@fcy Like I said it really depends on the value of the source. If I only get one or two ideas from a source I may just create/update evergreen notes with the new info and cite that source directly. But if the source has the potential to make multiple additions to my knowledge base then I may choose to run it through the process.
Anything can get this treatment. I can run a book, journal article, blog article, video, podcast, anything through the process. A source is a source is a source.
The structure is simple, here’s an example:
Vault root
- Evergreen notes
- ...
- Source & lit notes
- astley1987 Never Gonna Give You Up (202103121030)
- astley1987 Never Gonna Give You Up (S.202103121030)
- Strangers to love are averse to making commitments (L.202103121032)
- Intensity of love directly correlates length of relationship (L.202103121035)
- A true love will never give you up, let you down, run around or desert you (L.202103121038)
(that’s not a real example, but I find humor often makes concepts more memorable)
The source note (denoted by (S.YYMMDDHHMM)) is the dumping ground for raw notes as I process the source. As I find themes in those raw notes I chunk them together into groups and give the group a meaningful name (phrase based where possible, capturing the concept) and then highlight that chunk and extract it into a separate literature note using the Note Refactor plugin, which helpfully replaces the chunk with the link to the new note and links from the new note back to the source note for me. The end result is often that the source note largely turns into an outline / index note containing an annotated list of literature notes (denoted by (L.YYMMDDHHMM)) which are then linked to and referenced by various evergreen notes, as appropriate. (some aren’t yet, they just sit there waiting to be used)
(admittedly there is other “junk” in that source note – question prompts to consider, rough notes that didn’t make the lit note cut, etc – along with basic biblio info like type, author, year)
Essentially this is a way to extract core principles, claims, arguments, conclusions, etc from a source and then remix them together in evergreen notes, e.g. an evergreen note may say something like this principle is an abstraction of principles from authors A and B, see: [[X]] and [[Y]]; but see [[Z]] which disagrees on the basis of blah.
Regarding the example of the reddit comment, this is actually a case where I was correct in copying the entire comment contents into the source note because I now see the original comment and the entire user account has since been deleted by the author.
Here was the contents of the comment, in its entirety:
Inflation is the big boogeyman that people are scared of but don’t quite understand. Inflation is often seen as something that cuts into your future spending and over time reduces your spending power until you’re carting around a wheelbarrow of cash to buy a loaf of bread. This is the classical Mills/Smith/Ricardo understanding of money. And while this effect is present in some areas (and often to a smaller effect than Fed published inflation rate), it’s generally thought more recently that even in inflationary environments, we can see increased standards of living with less spending. 60 years ago, $100000 bought more bread, a larger house, and a “fancier” car than it does now, but the standard of living bought with $100000 now is much greater than it bought 60 years ago. The house bought has better climate control, the appliances are beyond even the wildest dreams, and cars are safer, more fuel efficient, and can even drive itself
This is mostly due to the idea that in a healthy economy, the value of assets produced in the economy is outpacing inflation. When money is created during the loan creation process (fun fact, only about 10% of money in the US economy was created by the federal government, yet still people are under the impression that the Fed prints money), the assets bought, the companies formed, the investments into new technologies are all providing more value to our standard of living than the net reduction in our spending power due to the creation of money. standard of living value comes in many ways. We drive down costs of current amenities by more efficiently producing them, and we produce new standard of living amenities.
The general thing to know is that a dollar for dollar comparison of future money vs today money isn’t apt. Spending power in some ways goes down. While yes, it costs more to buy a loaf of bread now than it did 60 years ago, but in other areas, we have driven down production and distribution costs and greatly driven up the quality of the living bought. Adjusting for inflation is a balance of accounting for the increased price of some goods, taking advantage of innovations that reduce the cost of some of your current amenities, and incorporating new amenities created in a healthy economy into your life in a well thought out retirement income plan.
This comment thread was converted into two literature notes:
[[Future goods tend to provide higher standards of living despite inflationary dollar erosion (L.2102122023)]]
[[Only about 10% of the money in circulation is printed by the Fed; the rest is produced by banks through lending (L.2102122031)]]
The first one was an interesting concept I wasn’t aware of from my prior (limited) economics coursework.
The second one I already knew but it was useful to attach the specific number to the concept.
In this particular case I could have just created / updated existing evergreen notes with the relevant ideas and quoted the 3 paragraphs from the comment and provided a link to it, in each evergreen note. But I didn’t have one, so I made it a source note. The flexibility of the process means it doesn’t really matter which way I choose as there’s no real downside to doing it this way, other than cluttering up my sources folder.
(I also today sorted through it and created actual index notes for my sources folder, so I now have 6 separate index notes with grouped links to the sources that are in various stages of processing, grouping them into broad groups like: business and tech strategy, knowledge digestion & writing, cybersecurity & computer science, systems thinking/reasoning, law/economics/sociology/politics. This way I can decide “I want to process content on topic X” and go to that group and pick the source I want to review / continue to review)
These are not linked from any evergreen notes yet, but are sitting there waiting to be found in a search.
Essentially what I’ve done is extracted the core claims/arguments/conclusions as atomic notes from a single source and made them available as freely-referenceable notes.
Hope that helps clarify. Let me know if you have any other questions.
