There are two major reasons I have for nominating this post:
The first reason is that I know from our analytics that this post has been read more times than any other post on LessWrong from 2019, and has been really helpful for many people getting into the more “external working memory and thinking augmentation” part of Rationality. While I don’t think I trust popularity very frequently, I do think in this case it is a decent amount of evidence about at least the relevance and importance of the topic.
The second reason is that I think building better tools for thought is a really crucial aspect of rationality, and one that I expect to become more important as technology becomes more powerful and the opportunities for cognitive augmentation that technology provides will multiply. I have not gotten around to implementing this system, or anything close to it, but have taken inspiration from it in my current note-taking system, and do think that improving my note-taking system is quite possible the most important bottleneck that is currently preventing me from being a much better rationalist.
There are two major reasons I have for nominating this post:
The first reason is that I know from our analytics that this post has been read more times than any other post on LessWrong from 2019, and has been really helpful for many people getting into the more “external working memory and thinking augmentation” part of Rationality. While I don’t think I trust popularity very frequently, I do think in this case it is a decent amount of evidence about at least the relevance and importance of the topic.
The second reason is that I think building better tools for thought is a really crucial aspect of rationality, and one that I expect to become more important as technology becomes more powerful and the opportunities for cognitive augmentation that technology provides will multiply. I have not gotten around to implementing this system, or anything close to it, but have taken inspiration from it in my current note-taking system, and do think that improving my note-taking system is quite possible the most important bottleneck that is currently preventing me from being a much better rationalist.