As human beings, stories are how we make sense of the world. When we are confronted with facts about “the world”, from the limitlessness of the cosmos to our worth as human beings, we interpret them and form it into a coherent story.
We do not do this alone. As a society, we often need to agree on our understanding of those hard facts to properly collaborate. Those stories, then, transcend the individual as we share them with others. We share our ways of understanding the world with other people, be it through poetry, art, philosophy or mathematics. Those stories, in turn, affect how we interpret other facts going forward. Stories are social infrastructure for making sense of the world.
Of all my strengths as a person, organization isn’t one of them. I often forget important tasks and important details. I frequently get overwhelmed because the details of a great project clutter of my field of view, whether that’s virtually or physically.
A few years ago, I found the “Getting Things Done” philosophy, and after much dilly-dallying, I implemented it. True to my nature, I implemented it physically. “Anything that is to be done should be done right”. Right?
This is a living how-to article detailing my process for conducting research about a sufficiently broad topic. It’s as much a guide for me as it is for you, the reader. The fact that it is living means that I intend to prune and edit this document as I refine my research process.
Clarify your intentions
Step 1: Define your topic
Develop a topic to be researched. Most times, this topic will already be picked out for you. You may have a burning desire to learn all you can about something, or you may need information to make a matter clear. Here, develop a topic to be researched and try to make that as focused as possible.
In a world of AI slop, and mis-information campaigns. In a world where Google Search was intentionally sabotaged for ad revenue, and enshittification is the name of the game, it’s hard to know where to get good quality information.
The solution
I don’t pretend to have a good solution, yet. However, these are sources of information that I currently trust. By no means is this an exhaustive list, it’s meant to be frequently updated and annotated.
The irrational number pi is infinite and its digits do not repeat. In it is contained a representation of every pattern, every word, every piece of music, every whisper, and–so long as it can be digitized–every thing.
Or If that’s too arcane, imagine that I have a program that generates truly random numbers and I run this program on a computer, and I hook up this computer to an energy source that lasts forever. This simulates pi, theoretically.
I’ve been putting this off for some time, but here it is. This is my WebHome. I’ve made this from Hugo, gotten a quick theme–poison by Luke Orth–and just gotten something up and running.