Thread by @ArchLeucoryx

@logseq, you've stolen my heart (well, maybe neurons). a thread... 🧵

i was checking my inbox one day and it turns out i had gotten access to mem.ai after signing up and getting on their waitlist. so i thought, okay, let's check this out, i'm eager for a new toy.

but a few minutes after opening the application and learning the ropes, i noticed it was another "entry-based" knowledge base, akin to Obsidian.md.

"mems" are literally structured as discrete pieces of information. they're 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘳𝘴 for information.

compare that to Logseq's "blocks", which are more like individual bullet points. it's possible to stuff a whole entry into a bullet point, but it's far better to atomize and stack more and more blocks as needed for further elaboration. it's that much closer to classic notetaking.

blocks are underrated, honestly.

i don't know if it's because i'm a zoomer/internet native but i feel like a lot of people fail to recognize how discrete journal-based knowledge bases are. not limited, not inferior, but discrete.

journal-based knowledge bases are a deck of cards. they're leaves on a tree. they're a memory palace with the locomotion to match.

yet these individual entries are still individual entries. they're discrete portions of information however you spin it.

and you know, for most people, that's fine. they might even benefit very well from this differentiation of thought; to structure ideas and bind them to a closer conceptual plane, for manipulation and all.

but i'm not a person that flies across the page with 10 new entries for every entry that's written. much of #metacognition involves memetic differentiation, but we fail to grasp--or perhaps there's less focus on--integration, and how things converge and assimilate.

to go back to Logseq's blocks...

information that is based on bullet points/is atomic already lends incredible flexibility to it.

but when there's also search AND embedding: that information becomes entirely fluid!

i suspect that information, thought, cognition...is not a web of discrete entries, but an ocean, with an incredible fluidity that's almost stupid. we can skim the surface or dive deep, and follow the bonds of one molecule to another to another and so on.

and that's! the! thing! :O

if i'm correct, entry-based knowledge management lacks the fluidity that's so representative of cognition, because the "atoms" of information in one entry cannot slip and slide/embed tightly into another entry. everything is crystallized with gaps.

Logseq's block embeds and global searching makes information entry-agnostic, and that is incredible.

i don't want to rag on mem.ai. i'm pretty sure i could punch out (light-heartedly) extra features out of it and learn to love it! it's like Gmail+Google Docs+Twitter+fun all together, really. but i think for pure knowledge, Logseq takes the winning spot for me.