. Borichevskiy (author of article that generated this thread) nods at the idea of using someone else's index of books. Such labor-sharing could be much more general. I don't want to suggest, though, that ingesting something is a waste of time if you don't review it. That's true of boilerplate metadata like ISBN numbers. But for original ideas, or for paraphrased insights gleaned from reading online, I find that sticking it into the graph produces value at the moment it's done. The rigor of compressing an idea to a few words, and determining which adjacent concepts it bears on, and how, has helped me understand things. (Teachers often ask their students to state things in their own words. It's like that, but faster and harder. Like punk rock for essays.)