# notes --- - [[reader-generated essays]] - artificial intelligence can make communication easier - easier communication leads to more ideas - [[writing is turning your networked thought into a cohesive narrative]] # Highlights --- > [!highlight]+ Wed May 22 2024 22:39:26 GMT-0400 > > often I do not have enough capacity to cope with writing and thinking at the same time; the thoughts suffer when I wrestle with the language, and vice versa > [!highlight]+ Wed May 22 2024 22:39:26 GMT-0400 > > I formulate the ideas. And then I communicate them. > [!highlight]+ Wed May 22 2024 22:39:26 GMT-0400 > > Is there an opportunity for complementarity here? **Can we use GPT-3 (or its coming descendants) to relieve people of the burden of communicating their ideas, so that they can invest more energy in producing them?** > > This would greatly reduce the cost of communicating ideas. And a **lowered cost has the potential to unleash large amounts of knowledge that are now locked in minds that cannot communicate it**, or that are too occupied doing more important things to take the time. (It will also, naturally, unleash an endless flood of misinformation.) #type/highlight #topic/artificial_intelligence #topic/thinking > [!highlight]+ Wed May 22 2024 22:39:26 GMT-0400 > > What I am doing right now, writing this essay, is, technically, a linear walk through the network of my ideas. **That is what writing is: turning a net into a line.** But it is also very concretely what I do, since I have externalized my ideas in a note-taking system where the thoughts are linked with hyperlinks. #type/highlight #topic/writing #topic/networked_thought > [!highlight]+ Wed May 22 2024 22:39:26 GMT-0400 > > So I have to spend five to ten hours making the output from my knowledge graph human-readable. I happen to think there is something satisfying about this craft, much as Buddhist monks enjoy endlessly raking sand. > [!highlight]+ Wed May 22 2024 22:39:26 GMT-0400 > > separating idea generation from writing in this way would have the advantage that people might become better at thinking > [!check]+ Wed May 22 2024 22:39:26 GMT-0400 > > A reader-generated essay is what you get when you can go into someone else’s knowledge graph and make a linear journey through the network, while GPT-5 generates a just-in-time essay that is human-readable. > > oh, this is brilliant... > [!highlight]+ Wed May 22 2024 22:39:26 GMT-0400 > > If you click on something that seems interesting, the essay meanders in that direction. If you feel the reading is becoming a bit of a slog, with too many irrelevant details, you zoom out with an Engelbart zoom, and get a summary of the content instead, at whatever level of abstraction suits you. > [!highlight]+ Wed May 22 2024 22:39:26 GMT-0400 > > You can also share the essay crafted by your trail. You simply generate a link that encapsulates the specific hike you made through the knowledge graph, and then whoever you send it to can see the connections you saw – or zoom in if they feel you missed some details, and get lost in an essay of their own. > [!highlight]+ Wed May 22 2024 22:39:26 GMT-0400 > > future creator economy: generating essays based on finding weird trajectories through other people’s knowledge graphs > > this might literally be the most exciting thing i've ever imagined