If you're interested in preserving your ability to think for yourself in the age of AI, I recommend Henrik Karlsson's blog Escaping Flatland. While not directly about AI, his articles "Cultivating a state of mind where new ideas are born" [1] and "Childhoods of exceptional people" [2] explore similar themes of how to train your mind to have original ideas and learn to solve problems on your own.
[1] https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/good-ideas
> Obsidian: An Org-Mode replacement?
I doubt it. Obsidian is not open source, and the core is maintained by a small group of people, rather than a community. What happens when the company dies?
That said, I am willing to have more faith in Obsidian, than many other things since they are not [VC funded](https://stephango.com/vcware)
> Emacs is a powerful tool, but it also demands a lot from its user. Eventually I got tired of dealing with the host of plugins and customizations that I needed to keep my system running the way I wanted. I'm at a point in my life where I would rather spend my spare time on hobbies, hanging out with family and friends, and otherwise not messing around with a patchwork of ELisp code snippets that I've cobbled together from various sources. I gradually stopped using Emacs in favor of more modern tools that are less flexible but also less of a hassle.
I don't know how many times I've read a variation on this. It took me a very long time, but now I pretty much made my peace with that: I use Emacs (for certain things), I use VS Code (with Emacs bindings), I use Apple Notes.. I don't find that it's possible or reasonable anymore, the desire to be "pure" and use only ONE tool to rule them all. The same for messaging apps, chatbots, etc.. I now embrace extreme diversity.
This is why I made revect. I even have an obsidian plugin in progress.
The goal to index your obsidian and also persist anything from llm chats, and browsing history.
To your own sqlite database so you can still own your data across providers.
I’m sure someone with much more time than me will win with a better version of it
I've been using pen & paper lately.
The context switch between digital and analog is compelling. There is something satisfying about throwing a piece of physical paper away after pushing your commits.
I tend to hoard information, so having a medium that is highly constrained keeps me honest with what I hold onto over time. Not being able to do full text search over my notes means I prefer to keep no more than ~one legal pad active at any given time.
I also tend to get distracted with shiny technology tools. I can take my notes anywhere. I don't need an internet connection. I can fold the piece of paper and store it in my wallet.
I think the key to ensuring you don't lose your own ability to think is to just delay the onset of using AI when solving a problem.
The more deeply you think, you train your brain harder, but also improve the utility of the AI systems themselves because you can prompt better.
Denote with a gptel-make-tool that's able to pull relevant notes and bring it automatically into context is fantastic.
The OP linked "You'll Never Think Alone"[1] is a good read.
[1] https://publiccomment.blog/p/you-ll-never-think-alone-170518...
I am also worried a bit about knowledge nowadays.
With LLM-based AI, should one also store individual chats in personal knowledge system? Yeah, I believe that some my chats are quite full of relevant info, that can be used in the future.
Also what is the right general approach here - should I ask the same question several times (every time I need information) or should I just look up previous answer in my history? To be fair I dont store google results, I just search it again, but with chat the path to right answer is often more complex than spitting few words in google search input box.
AI isn’t quite good enough for organizing your notes yet. However, the biggest issue with our notes is that we make them for us, not another person, so the context is lacking for search.
Knowledge is as much about familiarity as anything else
I started my personal knowledge base in the days of Mac OS 8 and still use it. Classic Mac OS with it's spacial finder and 1-to-1 file and window mapping works so well for my brain I still use it today for things I want to save and refer to.
I use & subscribe to AIs, but my personal knowledge is kept in the system I can use like the back of my hand, which happened to be the Macintosh Finder for me.
I use gptel in emacs, and keep around some of the chats and such as notes, along with my regular notes, it's all org-mode. I already used to keep around snippets copy-pasted from the web. This is knowledge management in the age of AI (except it works, it's useful and mundane and so I guess it's no longer AI, maybe I have to start using MCP agents or whatever the next partially-there thing is to be AI)
The author doesn't mention what I consider the true value of writing and organizing your notes yourself: that work is the work that drives learning and understanding.
I experimented with feeding my notes into an LLM model for RAG and was underwhelmed. The resulting output was repetitive, stilted, dry, and uninspiring. I wanted it to see if it find relationships between my ideas that I had not found on my own, but was disappointed . It did not provide me any new insights into my thinking. The style of what it did write was so foreign to my own style I found myself needing to read and re-interpret what it wrote back into my own ways of thinking that it was more busywork than help.
> Task-tracking and note-taking are practical and useful, but ultimately I want to treat my own thoughts as if they have value. I want to be a little more intentional and deliberate in my own thinking, and to have a space to engage in dialog with my own ideas. I want to be able to draw from my own knowledge instead of relying on AI assistants for everything. Maybe such an approach can even be complimentary to using AI tools; with the right plugins Obsidian can serve as an MCP server, which would allow tools like Claude to discover and read items in your vault. Perhaps this could offer the best of both worlds. But the key thing is that the AI is the assistant, and my thoughts and ideas remain my own.
Maybe I'm missing the author's point, as it's early here, but I don't see how your own thoughts can possibly lack value because of AI. LLMs can only summarize the documents it was trained on, so it has no way to tell you what you're thinking (like why something is wrong). The value of AI is using RAG or semantic search to make your notes more useful to you. What the author's suggesting is outside the capabilities of current LLMs. By design, AI can only be used as an assistant.
Every article that begins with any variation of loses me immediately:
"I went through a phase that I imagine many software developers go through at least once in their careers—a period of intense fascination with Emacs..."
What is this widespread overt fascination with the tools one use? I've always been aware of a tradeoff between why one uses a tool and any tendency to fascinate on the tool or process of using a tool. The use, the purpose, the goal outside and originally to want any tool has always been my preference. To see the forest when among trees, to see a purpose and path through. Not to navel gaze at the existence of tools in preference to using them beyond pontificating their existence. This then extends to shaking my head at the swelled population of developer influencers that over fascinate on tools, appearing to do that in preference of anything else.
This confuses a tool with knowledge itself. smh.
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Crazy coincidence as I just started setting up my PARA system on Logseq.
why the H does this have the same opening line as moby dick
why are emacs users like this
I looked into Obsidian a few years ago but decided against it due to the lack of encryption and self-hosting options. Are there now any workarounds or solutions available that provide encryption and self-hosting capabilities?
> Emacs is a powerful tool, but it also demands a lot from its user. Eventually I got tired of dealing with the host of plugins and customizations that I needed to keep my system running the way I wanted. I'm at a point in my life where I would rather spend my spare time on hobbies, hanging out with family and friends, and otherwise not messing around with a patchwork of ELisp code snippets that I've cobbled together from various sources.
On the flip side, my experience with Emacs has been quite different. You don't need a ton of plugins to get the most out of it; I've been using the same configuration of under 200 lines for the past six years without encountering any breaking changes. I rely on Magit, Org-mode, Org-roam, and Org-agenda every single day.
That said, using Emacs does require some commitment to reading the documentation. While I agree that it has some outdated defaults, you only need to make those adjustments once.