Finding order and relations (and their particular types), is a form of linking ideas found in some of the more complex zettelkasten and knowledge management spaces. It's not as explicit here and he doesn't seem to be focusing on stating or writing explicit links within his notes. He does, however, place some focus on the quality and types of links he's making (or at least thinking about), something which isn't frequently seen in the current PKM space. For example, no one is creating user interfaces that show links between ideas which are opposite (or in opposition or antonym relation) to each other.

I too have seen this before, though the directions may have been different.

When thinking about an idea, map it discretely. North on the compass rose is where the idea comes from, South is where it leads to, West leads to things similar to the idea while East are ideas that are the opposite of it.

This is useful in situating information, particularly with respect to the similarities and opposites. One must generally train themselves to think about the opposites.

Many of the directions are directly related to putting information into a zettelkasten, in particular where X comes from (source), where it leads (commentary or links to other ides), what's similar to x are links to either closely related ideas or to an index. The opposite of X is the one which is left out in this system too.

*The compass*: <br>Saw that one before. Ugh, didn't like it.<br><br>Thinking about it though, it's a fitting metaphor to look at a note from different directions. I'm going to add this to my notes template(Just to try). All my notes have North & could use some other perspectives 🎉<br><br>🧶4/4 pic.twitter.com/CJctmC5Y39

— Alex Qwxlea (@QwxleaA) June 14, 2022

Link to - Indigenous map conceptualizations - direction finding - method of loci

This is an intriguing off-label use case for Hypothes.is which is within the realm of peer-review use cases.

Dan is essentially using the idea of annotation as engagement within a textbook as a means of proactively improving it. He's mentioned it before in Hypothes.is Social (and Private) Annotation.

Because one can actively see the gaps without readers necessarily being aware of their "review", this may be a far better method than asking for active reviews of materials.

Reviewers are probably not as likely to actively mark sections they don't find engaging. Has anyone done research on this space for better improving texts? Certainly annotation provides a means for helping to do this.

A solid example of how western cultures dismiss non-literate cultures.

Many of the snippets here talk about what was in individual commonplace books and how their contents indicated what was admired. What about the negative image of all the things which were excluded?

What things did people read which they didn't commonplace? What does that say about them? Their times? The way they thought?

Could their commonplacing be compared with their marginalia to show what rose to certain levels of interest and what didn't? Digging through the records to find and verify marginalia may be incredibly tedious in comparison with specifically kept things.

Some of my own fleeting notes, which I keep because it's easy, may show some interesting things about the way I think in comparison to those things upon which I expand, keep, and value more for my work and my worldview.

Too often as humans we're focused on what is immediately in front of us and not what is missing.

This same thing plagues our science in that we're only publishing positive results and not negative results.

From an information theoretic perspective, we're throwing away half (or more?) of the information we're generating. We might be able to go much farther much faster if we were keeping and publishing all of our results in better fashion.

Is there a better word for this negative information? #openquestions