Thoughts on Logseq Networked Knowledgebase

 logseq is currently my favorite of the recent barrage of networked knowledge base applications. I have been enjoying watching videos from OneStutteringMind, who has been sharing his helpful and interesting explorations and insights.

There is a lot of powerful, cool, functionality added to the system like templates, exposing some of the database query functionality, TODO checkboxes, and all the powerful views and rendering made available by using Markdown. But the main/primary feature/function any of these brings, for me (in comparison to all the  long-established databases and filesystems), is the ease of creating connections (links). Any of this stuff could be emulated by, say, creating a bunch of symlinks on a filesystem. But just the ability to immediately/automatically link/create a new node (analogous to a filesystem directory) by just referring to it in text (using a special "[[ ]]" or "#___" syntax) pretty much is THE value-added feature for any of these systems. The rest is, more or less, nothing new, when we think about many basic organization systems.

In terms of "information organization", I think one thing that's important to realize is that information connections which appear hierarchical are just a special case of general node connectivity. That is, they are just node collections with some amount of a one to many relationship. Having indented sub-block is just another form of this special case (hierarchical) of information structure. Same with multiple values in a 'tags' property. So, I guess, I just want to note that it may be a bit of an error to ever try to find the "optimal" information structure. I think the structure will be a slave to the data structures used by the tool, and not some "universal truth". In other words, the structure of information is largely going to be merely an artifact of the underlying technology.

Namespaces are, in a way, also like this. They also have a one to many relationship to the items "in" them. I am not completely sure what the logseq team intends with this (besides creating yet another way to easily create something with a hierarchical structure).
But one way to maybe think about these is to consider how namespace are used elsewhere. Basically they are a work-around to the fact that many words or phrases don't contain enough information content to not be ambiguous. We might want to use short, simple, ways to access data and functionality. But these might clash with other data/function references with similar functionality. For example, we might want to be able, in a particular context, to simply call a simple "render()" function. But that name might clash with another function of the same name used to render something different. So we can add a namespace (maybe in the form of a class): e.g. markdown.render() vs. latex.render(). So, again, there might not be any grand design, other than wanting to have the option of using using short (relatively more ambiguous names), when in a narrow context, while also enabling unambiguous operation in a larger context.

Socialism and Capitalism

This is meant to contribute to someone's Facebook post. I just didn't want to hijack the post with all this text.
 
I understand that Socialism and Capitalism, etc., are meaningful historical labels and categories. But I don't think they are useful in making headway in, what I see as, a never-ending debate. I think it is more useful to think of competition vs cooperation or groups vs individuals. There is both, in the natural world. Bee hives. Predator-prey dynamics, etc., etc. Even our man-made games have both. Football teams work together to compete with each other. Within a team, players compete for positions. But they also don't do it to the extent that they sabotage the success of the team. Sacrifices are made for the team effort. There are always trade-offs. There are things which can be better (e.g. "The whole is greater than the sum of parts.") when working as a group. But individuals in the group will lose certain valued freedoms. And the people in the group will not equally benefit. That is, it will end up being unfair to some, in some aspect/way. We can see that competition is like empirical experimentation: We only find out what is the best, by testing things head to head in a "market" (competition). Although, I'd like to see more of a competition for ideas, than an attempt to drive the "losers" into the loss of their basic livelihood.  Any government, as an organization/coordination is "socialistic" to the extent that is is a government. It is group of people, e.g. a "social" group, pool or work together. If humans weren't "socialistic", we wouldn't even be around to be having this debate. It is a key to our success as a species. I realize people will say that "social" doesn't mean "socialism". But if you follow the real, concrete differences to their natural depths, you will see that the defined differences are a bit trivial and not usefully actionable. I think people make the mistake in not seeing the way our Capitalist "free market" is "socialistic". A business company is a group of people (a social group) who work together on/for a good or service. The bigger they get, the more they can stifle free-market competition (in ways completely unrelated to making products better or more efficiently). The more they become like a monopoly, the more they look like a communist regime. So we can have can have other arguments, like how to most effectively and efficiently run an organization of people, say the U.S. Government (i.e. us). But we will never be able to resolve these debates by means of arguing "This is not fair to me, if I work harder and someone else gets the benefit." or "We should all value basic human health and thus be compelled to contribute health care system." Of course any group coordination will mean sacrifices for some. But, also, a good group coordination will benefit everyone, overall, in other ways. Of course there is no natural law that dictates you must contribute to someone else's basic health, even if you've taken better personal responsibility for you own. It is just the smart thing to choose to contribute to the group, because it ends up paying off. I think we just need to be smarter about the form and functioning of our groups. I think transparency (as, I think, Sara mentioned) and directness are key. I have very specific ideas about what that could look like in a government system. A health cooperative (like my HMO, when at UW-Madison) is more in that direction (a more direct market interaction between providers and customers), while an insurance company is in the opposite direction. An insurance company does get in the middle and administer the resource pool which enables the risk-spreading function we want. But it indirectly gets filtered through the stockholders/owners of the company. They are a third party which, by design, introduces a conflict on interest. This makes the interaction less direct (and less transparent). They have an interest in skimming as much as possible from the customer - healthcare provider transactions, completely in addition to how much doctors get paid, or the quality of care patients get. It's better for the stockholders if it becomes harder for members to figure out or prove that they didn't rightfully get their benefits, because transparency is noised up by unnecessarily long legalese, or obfuscated by insurance "coding". With a health cooperative, you are able to vote on which doctors can have access to your customer pool, based on their quality and cost of services. Doctors can be more competitive to the patients' needs, vs what they need to show in terms of how much money they will end up making for the insurance company investors, so they will be allowed in it's network.

Ugh. This feels so long-winded, and rambling. -probably unclear. I just want to get it off my chest. Think of it as a draft.

Gift Cards (etc.)

Gift cards are a great gift FOR MERCHANTS. You give them an interest-free loan, they can use for anything. They only have to pay it back with something they already have in stock/available (at whatever price they've chosen to set). You give your so-called loved-ones a piece of plastic they can use in a very restrictive manner (compared to regular currency): limited place, for limited number of items, for a limited time, and only during the times they remember to have it with them and remember to use it.

Here's the chain of events which I think occurs:
"I feel compelled to get a gift for someone, since it is Christmas/birthday/etc."
"I don't know what this person wants/needs (ANY MORE THAN THEY KNOW WHAT THEY WANT/NEED to buy for themselves)."
"But I think I know where they sometimes get the kinds of things I think they sometimes like. So I'll get a gift card for that place."

I fail to see how a piece of non/less reusable plastic is any more personal, or more enabling than just giving cash. So why not just give cash? But now we can see the fundamental flaw many buy in to. If I give you cash, and you give me an equal amount of cash (because, after all, I care about you just as much as you care about me), then why exchange at all? Because merchants have paid marketers to hack into your psychology.

I don't mind giving gifts to those less able to get things for themselves right now. Our children fall into this category. If you don't have an infinite supply of money, then you have a finite one. Given a finite supply of money, you can choose when to use it for "gifts". If you tend to restrict buying things for loved-ones to "special occasions", then you are NECESSARILY buying them fewer things during other times.  That's your choice. Personally, I enjoy having the money/freedom to buy things whenever. If my daughter sees or asks about something she wants, I'll often just buy it. She doesn't want/ask frequently and she seems genuinely appreciative/grateful for what she has/gets. We do talk about the item, where it will go, how it will be used, what other things we might spend the same money on, etc. But most of the time I just get it. This feels more genuine/better than waiting until some other "special" time of the year, and feeling pressure/guilt to think of something to get then, just because everybody else is doing it, and we've done it like this for a long time (AKA: It's a "tradition").

Fair

As I get older, I realize that, in a way, I haven't changed all that much. There's a line from a Pearl Jam song: "I change by not changing at all." I know, but I'll let you figure out, the song. I've always just wanted what's fair. I don't want people to get less, nor more, than their fair share. The problem always lies in determining what is fair. But I think for basic needs, we all have some intuition about this. I don't think people should have basic health care because it is their 'right'. That sounds like a religion. -"it's only right." -"because I said so." -"because that's what God or some other authority wants." No. I require more than that. The minimum I require is good reason. There are many good reasons. But think it's entirely possible for us to all decide that we want to support basic, minimal sustenance for our fellow citizens. We need to keep in mind that it is not without the cost of people contributing. It is completely reasonable to limit the amount any individual or family gets. But it seems reasonable to agree to contribute to some level of sustenance for, say, health, shelter, etc. for a family with up to two kids. This could be run like a consumers union. Just like Walmart leverages its size to bargain with suppliers, so could a federal government, to drive down prices of health care, down from being some of the most expensive (yet not proportionally highest quality) in the world. With the basic structure of our government, with middle men/women (representatives), as easy targets for powerful special interest lobbies, rather than a more direct democracy approach, I have doubts as to whether this is likely to happen. But I have little doubt that if we the people can agree on some basic values, and work together to force those issues, this could get done.

You're Wrong

So am I. It's ok. We all operate with a model of our/the world, constructed in our mind. It is impossible for any model to be 100% accurate. If it were, it would have to BE the world. The only thing which can accurately reproduce all the phenomena in the universe, is all the universe itself. So here is a trade-off: We want something to help us predict what actions we should take, for our future benefit (guide our behavior). But it has to fit in our mind (or computers), and not use too much of our mind's energy or time. We need to evaluate a model based on it's usefulness. How useful is it in helping us predict what will happen, so we can prepare in advance? In our mind, for example, we likely have a model of the movement of massive objects. If we see a truck on a path to cross our current path, we can predict what will happen, and change our trajectory BEFORE this potential future event (fatal collision). A model's accuracy or correctness is certainly necessary for it's usefulness. But it would not be that useful if one required the correctness/accuracy to be at/near 100%, at the expense of too much time or energy. If it took more time to run your calculation through the model, than it took for the truck to hit you, the model would have been not useful to you. Some models are good enough to do some things. But just because, for example, a belief in a deity can provide a unifying focus, sometimes useful for organizing groups to act together for causes, or maybe provide some comfort from tragic events, it doesn't mean that model (e.g. a deity controls the universe) is accurate (true). In situations where one does have relatively more time, it is often well worth it to use a more complex/accurate model, based on verifiable data, and proven to be able to enable one to steer away from common pitfalls, towards desired outcomes. Science is not a comprehensive model. It is a means to test models. It is hard to argue against science, because it has a small job, and it does it well. It is simply the trial and error testing used to, bit by bit, test parts of models. It simply tells you if your assumptions can't be useful in predicting what to do next, if they just don't add up, and/or are internally inconsistent. The scientific method, itself, will not be able to tell you what to do. It is just a tool to test whether or not your model is likely to be useful in telling you what to do.

Is Less Government More?

Another comment/response (like Unaffordable Health Care) in the same Facebook thread:

So I guess I’m saying that basically all government functions are socialistic in nature. They are implemented by/for a social group (U.S. or state or local or . . . citizens). Centralization is just a means of doing, or another way of describing, the focusing of effort. -which is really a main practical use of forming any group, in the first place (another being division of labor, for efforts which are big and/or complicated). E.g. You live in a family group. The family usually focuses or centralizes itself and resources into one, single, house, rather than a single dwelling for each individual. So that is a primary defining feature of a government. It will centralize, or focus, effort on manipulating defined aspects of our resource exchange (our “economy”). The scope/extent of its activity can be debated. But I don’t see any of a government’s activities as being much/anything but “socialist”, in my view. This might simply be semantics, and not THAT useful an issue to push. But I guess the point I’m trying to make is that it is not necessarily useful to demonize the act of centralization, or even sometimes the act of increasing its scope of influence. The act of choosing to have a government (national, local, or otherwise), vs. none, IS effectively the act of deciding it’s ok to increase its scope of influence.
I sincerely don’t mean to incite any ill will. I am surely missing some information. But it seems there are a couple internal inconsistencies in your words, and possibly your words vs. your life choices. 1) It seems a couple defining or observable features of a “fallen” (or otherwise similarly described) world are “chaos and disorder”. So to the extent you are “comfortable” with a “certain amount” of that, seems to be the extent to which you are fine with the world being “fallen”. 2) A “least” government is the best, “skeptical” view of the government, seems inconsistent with anyone who volunteers to work for one of the most extremely socialist parts of our national government. --the military. Those opting for this, are choosing to have the government most directly determine/provide their health services AND their housing situation AND their food supply (and more). This is a lot more than, say, an independent contractor, freelancer, small business owner, etc. Here are a couple free-market versions of military jobs, one might instead opt for: patriotic mercenary, civilian defense contractor, etc. 3) I’m not sure if, or the extent to which, this applies to you. But those who believe in a god, most certainly believe in a benevolent dictator. -someone who is (on the balance/within the context of his/her “plan”) “benevolent”, and to a large extent dictates what happens to the world (and thus the people in it). To, maybe, expand on the above, here are some other examples of what some people might do to demonstrate they, in practice, believe in less expansive/centralized, and more localized handling/control of resources/services: Local/sustainable farming (v.s. large, centralized operations, in a few states). Installing solar panels to charge an electric car, vs. using gasoline (localized sun energy collection, vs. from some central collection and processing facility, likely much farther away). Again, I don’t assume you, personally, are not already aware of, or doing, such things. Of course everyone’s experience, and thus worldview, differs. We all are limited by our biology (brain, eyes, ears, etc.) and circumstance in forming a model of the world which cannot exactly match the ACTUAL world. I don’t believe there is any utopia (at least, not that we have the capability to comprehend or design). But I do have some belief/hope that we might be able to set up some sort of optimization problem to try and determine an appropriate balance between “common good/effort” and “individual freedom” in defined instances, if we can account for real, tangible, trade-offs. The modeling and optimization can never produce some sort of “utopia”, because it is not possible to know all of the parameters, and those parameter values would change in unpredictable ways, as a civilization evolves. Our current form of governmental “design” contains many examples of “chaos and disorder”, built in. So I don’t want more of that. But I also try to be a “what is right” vs. “who is right” kinda guy. So I also don’t necessarily think a free market competition of PEOPLE or groups of people (businesses, etc.) is optimally useful. I think the free market can be a good empirical way to experiment and find the best IDEAS (i.e. “what is right”). I mean . . . I realize the current market form doesn’t literally kill, or eliminate, or enslave all the people in a competing company, who might produce/provide an object or service of objectively inferior value. Some of those displaced workers might, effectively, subscribe to the “victor” company’s “idea”, by going to work for them, instead. But it seems like there might be ways to better promote a competition of methods/ideas, vs. people, themselves. Anyway . . . I just feel like we are being played, by “the powers that be” (The people instrumental in this, might not be actually/totally conscious that/how they are doing it. They just know that it seems to be working for them), into wasting our time with (and/or then falling into apathy about) arguments which can’t ever be resolved. The people they want labeled as “liberals” and “conservatives” choose different sides of a “common-good/work together” vs. “individual freedom” debate, depending on the application (military vs. human welfare, etc. etc.). The arguments distill out to be the same, whether you invoke “Jeffersonian” or “Federalist” or other labelings/categorizations. If one group is on one side, the other needs to invoke the other view, to justify what they want. It is a waste of time to choose one over the other AS A GENERAL PRINCIPLE, because both contribute to quality/quantity of life, but both have costs. I feel like, if you push strongly for one, over the other, you just keep the pendulum swinging in a useless, never-ending oscillation. You can fall into some mythical fantasy of a country that used to be “great”, and we can get there “again”, by simply shoving the pendulum back the other way.

Yeah. The more I think and look closely at our interaction, the more I see that we seem to fundamentally agree on. -something I believe is generally more widespread, than "the media" might tend to portray (including Facebook, and it's suggested/relevant items which now show up in the center feed). I'm just afraid of rehashing failed solutions of the past, due to some nostalgic recall, or failure to objectively study the underlying dynamics of past scenarios. It seems like the more people actually engage each other, in terms of sharing values about basic needs (personal protection, food, health, housing), the more the other more politicized issues become irrelevant, and we see opportunities for real solutions and hope.

Unaffordable Health Care

The following refers to, and elaborates on, parts of a comment a friend made on Facebook, to someone’s post. I didn’t want to post a ton of text there. So I’m making it a blog post, here.
I think there is a lot of validity to "Agustus’s" comment. Any less direct means of paying for your health services (vs. paying “out of pocket”) certainly can have the effect of a person losing track of the cost. When people have any kind of insurance, they can tend to think “It’s paid for.”, or at the very least reason that they pay the same amount, so why not take advantage of as many services as they think they might “need” to. One might see how these could have the effect of providers (i.e. “free-market” businesses) being able to get away with increasing costs and services. So I think it’s valid to propose that effect happens when going through a modern government, with all its administrative structures, etc. -i.e. It can be hard to SEE the true costs you’re paying, for any specific service. So an unchecked/un-revisited "subsidy" can surely have the effect of increasing costs. Realizing I was naive to the history of employer-provided health care, I did some quick research. Apparently it started with hospitals trying to market some of the then new health care advances, without shocking patients with large one-time costs. I guess it got one big boost during the WWII economy, when employers tried to attract reluctant workers, by offering health care insurance/benefits. Said another way, these businesses used this “benefit” to lure employees, rather than paying a (modestly) higher wage. One could argue who’s fault that was: Manipulative “free market” employers, or “stupid” employees. Another big boost to employer-”paid” health benefits came in 1943, when the government made these benefits tax-free (plus another boost, in 1954). I personally don’t see any rationale for government services to be directly tied to one’s income (income taxes). Those health benefits seemed to enjoy an advantage, given that the other forms of employee compensation were taxed.
But I reject the notion that any of these effects are simply due to the nature of “the government” or the government being simply “too big”. People that advocate free market, also seem to want some socialism. E.g. “(some regulation and contract law is of course necessary for a functioning economy)”. I have asked, and have yet to get an actionable answer, to questions like “Exactly how much is ‘some’?”, or a question which should be easier to answer than that: “What is the concrete, guiding, PRINCIPLE you’d use to QUANTITATE how much regulation, of what kind, where?” How much of this socialism, you are in favor of, is too much?
My view: Any group construct, call it “public”, “government”, “corporation”, “company”, --whatever-- can be vulnerable to third-party manipulation. You can get some things done faster by dividing and specializing, and also spread risk. But you also increase the “attack surface”, when you introduce administrative processes, and other structures. Corporations have this third-party manipulation built right in. -shareholders, vs. the producers/servicers and the customers. The U.S. government has it’s lobbyists, etc., etc. As is usual, in life, there are tradeoffs. The fact that large organizations persist, means that the balance must be in favor of the large group, vs. individuals, for certain applications. Walmart is a large group. It uses it’s “large group” bargaining power to purchase things for its stores at very low prices. So why are so many people opposed to a group of all the U.S. citizens forming a large, collective bargaining group to get better prices for health care? If large organizations like Walmart regularly bargain for goods/services, why do people want to believe it’s IMPOSSIBLE for the U.S. citizens to do it? --and what is the large group that the U.S. citizens have formed?! Oh. Yeah. The U.S. government!  The “free market” many people think of would only exist if individuals traded amongst each other. As soon as you have some group forming on one side of any trade (e.g. a company, or corporation), the self-correcting benefits of that dynamic tend to fail. --until an equally powerful group can form on the other side of the trade (consumer/trade/labor union, etc.). In terms of increased health care expense, I believe part of it is just that progress has allowed more health interventions to be possible, and thus more “opportunities” to pay more money. But I also feel like a big reason things have/had gotten so expensive is that we have allowed employers, private insurance companies, and health care providers to keep their hands too much on the controls of OUR healthcare money. Too much “compromise” with private health insurance providers. I believe a person should be able to join any cooperative group, to pay (collectively bargain) for anything. Give people the option of joining a large insurance cooperative (U.S. government), to collectively bargain for health services. People should have the option of joining any other group, instead. But why would any logical person want to join a group where, on top of health care, they are paying for shareholder profit, and advertising costs (used to try and convince the subscribers they are getting a good deal).
I guess, in summary, I feel like the government needs to be more streamlined and held accountable (maybe completely rebuilt). I don’t think a growing of the large groups on the “other side” (private, “free market”) is an antidote for this. I have been focusing on health care, because it is a case example of a government program. I guess I see an OPTIONAL single-payer system as more market-like, than the alternative. We would effectively be allowing people to form a consumer-union-like group on one side of the market trade. The alternative to doing this would require increasing the amount of enforcement of “regulation and contract law”, so that corporations aren’t too powerful a force in this exchange with health care consumers (U.S. citizens). --more regulation and enforcement infrastructure, vs. just allowing the U.S. citizens to simply form their own trade group (effectively).

But I think you are right that many people agree on what we want, and we only tend to disagree on how to get it. When I attempt to look at things logically, and objectively, I feel like certain people who control many of our resources would have a huge interest in pushing a “free market” notion, along with a general distrust in government. They, themselves, utilize and benefit from large-group power, including the U.S. government. They like, and use, these “too big” structures, regularly.. They want you to distrust them, by promoting the so-called “free market”. If you do that, you reduce your engagement with, and thus your control over, your large, powerful group. --your U.S. government. I think the parts of the “free market” notion that resonate with many people are the concepts of fairness and accountability (fair price setting, no “stealing”, etc.). We want to be able to fairly trade, and share, our resources. We want people to be accountable for what they do or don’t contribute to a trade or sharing. But how could we ever really enforce people not joining together into large groups, to gain some advantage over our environment (other people/groups are a part of our environment). Our working together in large social groups is a huge part of how we have become such a successful species. So I don’t think we need to demonize one group (say, the U.S. government), in contrast with others (businesses which operate in the “free market”). I think we just need to try to engage with and within groups to make them more directly fair and accountable. Remember that these groups aren’t real things. They are just a set of interactions and intra-actions. So the more you try to be fair and accountable, when dealing with others, the more things will be that way. Technology can be used to shorten the interaction loop, so it is easier to see how your actions are affecting others, and to reduce the attack surface for potential third-party agents. I’m thinking about things like directly paying to “subscribe” to government services, as a way to keep government agents accountable, and directly “register” your “vote” for what you want, without having to rely on some elected official to hopefully advocate for your will.