You say there is no choice to be a Jester, but I would ask if there’s other successful role responses to the information that we’re perpetual outsiders? What do you think those might be?

One theme that I recognized in this post but I'm not sure was explicitly articulated - the consultant is conceptualized here as someone who is attempting to be instrumentally rational (effectively affect change in the environment to match their goals) but is only able to do affect change through other people. The reason why it’s important to understand the org chart, social status, localized power, and power potholes is because as a consultant your power is exercised through other people.

This article may be of interest, as it drills in on this tension.

How Consultants Project Expertise and Learn at the Same Time https://hbr.org/2018/07/how-consultants-project-expertise-and-learn-at-the-same-time

Is this making a similar argument to VGR in "Don't build a hill to die on" about not planting a flag given incomplete context as to all the information the executive has? I'm interpreting this as making sure, with any suggestion I offer, that I'm prepared to respond to their feedback that I'm off base and adjust on the spot.

This is a really interesting point. Providing “finished” and “polished” [[deliverable]]s all of the time means people will take it as some final thing where they either agree and implement or don’t. Tightening the [[feedback loop]]s and allowing for [[iteration]] allows me to learn more and involve them in the process.

I remember one of my worst client engagements was early in my experience. I didn't share my work often until it felt fully fleshed out, which meant that I went months in before realizing at the point of a final presentation that I realized that I had my core assumptions about what they wanted all wrong. They didn't pay me the second half. That was an expensive lesson in my role as a consultant and the value of feedback on shorter cycles!

Can you define what you mean by social capital?

This relates to the idea of community porousness. What's the likelihood that an outsider is brought in? A slack group has very little porousness, whereas Twitter has high porousness.

An interesting example of this is with Roam's product community. It has a cozyweb home in a Slack group where people can help each other out without thinking of their public image as much, and on Twitter where their discussions double in purpose as evangelism.

Wouldn't this make strong ties into the ones who bridge communities? You post a request in your own cozyweb space, and the strong ties post it into their cozyweb space?

Or is the argument that people won't reshare it but they'll recommend individuals, and those recommended individuals are your weak ties?

Or is the argument that people in your cozyweb spaces are generally going to be weak ties themselves who want to look good for you and for the other people in the space by making recommendations?

Some come to mind for my own area of work. There's a subculture (very very early) of behavioral science practitioners I'm a part of, as well as gamification designers who actually play video games. I wonder how these subcultures develop?

It’s easier to facilitate and enable people to do something they already wanted to do than it is to convince people to do something they don’t want to do. It’s trite but easy to forget.

People keep using the research practices that they learned in school, and they stop learning. This is why it's important to be an [[autodidact]].

I haven’t thought about reducing [[note maintenance]] yet. I largely just use the [[develop]] tag for that. Interesting.

This is what tags is doing for me. Andy Matuschak has thoughts about this too (feedback loops and such) and I know he's not a huge fan of tags, but I can't ditch the thought that it really comes down to how you use them. I think it just depends on your usage, and I generally ask the question: “why not both?” Why is it always one or the other vs. one when it’s useful and the other when it’s useful? What are the situations where I would want one or the other?

Tags help me resurface things as I’m writing, especially if I use them to pull up linked references and related thoughts as I'm writing and then add to them/link to other things whenever they resurface in my review.

I like this idea that there is low creative self-esteem in someone who doesn’t search through and revive their notes. Part of why this article really isn't resonating with me is because apps I used with the file/folder/search approach didn't encourage me to actually review my past notes, whereas with Roam I can't imagine not looking through past notes when I'm working on projects.

I would like less lag time in adjusting and reformulating my searches as I go. The lag time at this point has more to do with how slow Roam is to render things than how slow the process could be, since the sidebar should allow you to pull up many things, explore new threads of thought, and change your question as you go. Thing is, text search with filtration is still powerful as a tag based search if you’re looking at purely functionally, but tagging also gears you towards asking, “when do I want this to resurface?” So you end up coming to more relevant stuff than simply what is written in the base text. This means you're more likely to resurface notes when you take a tagging approach because it gears you to behave differently towards your notes.

That being said, I don't see this as one or the other. Sometimes I think it's better to just search for a note with text. Only problem is that primarily works for searches where you can clearly formulate your question/goal, you know what you're looking for, and you know where to find it. That essentially turns search into something that requires memory, whereas tag based searches allow for exploratory browsing.

Definitely is some power usage to properly utilize this. That being said, this might also come down to a mindset. I set it up for exploratory browsing and filtering, which is a different goal than pulling up an exact phrase and has a different approach. What I mean by this is that I want my notes to take me to an answer or help me come up with an answer when I only have a fuzzy formulation of my question or goal. That being said, the ability to do hyper specific searches comes about as a result of that browsing orientation.

There’s also a middle ground that’s not super specific, but still helpful. I have tags for meeting notes, the people involved, and dates, so I can filter my searches by any of those things with queries and even just simple linked references filters. Not neurotic specific like Tiago is saying here, but still helpful for finding stuff when I don’t know exactly what I’m looking for. "Oh, I know it was something this person said and it was in the last month or so"

This could be true, it’s a good point. I come back to Conor’s framework of reduce, filter, and map though. If the user is doing behaviors along the way that reduce the amount of information they’ll see when they look in the future, filter to specify what you want, and then map it out to new contexts, then this bug becomes a feature. Progressive summarization helps in that process, and filter specific tags also helps, as well as straight up deleting things or applying an archive tag that you can always filter out.

This problem also gets reduced when you have aliases and hierarchy abilities along with the tags, because then you’re able to better express what you mean in fewer words/tags. Problem is that Roam doesn't have aliases yet to let the user reduce clutter in their pages and with the different ways that users express the same thing. Tags with bidirectional and unidirectional aliases allow us to express meaning, rather than remember specific words.

I think he might be referencing Barbara Tversky’s work? Mentioned in Mind in Motion. I think some sense of spatial orientation helps, but I really don’t see how that excludes tags and makes folders better. If anything, constantly drawing connections between things constantly helps you to spatially organize them closer or further away from each other.

We also think in terms of language. Roam essentially lets us write a language for ourselves for communicating with our notes, expressing meaning, and getting a response. The way we use tags as we're writing and later as we're reviewing is crucial.

Also, Bear’s approach to letting you have tags with hierarchy seems to be a happy medium.

Bidirectional and unidirectional aliases that díctate relationships for linked references and autocomplete reduces this problem. What do I mean by this?

Bidirectional: {[[pct]]=[[perceptual control theory]]} means that those are the same thing. If I write perceptual control theory, that's the same thing. This is bidirectional aliasing.

Unidirectional: {[[pct]]>[[behavioral science theories]]} would mean that every time I write pct, it recognizes that I'm referring to behavioral science theories and I'll see that when I'm looking through linked references to behavioral science theories, or when I type in behavioral science theories it will show pct and all other pages where that relationship has been outlined. The same is not true in reverse because it's unidirectional. Essentially, it's a hierarchical alias.

Aliases like this allow you to express meaning, so you can actually write things in multiple ways to mean the same thing. The current markdown aliases that are supported are essentially temporary unidirectional aliases.

The goal here is to let tags essentially be the language that I use to communicate with my notes. Permanent bidirectional and unidirectional aliases are unfortunately not yet supported by Roam, but this gets at the general point to me that the problem isn't with tags but with how you use them and how they functionally work.

Disagree. If anything I just think about that approach as inline search. I'm not sure if I see the problem, this approach is actually quite helpful.

This could be more nuanced. If you’re using tags repeatedly and making aliases, then that means you are actively recalling info in a consistent way and you have explicitly outlined the different ways that you refer to that concept. That’s pattern recognition and memory fuel. I kind of consider Roam to be a tool for enhancing pattern recognition.

Page autocomplete helps, intelligent approaches to making index pages as you go also helps, and aliases (bidirectional and unidirectional) would all help. Also letting me search things better in line, as well as showing me what unlinked references I could turn into linked references beside a block would be helpful so I don't miss things.

This is a feature, not a bug. With backlinks and unlinked references this problem goes away, especially if you can do aliases for tags. That being said, some of my workflows require tagging everything within a subset, and some tags can just be layered on continuously as the note resurfaces.

Plus, this is a problem with any note taking system people use that is too rigid.

Note taking system should not have too much process while you’re writing or else it gets cumbersome. Needs to be worth the cost benefit. I fully agree with this. Effort needs to lead to worthwhile value.

Agreed that this is the goal. I want that in my notes.

Again, functionally that’s how it works, but tags also let you/encourage you to input information that’s not in the base text but is related.

Aliases and hierarchy! Would also be helpful if the app suggested aliases to you based on frequent usages together or similar letter combinations.

This kills the ability to browse for information. Still works for straight search of “I know what I’m looking for and where to find it”

See my comment about pattern recognition above. The functionality of tagging can be set up so you have frequent/spaced repetition. Also sort of a feature, not a bug. If something doesn’t get consistently reinforced, then it should sink away. You just need to balance search strategies. Don’t always go in with one predefined query with filters. Let yourself follow train of thoughts, and if it resurfaced, then tag it up more then or build on it. If not, it probably wasn’t too valuable anyway.

You can also program your attention so some tags never go away by making index pages. I’d say this all just depends on your behavior with notes more than anything, I don’t think about it so much as tags vs. folders.

However, I would totally say that you need to behave a certain way with your notes or it does become unnecessary expenditure. If you aren’t searching your notes and conversing with them, you won’t see the benefits.

I’m sold that too high of an upfront cost is problematic. So it’s just about coming up with workflows and having functionality that allows the user to spend less time in the present for their future self, because while the cost can be high, the value is immense.

And [[priming]] isn't currently supported in the literature.

How does attention work? What we pay attention to is probably important as a mechanism of personality. Goal relevance, surprising expectation, both play into that. Threatening information.