#associative memory

I HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY ABOUT THIS!

Now I don't actually know if this is a form of synesthesia, because I haven't researched that, but! It IS because of associative memory schemas that are very very strong. This can be linked to neurodivergence, like it is with me!

That said: all of the numbers have some interesting characteristics and I will tell you about them briefly

0: a warm and crisp ocean breeze, its color is "beach" (whatever that means), and it tastes like american smarties

1: red and it smells like must but not in a necessarily bad way? Like laundry you left in the wash too long

2: bubble gum pink but it smells like pine sol and tastes like snow melt

3: like letting go of a held breath, gold (definitely bc i LOVE Legend of Zelda) stinks like a bloody nose

4: literally just this

Smells like a warm copier

5: is an earthworm

6: hand sanitizer and graham crackers in a kindergarten aged baptist church classroom

7: turpentine

8: purple and shiny like a party hat, smells like freshly ground coffee beans

You need to look up ways to break associative memories (google “break memory associations”). There’s loads of techniques out there and I vaguely remember at uni they taught us how effective of them can be. 

Truthfully I’ve never used them myself with clients - it’s just never come up in casework, so I’m probably not the best person to ask about them. 

I usually do not spend much time chatting about pointless or purposeless topics, both because of my nature and because of the Buddhist precept of abstaining from idle chatter. Photo by Miguel u00c1. Padriu00f1u00e1n on Pexels.com Also, I notice that when I speak in a social gathering and the topic involves knowledge and learning, people find my style quite different from theirs, if not somewhat…

Tentative name.

Page-title-tag unity evolved from my older, simpler idea of page-tag duality, where each tag is/opens to it's own page, and each page is/can be referenced as it's own tag. Page-tags could be used as a page, as a tag, or both. I arrived at page-tags from observing the emergent structure of my RADA project on my old blog, where readers could "lilypad" across the loose jumble of notes at their own pace and control.

However, page-tags were too simple. Although applications like Logseq, Roam, and Exegenesis do have page-tag duality per their querying systems, it was not the elegant unity that I experienced with RADA. It would've been more accurate to say that my lilypadding was closer to a wikilink-tag duality (namely, writing in-line wikilinks in the below tags section of each post), with the associative recall and navigation emerging as a side effect.

Today, PTT accurately defines the mechanics of this tag-based lilypadding without the need for direct wikilinking features. In any given folder of notes:

Each page has a title.

Each title references a page.

Each title can be written and used as a tag.

Each title-tag references a page.

Title-tags can be appended and/or attached to other pages.

In sum, each title-tag is a soft reference/vector to that page.

The effects of PTT unity emerge with messiness and scale. By the simple work of adding ostensibly extraneous tags to single pages or notes (whether these title-tags are written in the text or not, leaving some elbow room up to the user), we can make higher associations while simultaneously enriching the original, in-person idea hinted by the tag-title and it's page. This means that each note associated to the original note is as much a native part of the text as the original text was. More simply, every referenced page-tag-title becomes part of the note, almost like it was part of the note to begin with. (This completely solves the problem of context in networked note-taking.)

PTT unity also satisfies the indexical nature of classic wikilinks, where the process of putting double brackets around the most important general concepts of the database (e.g. "shame", "antifragility") actually defines these concepts through the linked and unlinked references. This organic index becomes closer to a personal distributed glossary, where every concept begets detailed perspectives and subtle patterns. There is technically nothing stopping the user from tagging general concepts and aggregating masses of notes per tag, though they will have to reckon with the rapid inflation of text given that each note will be displayed in full.

Theory aside, PTT unity has the potential to supplant [[sequence-branch duality]] as an actual mechanic and not just an example for the PKM null theory. Again, sequence-branch duality tells us that we can read all radially branching linked notes in a linear sequence, and we can read all linear sequences as equal radial branches of a more fundamental topic or synthetic idea. In form, sequence-branch duality demonstrates that the arrangement of the notes does not matter so much their proximity does; this gives power back to the reader, and their navigation abilities as they explore the network.

Knowing that PTT unity literally appends/groups all referenced notes to the original note as a larger, developing topic, PTT immediately supercharges sequence-branch duality. If we can read all radially branching notes in a linear sequence, why not put those notes side-by-side or at the bottom of the original note? Further, if we can read all sequential notes as radial branches from a deeper or more synthetic idea, why not tag the entire sequence with that deeper idea and dissolve the linearity more readily?

If sequence-branch duality conjectures that many organizational structures are interchangeable and arbitrary, PTT unity executes it. Indeed, this is the raw power of associations. Associations are not direct links between two single points. Rather, they are (closer to) hypergraphs and overlapping regions between fuzzy categories. After all, we use ideas more than we really define them. By unlocking more accurate associations, we can better cut across specific experiences and information more external to ourselves, and generalize novel observations that can then be inspired and synthesized for our own purposes.

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See also:

[[Reinventing monism with the topological razor]]

This is an abstract of a future, planned, or unwritten essay or thread.

Most graph database applications shunt recall and resurfacing features to the side, in favor of reducing the friction around creating new notes. This is not bad in of itself, but it shifts the needle to collector's fallacy instead. Furthermore, lack of development around recall and resurfacing invariably makes it harder to for the user to truly recall their tireless note-taking.

I propose a prototypical, emergent architecture of a deconstructed "onion" from two simple principles.

For any one note, it should have no more than 4 outgoing links.

Each successive link goes "longer" when connecting to other notes, and is less reliably contextually congruent.

Forward links are a seminal aspect of this onion architecture. They are invariably stronger than backlinks; we think forward, rather than track backwards. They differentiate a swimming ocean or roiling cloud of notes and hone in on the most accurate or contextually congruent idea. On the other hand, backlinks are a feat of global integration. Backlinks are useful, but less familiar to how we think.

An example of this link stratification:

Original note: "organisms". Organisms are things that are alive.

The first link will be to a page about "alive" (the biological definition of living). This is because an organism is alive. It is a fundamental attribute to the concept.

The second link will go to a note about cells. This is because all organisms are made of cells.

The third forward link will go to a note about whales. This is because whales are an example of an organism.

The fourth link will go to a note about Earth. This is because, within the idea of biological systems emerging into singular entities, the Earth itself is the ultimate biological system and can be considered an organism.

How can I be too tired to talk, but seldom too tired to write?

Yesterday, I wrote about how I was way too fatigued to keep a social engagement and yet I managed to write a lengthy post for my blog; how is that possible? In fact, I seem to be doing it again, even though I consider myself to be “taking a break”…so, if I have so much to say, and so much stamina to write it, why couldn’t I have just gone and done that face-to-face? Why does one feel so easy and…

Do you have an associative memory?

Associative memories work by linking new data to existing data. This means that when you study, you may not retain or recall it because you can't associate the information in the book to what you know already?

This also means that memories are linked to places, people, things, events, emotions ... So, unless or until you are back in that space or moment you may be unable to recall a conversation