atomicity - flexibility
Table of Contents
It is very common that one idea originally only appeared as a branch from what once seemed to be more important, turns out to be a lot more significant later.
For example, [insert an example here when I have one]
In that case, write all notes atomically from start make such rebase of focus very easy.
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zettel should be atomic
content of a zettel should only address atomic idea, because:
- atomic notes make reference easy, make discussion with zettel easy, as referring to one propositions is then intuitive
- atomicity - flexibility, making it convenient for rearranging organization and compilation, to reuse notes with zero effort
- atomicity make bad note better and hence ensure works would not be wasted
In practice, when made atomic, a zettel often falls in one of 3 common zettel categories
- use reference only if necessary
use only the plainest, most literal terms
“I couldn’t reduce it to the freshman level. That means we really don’t understand it.” - Richard Feynman
atomic
An entity is atomic when it cannot be split further; any further categorization would not make sense.
“Arithmetics” could be sensibly categorized into “plus, minus, devide, multiply”, but devide “multiply” futher into “term 1, multiply operator, term 2” won’t make much sense, as the relation of multiplication won’t hold when the 3 have seperated, and it is very unlikely that any of them would be mentioned without the other 2 at the same time.