Interesting thread, but I disagree with taking Don’t Repeat Yourself to an extreme. I want to be able to speak fluidly without notes about the subjects in my notes. Part of what lets me do that is rewriting ideas with different wordings.
https://twitter.com/JoshuaLelon/status/1251679471935127552
There was a period of time where I tried to use block or page refs literally any time I thought I had written about something before, but I ultimately realized that this amounts to rereading my notes rather than explaining myself in new ways, so it was hindering my recall.
I'll add that in addition to recall, it's helpful for creativity. If I first write down my new thought or way of explaining it, and then I pull up what I've written before, that gives me more diverse ideas and phrasings to compare and synthesize.
It's like how in group brainstorming sessions, you'll generally end up w/ more ideas to discuss if everybody first comes up with ideas on their own before they come together. The alternative is 5 people get together, the first ideas anchor the group, and less ideas are generated
Learning Clojure, there's this really cool idea of using a REPL, creating a very tight feedback loop between writing a function and seeing its output. What if you write a claim and thoughts, open up past related thoughts, and compared? Rapid loop b/w new ideas and experience
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