Epistemic status: Mystery.

It seems like research could be made much more efficient by investing more in “tools for thought”, such as

  • citation trackers like Mendeley / Zotero
  • Zettelkasten
  • keeping well-organized and indexed research journals

And yet it doesn’t seem like the best researchers use them much at all (c.f. The most effective readers and thinkers I know don’t take notes when reading). Why not?

  • Descartes “Discourse on Method” and how he tries to show that all his insights just come from a thinking system he’s come up with.
  • communication hypothesis: most research is bottlenecked by communication between people, not by communication with yourself.