An early longform lesson you learn is the necessity of serialization. You can’t write a graph or mind map. You have to pick or impose a total ordering of ideas even if there’s no natural one.
Realizing I‘ve been resisting a related lesson: the necessity of paralleliztion.
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You have to separate strands even if it seems like they’re necessarily tightly braided, with rich cross-couplings like DNA double-helix. And then serialize the strands as sections or chapters. Or chop into segments and interleave, making it more explicit/legible.
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Serializing ideas with no necessary natural order merely feels like a chore. But parallelizing tightly braided strands feels like...murder or something. It’s a bit emotionally painful.
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There are probably parallels to experiments with narrative structure in novels. Different structures suit communicating different knowledge graphs. Also probably parallels with generative processes per Chris Alexander. Communications are learning programs run by the audience.
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