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LiquidText: A tool for academical note taking

liquidtext.net

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Re: LiquidText: A tool for academical note taking

#61

Ok, grammar nazi alert. Who uses the word academical? I had to google it just to confirm it is indeed a word, albeit a rarely used one that is indistinguishable from the simpler, and in my opinion, the proper word, “academic”. A bit like saying “that’s nonsensical” vs “that’s nonsense’. https://wikidiff.com/academic/academical

maybe a non-native english speaker

Re: LiquidText: A tool for academical note taking

#62

Ok, grammar nazi alert. Who uses the word academical? I had to google it just to confirm it is indeed a word, albeit a rarely used one that is indistinguishable from the simpler, and in my opinion, the proper word, “academic”. A bit like saying “that’s nonsensical” vs “that’s nonsense’. https://wikidiff.com/academic/academical

Why be so polemical?

I know, I’m insufferableical. I need a vacationical.

Re: LiquidText: A tool for academical note taking

#64

I am more and more reluctant to use any note taking app. Ideally, notes I take on the book I am reading today should still be available to me in 20 years. No app can offer that kind of guarantee. I switched to using plaintext files, and do not look back. The only thing one needs is to have a clear workflow to make sure notes remain accessible and useful. I like the Zettelkasten method for this (see eg https://zettelk…

> Ideally, notes I take on the book I am reading today should still be available to me in 20 years.

Personal opinion : I think this is not the right way to look at knowledge. What you think as "knowledge" today will only be data for algorithms in 10 years. Some knowledge today won't be useful in 5, 10 o 20 years from now.

The best way to validate knowledge is to share it and review it with peers as quickly as possible. Ideally, you would make your notes public and they would be easily findable by anyone, so anyone can continue your work at anytime.

Note taking for long term retrieval doesn't make sense in a world of internet and machine learning. In the future, you will just enter a question in a text box and algorithms will search inside billions of documents, deduce facts and write an essay to answer your question.

To me, note taking only makes sense for very short term "todo", or when to listening to someone speak. "Note taking" when reading a book is called "annotating", and they are training data for ML algorithms (not for your brain)

Re: LiquidText: A tool for academical note taking

#65

Ok, grammar nazi alert. Who uses the word academical? I had to google it just to confirm it is indeed a word, albeit a rarely used one that is indistinguishable from the simpler, and in my opinion, the proper word, “academic”. A bit like saying “that’s nonsensical” vs “that’s nonsense’. https://wikidiff.com/academic/academical

maybe a non-native english speaker

Probably. The irony is palpableical. Reminds me of this article I read recently. I could understand it, but it was like reading a foreign language https://www.google.com/amp/s/thedigitalwise.com/2020/03/14/a....

Re: LiquidText: A tool for academical note taking

#66
post #64

I am more and more reluctant to use any note taking app. Ideally, notes I take on the book I am reading today should still be available to me in 20 years. No app can offer that kind of guarantee. I switched to using plaintext files, and do not look back. The only thing one needs is to have a clear workflow to make sure notes remain accessible and useful. I like the Zettelkasten method for this (see eg https://zettelk…

> Ideally, notes I take on the book I am reading today should still be available to me in 20 years. Personal opinion : I think this is not the right way to look at knowledge. What you think as "knowledge" today will only be data for algorithms in 10 years. Some knowledge today won't be useful in 5, 10 o 20 years from now. The best way to validate knowledge is to share it and review it with peers as quickly as possibl…

> Note taking for long term retrieval doesn't make sense in a world of internet and machine learning. In the future, you will just enter a question in a text box and algorithms will search inside billions of documents, deduce facts and write an essay to answer your question.

That is a narrow view of the reasons people take notes on books. One might want to save one's personal impressions of a piece of fiction, ideas about superficially unrelated concepts that suggest themselves, etc.

Re: LiquidText: A tool for academical note taking

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

maybe a non-native english speaker

Probably. The irony is palpableical. Reminds me of this article I read recently. I could understand it, but it was like reading a foreign language https://www.google.com/amp/s/thedigitalwise.com/2020/03/14/a... .

This is fantastical. What's the deal with the writing? Right now by bots for bots?

Re: LiquidText: A tool for academical note taking

#69
post #66
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ideally, notes I take on the book I am reading today should still be available to me in 20 years. Personal opinion : I think this is not the right way to look at knowledge. What you think as "knowledge" today will only be data for algorithms in 10 years. Some knowledge today won't be useful in 5, 10 o 20 years from now. The best way to validate knowledge is to share it and review it with peers as quickly as possibl…

> Note taking for long term retrieval doesn't make sense in a world of internet and machine learning. In the future, you will just enter a question in a text box and algorithms will search inside billions of documents, deduce facts and write an essay to answer your question. That is a narrow view of the reasons people take notes on books. One might want to save one's personal impressions of a piece of fiction, ideas…

I agree. Note taking can be about identifying facts, interesting ideas or arguments but it can also be about arguing with the author, making links or recording your own understanding. The activity of taking notes, for me, is really about codifying your understanding of a section of text.

Re: LiquidText: A tool for academical note taking

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably. The irony is palpableical. Reminds me of this article I read recently. I could understand it, but it was like reading a foreign language https://www.google.com/amp/s/thedigitalwise.com/2020/03/14/a... .

This is fantastical. What's the deal with the writing? Right now by bots for bots?

That is a category of non-native speaker that I hadn't considered until you mentioned it. A bot. Perhaps the author of this post, and the article I mentioned aren't human at all. They could be bots. Sorry for being robophobical. These are anxious times we are in.
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