Something interesting happens when one draws on a whiteboard ⬜✍️while talking.
Even drawing 🌀an arbitrary squiggle while making a point makes me more likely to remember it, whereas points made without squiggles are more easily forgotten.
This is a powerful observation.
We can chunk complex ideas into simple pointers.
This means I can use 2d surfaces as a thinking tool in a new way. I don’t have to process content by extending strings over time, and forcibly feeding an exact trail of thought into my mind by navigating with my eyes. Instead I can distill the entire scenario into 🔭a single, manageable, overviewable whole—and do so in a way which leaves room for my own trails and 🕸️networks of thought.
At a glance I remember what was said, without having to spend mental effort keeping track of that. This allows me to focus more fully on what’s important.
In the same way, I’ve started to like using emojis in 😃📄essays and other documents. They feel like a spiritual counterpart of whiteboard squiggles.
I’m quite excited about this. In future I intend to 🧪experiment more with it.
I think random objects might work in a similar way. e.g. if talking in a restaurant, you grab the ketchup bottle and the salt to represent your point. I’ve only experimented with this once, with ultimately quite an elaborate set of condiments, tableware and fries involved. It seemed to make things more memorable and followable, but I wasn’t much inclined to do it more for some reason. Possibly at that scale it was a lot of effort beyond the conversation.
Things I see around me sometimes get involved in my thoughts in a way that seems related. For instance, if I’m thinking about the interactions of two orgs while I’m near some trees, two of the trees will come to represent the two orgs, and my thoughts about how they should interact will echo ways that the trees are interacting, without me intending this.
Oh, I totally didn’t mean it in an adversarial tone, only in a playful tone. I am generally in favor of people experimenting with weird content formats, I just had an unusually strong emotional reaction to this one, which seemed good to share without trying to imply any kind of judgement.
Can do a more detailed introspective pass later, just seemed good to clear up the tone.
(Potential reason for confusion: “don’t endorse it” in habryka’s first comment could be interpreted as not endorsing “this comment”, when habryka actually said he didn’t endorse his emotional reaction to the comment.)
I am quite uncertain but have an intuition that there should be an expectation of more justification accompanying stronger negative aversions (and “hate” is about as strong as it gets).
(Naturally not everything has to be fully justified, that’s an unbearable demand which will stifle lots of important discourse. This is rather a point about the degree to which different things should be, and how communities should make an unfortunate trade-off to avoid Moloch when communicating aversions.)
Something interesting happens when one draws on a whiteboard ⬜✍️while talking.
Even drawing 🌀an arbitrary squiggle while making a point makes me more likely to remember it, whereas points made without squiggles are more easily forgotten.
This is a powerful observation.
We can chunk complex ideas into simple pointers.
This means I can use 2d surfaces as a thinking tool in a new way. I don’t have to process content by extending strings over time, and forcibly feeding an exact trail of thought into my mind by navigating with my eyes. Instead I can distill the entire scenario into 🔭a single, manageable, overviewable whole—and do so in a way which leaves room for my own trails and 🕸️networks of thought.
At a glance I remember what was said, without having to spend mental effort keeping track of that. This allows me to focus more fully on what’s important.
In the same way, I’ve started to like using emojis in 😃📄essays and other documents. They feel like a spiritual counterpart of whiteboard squiggles.
I’m quite excited about this. In future I intend to 🧪experiment more with it.
I think random objects might work in a similar way. e.g. if talking in a restaurant, you grab the ketchup bottle and the salt to represent your point. I’ve only experimented with this once, with ultimately quite an elaborate set of condiments, tableware and fries involved. It seemed to make things more memorable and followable, but I wasn’t much inclined to do it more for some reason. Possibly at that scale it was a lot of effort beyond the conversation.
Things I see around me sometimes get involved in my thoughts in a way that seems related. For instance, if I’m thinking about the interactions of two orgs while I’m near some trees, two of the trees will come to represent the two orgs, and my thoughts about how they should interact will echo ways that the trees are interacting, without me intending this.
I… am surprised by how much I hate this comment. I very likely don’t endorse it, but I sure seem to have some kind of adverse reaction to emojis.
Well, I strong downvoted because adversarial tone, though I’d be pretty excited about fighting about this in the right kind of way.
Curious if you could introspect/tell me more about the aversion?
Oh, I totally didn’t mean it in an adversarial tone, only in a playful tone. I am generally in favor of people experimenting with weird content formats, I just had an unusually strong emotional reaction to this one, which seemed good to share without trying to imply any kind of judgement.
Can do a more detailed introspective pass later, just seemed good to clear up the tone.
(Potential reason for confusion: “don’t endorse it” in habryka’s first comment could be interpreted as not endorsing “this comment”, when habryka actually said he didn’t endorse his emotional reaction to the comment.)
Oh, that would make a bunch of sense. Yes, the “it” was referring to my emotional reaction, not the comment.
Ah! I read “it” as the comment. That does change my mind about how adversarial it was.
I am quite uncertain but have an intuition that there should be an expectation of more justification accompanying stronger negative aversions (and “hate” is about as strong as it gets).
(Naturally not everything has to be fully justified, that’s an unbearable demand which will stifle lots of important discourse. This is rather a point about the degree to which different things should be, and how communities should make an unfortunate trade-off to avoid Moloch when communicating aversions.)