[canvascritic]

I'm not a fan of neurophysiology analogies because it veer into pseudoscience, but I'll play along.

Roam implemented static bidirectional links and called it associative memory. in reality, it's closer to mind-mapping software with backlinks. So without mechanisms for reinforcement (surfacing old notes intelligently), pruning (forgetting irrelevant junk), or plasticity (reorganizing in response to use), the system becomes a junkyard of half-formed thoughts.

Brains forget for a reason, roam doesn't

[josephg]

> Brains forget for a reason, roam doesn't

I think this is the key mistake in Roam's design (and in many ways, obsidian and friends). They appeal to a dream some people have that maybe if you never forget anything, you'll get smarter forever. (Or something like that).

The problem is that there's many benefits to having a mind which forgets things. That property lets us grow and change over time - and move on from old ideas or old ways of thinking. Not necessarily because they're bad; but because we become a different person from the person who had that thought.

Trauma is an extreme case of this. Its essentially a disorder of memory; where we etch some old memory in stone. Because we don't let ourselves forget it, we inevitably build structure / thought patterns around that memory. "This one time __" - "As a result, deep down I believe that I am fundamentally ___ (unsafe / unworthy / stupid / unlovable / ...)". Trauma work is in many ways a slow process of learning to unclench your mind from those past experiences, to allow yourself to "move on" from them. (Ie, forget the emotional impact they have today.)

Its also kind of obvious in software or architecture. You can't just keep adding to an old structure forever. Software gets harder to build the bigger it gets. Same with buildings, books, teams and more. If everything new needs to fit with everything that has come before, its an O(n^2) job. Of course roam suffers from this too. The default "remember everything forever" default is naive and silly. Our brains don't work best like that.

[coldblues]

There is no reason to forget. Your brain does memory crystallization whether you like it or not, this is not something that is up to you. There is no upper bound to memory as far as we know. https://notes.andymatuschak.org/Spaced_repetition_memory_sys...

You are just making a very silly "Appeal to nature" argument. Your notes, just as your memories, change and morph. For your memories, every time you access them, for your notes, every time you notice something you could improve. Old notes should not bother you, just ignore them if they're not relevant. They take a negligible amount of space on your devices. Personally, every note I've taken serves a purpose, even if their purpose is to just fill a spot so that I may be continually aware I've tackled a particular subject before even if it has not had any relevance for years.

[josephg]

> There is no reason to forget. [...] You are just making a very silly "Appeal to nature" argument.

I don't see it that way. I see it as a healthy, useful expression of continuous death.

In software, we don't start every program by first importing every line of code ever written. Why not? The computer has room for all that code. Why don't we import it all into our workspace? The reason, in my mind, is that each line of code in a computer program has a cognitive cost to it. A sort of, conceptual gravity, which makes reaching for further away ideas much more difficult.

When brainstorming, often a blank page is the best canvas for a new idea. We start companies with new stationary. New workbooks. We even have sayings for this - "Blue sky thinking" or "Greenfield projects". Ie, projects which don't inherit older, more established structures or code.

There's a balance of course. We also don't start everything from scratch either. In code we pull in libraries as we need them, and lean on our programming languages and operating systems. But you have to strike the right balance between new and old. Too much old and you're stifled by it. Too much new and you're trying to boil the ocean.

I think humans are like that too. I think our ability to crystalize new thoughts depends on our capacity to let go of old ones. I don't think the best minds spend their lives hoarding all the best knowledge. For my money, the old people I like the most are people who can be in the here and now. Knowledgable, sure. But also present. Open to surprise. Philosophically you want to combine whats happening right now with the best ideas from the past. And let the rest go.

At least, that's how I think of it for myself. If I'm a different person in 20 years from who I am now, I wish whoever I become the best of luck. I hope for them to be unburdened by all the cognitive misadventure I'm probably going through right now.

[meindnoch]

>There is no upper bound to memory as far as we know

That's physically impossible.

[coldblues]

Correct. What I meant specifically is that we are unaware of a hard limit to memory, one that we have not found due to factors like our lifespans and cognitive decline, so it should not be something to worry and fuss over due to its current irrelevancy.

[accrual]

I personally find pleasure in reading my old notes, even ones that contain outdated ways of thinking, incorrect assumptions, etc. If anything, it helps me reflect on the growth that's occurred. I agree it's not necessarily productive to log everything all the time, though.

[josephg]

Me too. But again, its nice to re-read old notes which are "lost to time". The author of this piece is clearly finding the past is actively influencing the present:

> At least for me — and most of the people I know — we got a garbage dump full of crufty links and pieces of text we hardly ever revisit. And we feel guilty and sad about it.

It'll never work if you can't leave things behind.

[Buttons840]

I write things down to forget. Once it's written, it's safe to forget.

[josephg]

Yeah me too! But old notebooks can just be left on the shelf and forgotten. I don’t think that’s reall true of roam. At least, not how a lot of people use it.

[mmooss]

You can't delete things?

Really, I think the user in that case needs to be much more choosy about what they put in the database. It will save them time and greatly improve the signal-to-noise ration.

[jimbokun]

Deleting takes a lot of mental and emotional energy.

Going through all your notes regularly and asking “should I delete this? Does it bring me joy?”

[mmooss]

> Going through all your notes regularly and asking “should I delete this? Does it bring me joy?”

I'd just delete things opportunistically, as you come across them. If you aren't coming across them, there's no value in deleting them.