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Particle Thinking

by Breck Yunits

November 24, 2024

Alejandro writes of an exercise to describe something in two words.

To him Scroll is "semantic blogging".

His Scroll blog is "a database of [his] knowledge."

He then asks what two words I would use for Scroll?

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While Scroll is also semantic blogging to me, if I could only pick two words I'd go with: particle thinking.

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The Big Questions

I like to ponder life's big mysteries.

Why are we here? How do things work?

Figuring out life's mysteries is like moving a mountain.

How does one move a mountain?

Two approaches come to mind: the philosophical approach and the engineering approach.

The philosophical approach is to change your question or perspective. A mountain from a different perspective can be a pebble, coverable with one thumb.

The engineering approach to moving a mountain is "bit by bit".

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Particle Thinking

Particle Thinking is the bit by bit way.

All of these words you are reading now can be constructed with 2 particles: a particle and an anti-particle. You then use many of those as subparticles to build letter particles, and then combine those to get word particles, and then list particles, and then parser particles, and then language particles, and then encyclopedia particles, and program particles, and operating system particles, and lowly blog post particles like this.

It's particles all the way down.

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Particle Thinking Pays Compound Interest

What's so good about this approach?

Learning is programming except instead of creating functions in code you are creating functions in neurons. Like programming, a poorly created function can be vastly slower than a well crafted one. Evaluating mental functions takes time and requires energy. If your neural functions are wasteful you will compute slower, miss optimal thoughts, and waste a lot of ATP.

If instead, you refine your thinking to where you understand exactly what concepts are necessary and what are not, you will think faster, come up with better ideas, and have more ATP to spend on enjoying life.

Do this for years, and then decades, and your savings compound.

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So those would be my two words for Scroll: particle thinking.

I want a language that helps me be a great thinker, to get the most out of my limited neurons, and use neural ATP most effectively.

And I want a language with a community of other people that think like this.

And I want a language that gives me a another way to try and move mountains.

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What do you think? What two words would you use to describe Scroll?

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