Roam Discourse Graph extension

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joelchan86#what is obsidian-logseq-roam22-11-11 14:05:36

I think of all of these tools as "personal hypertext notebooks" - basically taking what is possible in wikis (organizing by means of linking, hypertext) and lowering the barrier to entry (no need to spin up a server, can just download an app and go).

The common thread across these notebooks then is allowing for organizing and exploring by means of bidirectional hyperlinks between "notes": - In Obsidian each linkable note is a markdown file and can be as short or long as you like - in Logseq/Roam and other outliner-style notebooks, you can link "pages", and also individual bullets in the outlines on each page.

In this way, the core functionality of these tools is similar to a wiki, but they do leave out a lot of the collaborative functionality that makes wikis work well (granular versioning and edit histories, talk pages, etc.). So for folks like <@305044217393053697> who are comfortable with wikis already, they add marginal value IMO.

Their technical predecessors in the "personal (vs. collaborative) wiki" space include TiddlyWiki and emacs org-mode (and inherit their technical extensibility: many users create their own extensions of the notebooks' functionality. an example is the Roam Discourse Graph extension that <@824740026575355906> is using).

These tools also tend to trace their idea lineage back to vannevar bush's Memex and ted nelson's Xanadu.

joelchan86#what is obsidian-logseq-roam22-11-11 14:08:30

These tools are still not entirely mainstream compared to tools like Notion, which is related to your experience trying to learn more about the tools - so they tend to have a steep learning curve!

IMO the best way to get a feel for what they are is to see some examples/videos.

I like this video for an overview of Logseq: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtRozP8hfEY&t=6s

I describe Roam and the Roam Discourse Graph extension in this portion of a talk I recently gave: https://youtu.be/jH-QF7rVSeo?t=1417

joelchan86#what is obsidian-logseq-roam22-11-11 19:01:10

i agree it's not universal! my feeling is that Claim: a statement (claim or evidence) might be the more universal element: - empirical work also consists of statements about the world (this is less controversial) - design/technological innovation rests in part on claims about a) what is needed in the world, what is hard to do, constraints, and b) what is needed to succeed: examples here: https://deepscienceventures.com/content/the-outcomes-graph-2 (h/t <@559775193242009610>) - theories often consist of systems of core claims (e.g., in models like what <@824740026575355906> and <@734802666441408532> are working with, where we can think of the claims as subgraphs of the overall knowledge graph)

see, e.g., Evidence from this review of models of scientific knowledge https://publish.obsidian.md/joelchan-notes/discourse-graph/evidence/EVD+-+Four+positivist+epistemological+models+from+philosophy+of+science%2C+including+Popper%2C+emphasiz...+statements+as+a+core+component+of+scientific+knowledge+-+%40harsDesigningScientificKnowledge2001

and Evidence convergence/contrasts across users of the Roam Discourse Graph extension in terms of building blocks: common thread across all was Evidence