Posted by MrVandemar 7 days ago
No, because the correctly identified concern by the author is much deeper. Knowledge isn't some repository of data, or some solipsistic LLM simulacrum of it, it's practiced, social, contextual. A real brain, unlike the "second brain", intentionally forgets.
To have agency is to purposefully erase, cut through BS, and start from a clean slate. Any person who has done anything meaningful starts with an empty sheet of paper. There's a reason all these note taking gurus have exactly zero actual work to their name, it's just productivity LARPing. Every single time you see one of these "productivity" advocates you try to look up if they've build something that has helped even one person with all their productivity, nothing. They just keep yapping about their notes.
Some ideas on how am I supposed to start hating my notes:
* They grow to 100MB, then it starts to be a burden
* I switch from notepad.exe to a dedicated application which somehow exploits my hobby of writing notes
* I develop OCD or something else
None of this seems very relatable. At this point, I might be writing a new note with these ideas, updating it when I get more ideas or when the one, most plausible explanation jumps out at me. Then I would read it years later and have something to think about before bed and have a good feeling that I didn't lose something and I am not left with thougths about the last episode of a TV show. Or is that supposed to be a bad feeling?
I’ll try to help.
> going through them and maintaining them and extending them is fun
It’s fun for you, not for everyone else. There, it’s as simple as that. All you need to understand is different people enjoy different things.
> Or is that supposed to be a bad feeling?
It’s not “supposed” to be anything. It will be good for some, bad for others, neutral for others still. There’s no objective right answer. If you enjoy something and it doesn’t harm anyone, do it. If you don’t enjoy it and it isn’t necessary, don’t do it. Other people will have different preferences.
"All you need to understand" is for insects.
I spent about an hour yesterday looking for the right combination, for the right model of Passat produced in the right year. A freaking hour of wasted time.
Been doing that every 2 year or something for the past decade.
You have no idea how many times I angered if only I had taken 30 seconds the last time to put the right YouTube link in an obsidian note.
Even if the second brain is messy, it's still your mess. Internet is even a bigger mess than that.
And to that, I'd add that a second brain should behave like a real brain in the way that our brain get rid of (what it thinks) is useless.
Your note should reflect on that and be cleaned up once a while for things that are not relevant anymore and should be disregarded, it doesn't negate the advantage of the second brain tho which is that it's able to retain much more information and even file. Good luck embedding a pdf or a tax report in your brain.