Notes

To synthesize knowledge of a complicated subject that doesn’t fit into intuition, humans need a time-consuming read/write process to build symbols that abstract cognition.

But symbols are fated to be forgotten. To accelerate rebuilds of cognition, we write notes, a cognition builds artifact, when being read will imperatively allocates attention.

  • Lecture notes help a student prepare materials absorbed throughout the entire semester within just a final week.
  • Code annotations help a developer quickly remember his choices of design made 6 months ago to reason behaviors of his software.

Readability

The readability of notes depends on the version of language it was written in.

In six months, mind drifts: boyan:2024.4 → boyan:2024.10

  • My notes written in boyan:2024.4 are readable, interpretable, and compatible with boyan:2024.10.

In six years, mind shifts: boyan:2024.4 → boyan:2030.4

  • My notes written in boyan:2024.4 are unreadable, uninterpretable, and incompatible with boyan:2030.4.

Writings

To communicate, I need to remove my cognition’s dependency on me, on my mind, on my language.

  • I need to write in the target audience’s common language (lingua franca) like computer-science:2024.10, democrats:2024.10, jazz:2024.10, expressionism:2024.10, and capitalism:2024.10.
  • Such writing turns private, tribal knowledge into public, open knowledge.

To be inherited, I must strip my cognition’s dependency on today, on modernity, on fashion.

  • I must write in a minimal set of invariants like good and bad, live and die, zero and one.
  • Such writing turns temporary, ephemeral insights into constant, perpetual wisdom.