5 ms·

Interesting idea, but could you elaborate on the practical side of this? Here's my take on this, in the form a ramble: Intellisense works really well for code

Interesting idea, but could you elaborate on the practical side of this? Here's my take on this, in the form a ramble: Intellisense works really well for code because there's a finite set of, for instance, methods you can call on a certain object - so I'm assuming you mean something that's more than just autocompletion. I'm not really sure language on its own is powerful enough to handle ideas. When I think of organising thoughts and ideas I normally think of a mind map type of thing. However, mind map software is too restrictive in terms of what you can create. A sheet of paper + pen is an excellent tool for noting down ideas and thoughts, but paper is finite and ink is irreversible: you can't move around/delete stuff. I also sometimes have trouble with situations where idea A and idea B are related, but are situated at two completely ends of a mind map graph. So this might mean dispensing with two-dimensional mind maps entirely, but I struggle to imagine a non-annoying way of displaying a mind map in 3D.

miguelrochefort 13y ago
"Thought" might be a better term than "ideas". The purpose of such a tool is not to brainstorm, but to communicate. We communicate using natural languages. If you check Twitter, you'll see people write down all kind of thoughts and information. But this information is not semantic, and only a human (or NLP) can make sense of what is said. When people communicate, it's either to make a statement about the past ("I ate sushis"), about the present ("I'm in Las Vegas"), or about the future ("I want to watch Terminator 2"). The past and present (which actually are the same) are simple declaration about reality. The future is all about wishes and intents. Of course, you could add another dimension/mode (reality/fiction). In fiction, past/present could be "I wish Hitler wasn't born" and the future could be "I want to work at Google". In reality, you would say "Dinosaurs existed" (past/present) and "There will be an hurricane tomorrow" (future). The difference is that the future is no longer a wish, but a prediction (as we're dealing with reality). I want people to be able to communicate the following ideas without just relying on boring text: - The Lego Movie was great. - I want to be in NYC by noon. - I'm interested in Bitcoin. - Lock my house's doors. - I want to wake up at 7AM every monday. - I'd love to attent to the next Metallica concert in Barcelona. - It's rainy in Vancouver. - Where is my car? - Turn on the oven to high. The above statements should be purely semantic. I should be able to click on "Metallica" and get more information about them. I should be able to click on "event" and see where and when it takes place. I should be able to click on "car" and see exactly what car he's referring to. I want statements to be elevated to a level where they have meaning, and that text only is a single representation of these ideas. You're in Vancouver? You won't see "It's rainy in Vancouver". You'll see "It's rainy (here)". If you don't know what Bitcoin is, you might see "John Doe is interested in [insert a short summary about what Bitcoin is]". If you're metallica, you'll probably see "3723 people want to see you in Barcelona". If you're the oven, you'll probably understand "Heat up to 500 F". Now, the above statements are simple and don't show why someone would need an IDE for thoughts (NLP + manual confirmation would be enough in many cases). But people shouldn't limit what they think to 140 characters either. They should be able to express complex ideas such as (a product review): "iphone" -> "Do you mean iPhone 5S ..." -> Yes "display" -> "Are you referring to the display of the iPhone ..." -> Yes - Glossy - Cracked - Too Dim -> Yes - _____________ ... As you can see above, it's not easy to express complex interactions with text. But the idea is that you can input any keyword representing a "thing" (object, attribute, value), and continue adding nodes by searching for them with keywords until you have the elements you want to refer to. Then, you can drag relations between them and see suggestions based on likeliness and what not. It would of course infer things based on past statements and what it knows about you. When writing a product review, people don't always know where to start, and often repeat things that other have said. By being able to refer to specific aspects of a product, see what others have said and confirm/infirm their statement (upvote/downvote), as well as build on top of it is probably a better way to converge meaning than to ask potential buyers to read through all of them manually. Maybe this should have his own idea thread. Basically, I want a semantic version of Twitter that can suggest me things I can say about things I want to talk about, and let me endorse an existing statement instead of repeating it.
- sitkack 13y ago
  I see it doing reverse stemming so that the nouns and verbs in the AST are more simple, like annotating verbs and nouns with a temporal tag. You type in english, and it generates an AST on the fly. This would allow conversations to line up and be searchable by content rather than just text. If the software isn't continually improved I could see it dumbing down the grammar that the group uses. It could enforce a defacto double-speak. Another nice side effect, is that you could search by concept. I find this very very difficult with current search tools.
  - miguelrochefort 13y ago
    That's the plan.
pjbrunet 13y ago
"sometimes have trouble with situations where idea A and idea B are related, but are situated at two completely ends of a mind map" Freemind has an arrow that can jump branches. Also you can drag A to B, flip a branch up, down, to either side, etc. No such thing as opposite ends. Also I think you can hyperlink A to B.

miguelrochefort 13y ago

"Thought" might be a better term than "ideas". The purpose of such a tool is not to brainstorm, but to communicate. We communicate using natural languages. If you check Twitter, you'll see people write down all kind of thoughts and information. But this information is not semantic, and only a human (or NLP) can make sense of what is said. When people communicate, it's either to make a statement about the past ("I ate sushis"), about the present ("I'm in Las Vegas"), or about the future ("I want to watch Terminator 2"). The past and present (which actually are the same) are simple declaration about reality. The future is all about wishes and intents. Of course, you could add another dimension/mode (reality/fiction). In fiction, past/present could be "I wish Hitler wasn't born" and the future could be "I want to work at Google". In reality, you would say "Dinosaurs existed" (past/present) and "There will be an hurricane tomorrow" (future). The difference is that the future is no longer a wish, but a prediction (as we're dealing with reality). I want people to be able to communicate the following ideas without just relying on boring text: - The Lego Movie was great. - I want to be in NYC by noon. - I'm interested in Bitcoin. - Lock my house's doors. - I want to wake up at 7AM every monday. - I'd love to attent to the next Metallica concert in Barcelona. - It's rainy in Vancouver. - Where is my car? - Turn on the oven to high. The above statements should be purely semantic. I should be able to click on "Metallica" and get more information about them. I should be able to click on "event" and see where and when it takes place. I should be able to click on "car" and see exactly what car he's referring to. I want statements to be elevated to a level where they have meaning, and that text only is a single representation of these ideas. You're in Vancouver? You won't see "It's rainy in Vancouver". You'll see "It's rainy (here)". If you don't know what Bitcoin is, you might see "John Doe is interested in [insert a short summary about what Bitcoin is]". If you're metallica, you'll probably see "3723 people want to see you in Barcelona". If you're the oven, you'll probably understand "Heat up to 500 F". Now, the above statements are simple and don't show why someone would need an IDE for thoughts (NLP + manual confirmation would be enough in many cases). But people shouldn't limit what they think to 140 characters either. They should be able to express complex ideas such as (a product review): "iphone" -> "Do you mean iPhone 5S ..." -> Yes "display" -> "Are you referring to the display of the iPhone ..." -> Yes - Glossy - Cracked - Too Dim -> Yes - _____________ ... As you can see above, it's not easy to express complex interactions with text. But the idea is that you can input any keyword representing a "thing" (object, attribute, value), and continue adding nodes by searching for them with keywords until you have the elements you want to refer to. Then, you can drag relations between them and see suggestions based on likeliness and what not. It would of course infer things based on past statements and what it knows about you. When writing a product review, people don't always know where to start, and often repeat things that other have said. By being able to refer to specific aspects of a product, see what others have said and confirm/infirm their statement (upvote/downvote), as well as build on top of it is probably a better way to converge meaning than to ask potential buyers to read through all of them manually. Maybe this should have his own idea thread. Basically, I want a semantic version of Twitter that can suggest me things I can say about things I want to talk about, and let me endorse an existing statement instead of repeating it.

sitkack 13y ago
I see it doing reverse stemming so that the nouns and verbs in the AST are more simple, like annotating verbs and nouns with a temporal tag. You type in english, and it generates an AST on the fly. This would allow conversations to line up and be searchable by content rather than just text. If the software isn't continually improved I could see it dumbing down the grammar that the group uses. It could enforce a defacto double-speak. Another nice side effect, is that you could search by concept. I find this very very difficult with current search tools.
- miguelrochefort 13y ago
  That's the plan.

pjbrunet 13y ago

"sometimes have trouble with situations where idea A and idea B are related, but are situated at two completely ends of a mind map" Freemind has an arrow that can jump branches. Also you can drag A to B, flip a branch up, down, to either side, etc. No such thing as opposite ends. Also I think you can hyperlink A to B.