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Note-Taking and Personal Knowledge Management

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Unattributed
14 hours ago · 18 min read3538 words · Tech · hide · 4 comments

Bridge heading into the smokey landscape. License: CC-0 I read Brennan Kenneth Brown's What have note-taking PKMs accomplished, really?, and found myself writing a lengthy response. But, after I wrote my response I reread Brennan's article and found myself in a bit of a quandary. I found myself asking a simple question: was it intentional that he presented both arguments and counterarguments in his piece? That seemed to have a simple answer: yes. Any good piece of writing should undertake to present the relevant perspectives, and treat them seriously. But this is where I stumbled to understand Brennan's position. While he presented the counterpoints, or counterarguments to these positions, he didn't seem to treat them in the same manner as his primary arguments and points. That has caused me to think about his article from a different perspective. What Was the Purpose There is a statement, or rather a question, that forms the premise of Brennan's argument about Personal Knowledge…

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  • Brennan Kenneth Brown @brennan@social.lol 10 hours ago

    Excellent response! I never have gotten a write-up this detailed before, I'm very touched you went through the effort and hassle. /gen

    I can tell by this and other feedback I got that I was both too nebulous and overreaching in my original article. I have absolutely no qualms with Obsidian or how people use it (I try to emphasize this in my conclusion) and I was really only going after branded PKMs which I see as grifts trying to take advantage of beginners to the space. You write you "don't know that this is really an issue" and that's fair, but it does essentially nullify what was meant to be the thesis of my piece.

    Regardless, I think a lot of the criticism is fair and I do apologize for making you go through the effort of writing all this out, which was clearly a laborious process.

    (I tried finding a better way to respond, but there's no contact info on the site I think?)

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    • unattributed 𓂃✍︎ @unattributed@gotosocial.social 2 hours ago

      @bubbles Hi Brennan,

      Honestly, I wasn't planning to be so detailed, and I even still think I got a couple of things wrong… But I found that I couldn't ignore the parts of your post that were so open to misinterpretation.

      (Quick Aside: Trying to keep my site as clean as possible, I link to my FediProfile in the footer, which is where all my contact locations are: @unattributed).

      The thesis nullification is possibly one of the biggest issues. When you are going with the concept that branded PKMs are not worthwhile, and their creators are grifters that is the point you need to prove. Stating that other people don't use those systems isn't proof that branded PKMs aren't worthwhile, it just shows they aren't worthwhile to those individuals.

      So, what would prove those PKMs are grifts? Showing actual harm to people. If you have seen CoffeeZilla on YouTube, he exposes a lot of scams and grifts, and whenever possible he gets actual statements from people who have been harmed. Look at his CryptoZoo series, he has statements on video from people that have been damaged to the tune of tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars. CoffeeZilla has also exposed a lot of other crypto scams, and MLM scams—always documenting the precise nature of the scam, and showing the literal harm that has happened.

      I doubt anyone who has bought a couple of books, or even paid $500 for a class feels that they didn't get something of value for their money. At worst, they might feel the price wasn't worth what they got, but there's a large gap to examine: were they expecting something that wasn't promised, or were they misled in some manner. That's where the focus of this kind of piece needs to be.

      Don't apologize for my effort… LOL. If I had decided the effort wasn't worthwhile I would have scrapped it, I do that frequently.

      I apologize if I stretched things when I brought up your writing process. Everyone has their own methods, what works for you likely won't work for me. I just noted that there seemed to be a gap between the draft and edit of the piece. Your explanation of how you write fit my perception of that gap.

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  • Ike @ike@pkm.social 3 hours ago

    I had a similar reaction to reading the piece by Brennan, but I didn't make the time or effort to distill what it was that my intuition was telling me.

    This article by "unattributed" does a good job of critically analyzing Brennan's article.

    Brennan isn't wrong in the general question ("Are PKM systems effective?") but the way that it was posited gave me the impression that Brennan was attacking both the tools and the frameworks.

    reply
    • unattributed 𓂃✍︎ @unattributed@gotosocial.social 2 hours ago

      @bubbles Thanks for the credit.

      As I've just gone into a bit more detail about with Brennan, the problem is his article doesn't focus in on what his actual premise is: the branded PKM market is full of grifters and scams.

      I don't disagree with that premise (I actually think the market does have an issue with this), but I think the focus needed to be more precise. Something closer to the way CoffeeZilla documents grifters and scams, and shows the literal harm that is being done.

      reply