202109091133 Notes should associate organically

We should let note structures emerge organically.¹ By refraining from categorizing and sorting notes at the outset, we cultivate 202104291540 Emergence (202109091131 Notes should surprise us) and encourage nuanced, fine-grained relationships between ideas (202109091132 Notes should be densely linked).

The world is not finely hierarchical. As we know, 202109060845 Knowledge is a heterarchy. Neither can we fit things precisely into neat categories. There is overlap and fuzziness in the real world. Any single fact (202209091130 Notes should be atomic and 202109091134 Notes should be concept-oriented) can relate to others in varying ways and with varying strengths. Any attempt at bringing a strict "one-and-only" order to our notes will limit the expressivity of our notes.

Topic clusters emerge by themselves, especially surrounding keywords or tags. The resulting archive fits the way you think because it grew according to your interests. Also, things are labeled in a way especially meaningful to you, not anybody else. This is all about personal information management, so personalization is a must, and increasing idiosyncrasy will likely make things better.²

Instead, we should embrace the chaos. Embrace the organics. Embrace the possibility that things will be lost forever. For if we write a note and never read it again, it must not be connected to things we care about. Such a note certainly wouldn't be counted among our 202109091129 Evergreen notes.