Thread by @Conaw

Realized tonight that this tweet was actually pretty important.

Allowed me to see some things about what I've been working with @RoamResearch for (give or take) the past 4-6 years with fresh eyes

https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1199575415393619968

@RoamResearch There is a way in which the whole point of @RoamResearch is to allow everyone in the world to "DO SCIENCE" in every part of their lives.

@RoamResearch By DO SCIENCE, I mean...

1) Make observations

2) Sometimes.. conduct experiments to give you new things to observe

3) Seek out "Good Explanations" that account for what you've found (and more)

4) Test explanations as new observations come in

@RoamResearch A "Good Explanation" -- leaning on @DavidDeutschOxf's term here

A) Accounts for the data

B) Makes "surprising facts" seem obvious

C) is far-reaching -- ideally explaining some things you weren't focused on when coming up with it

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explanato…

@RoamResearch @DavidDeutschOxf Sometimes we see ourselves best when we see ourselves through the eyes of another

@vgr's post was enlightening in a few ways.

First, he held up a mirror and showed me something I hadn't see about myself before

@RoamResearch @DavidDeutschOxf @vgr For those unfamiliar with Fox and Hedgehog distinction, the general idea is (as I understand it)

A Hedgehog has one big idea - they see the world through a particular lens (think Marxism, or Christianity)

A Fox has a lot of small ideas, they're more fluid

@RoamResearch @DavidDeutschOxf @vgr Venkat's written a bunch more about this - taken the idea further, and characteristically turned it into a 2x2

https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1199577154356334594

@RoamResearch @DavidDeutschOxf @vgr Historically I've tended to think of myself more as a Hedgehog.

For at least the last 12 years, I've tended to put a huge amount of intellectual effort into trying to figure out and articulate my "Grand Unified Theory of Everything"

@RoamResearch @DavidDeutschOxf @vgr Evolution, Predictive Processing, Christianity, Psychedelics, The Simulation Argument, Clojure, The Memex, Post-Capitalism, FOSS, Startups...

@paulg , @richhickey, Julian Jaynes, Doug Engelbart...

All of em are connected in my head

@RoamResearch @DavidDeutschOxf @vgr @paulg @richhickey The trouble for me has always been, how do I lay out this tangled web so that others can FOLLOW IT

ADD to it

CRITIQUE it

IMPROVE it

@RoamResearch @DavidDeutschOxf @vgr @paulg @richhickey When I tried to do even a tiny portion of this in college -- connecting ideas around political legitimacy, moral psychology, web-based collective intelligence, and the startup I was doing @Localocracy -- it totally spiraled out of control

@RoamResearch @DavidDeutschOxf @vgr @paulg @richhickey @Localocracy Result was that I never got to a thesis I was comfortable permanently attaching my name to in the university archives

So I chose to drop out - even though my advisor was happy with the draft.. was basically formatting changes away from degree.

@RoamResearch @DavidDeutschOxf @vgr @paulg @richhickey @Localocracy Viscerally remember the months and months of cut up drafts laid out on the table, circles and arrows drawn on the whiteboard, trying to make the pieces fit.

Same pain again when putting together conference talks for Aol/HuffPost after startup was acquired

@RoamResearch @DavidDeutschOxf @vgr @paulg @richhickey @Localocracy Still, always thought I was a hedgehog with inability to clearly see and articulate the unifying theory I felt intuitively was there (always missing 1 LAST thread to tie it all together)

Never saw myself as a fox trying to reverse engineer a worldview from distinct observations

@RoamResearch @DavidDeutschOxf @vgr @paulg @richhickey @Localocracy On reflection though, I think @vgr's totally right. And @RoamResearch as a product totally has that bias built in.

One of the first times we were mentioned on twitter was a recommendation for someone looking for an app to map out conspiracy theories

https://twitter.com/ben_r_hoffman/status/1131079009989742593

@RoamResearch @DavidDeutschOxf @vgr @paulg @richhickey @Localocracy I've had a bit of trouble when people ask for use cases for Roam, because to me, team, and a lot of early adopters, it's useful for pretty much everything

Projects / Tasks / Project Management
Meeting and Reading Notes
Journaling and Writing

Thing is... we're mostly all insane

@RoamResearch @DavidDeutschOxf @vgr @paulg @richhickey @Localocracy There are a lot of different ways to use Roam, mine is among the messier ways, but enough people have asked that I decided to just do a full work session in our public help database tonight, the same way I do writing sessions in our team Roam.

roamresearch.com/#/v8/help/page…

@RoamResearch @DavidDeutschOxf @vgr @paulg @richhickey @Localocracy That link shows a bunch of the idiosyncratic ways I personally use the tool.

Timestamping things to keep track of my attention, seeing when I am in and out of flow.

Following tangents, references to previous blocks to pull my attention back, throwing in TODOs as I think of em.

@RoamResearch @DavidDeutschOxf @vgr @paulg @richhickey @Localocracy What was interesting about this session in particular though, is that it turned out to be particularly generative.

Helped me pull together a GRAND UNIFYING THEORY of what is motivating people (+ me) to do all these things in Roam that they could be doing in a dozen separate apps

@RoamResearch @DavidDeutschOxf @vgr @paulg @richhickey @Localocracy Roam is a tool that offers the promise of helping you build a GRAND UNIFYING THEORY (or two or three or four)

And debugging it

And sharing it with others

@RoamResearch @DavidDeutschOxf @vgr @paulg @richhickey @Localocracy Whether we can deliver on that remains to be seen

It's an experiment you test by trying it (a thing perhaps worth considering if you trust the people saying #roamcult on twitter)

@RoamResearch @DavidDeutschOxf @vgr @paulg @richhickey @Localocracy But the building blocks are there for natural foxes to build a hedgehog second brain

https://twitter.com/kylemathews/status/1192517571997683712

@RoamResearch @DavidDeutschOxf @vgr @paulg @richhickey @Localocracy The reason you take meeting notes in Roam, and journal in Roam, and track your time in Roam, and store your reading notes in Roam, and map arguments in Roam

Is that you want to use those as building blocks to find Good Explanations for larger patterns in your life.

@RoamResearch @DavidDeutschOxf @vgr @paulg @richhickey @Localocracy That's the Grail Quest at least

@RoamResearch @DavidDeutschOxf @vgr @paulg @richhickey @Localocracy Also -- obligatory @visakanv reference

So true in this case. Big ups @vgr. Thread that prompted this very very much appreciated.

https://twitter.com/visakanv/status/1040450987754811392