How do you synthesize what you learn?

Question

Smart people frequently mention having mental models or a "tree" of knowledge to which they add new information.There seems to be alot of apps that encourage note-taking or information storage/sharing but few that truly encourage critical thinking or synthesis.An exception?: https://roamresearch.com/

ColinWright · Accepted Answer

A lot of people rely on note-taking apps that allow you quickly and easily to insert information, ready to be retrieved with a simple search.
An information repository is not knowledge.
Luhmann's "Zettelkasten" is often imagined to be an early form of a wiki. Each card is a wiki page, and cross-references are on each card. But that doesn't then help us to understand what Luhmann meant when he said he would "have a conversation with his Zettelkasten".
When, and how?
I have my own theories about this, and am adapting my existing systems of note-taking to try to see if it results in a "conversation" that can "occasionally surprise me", as Luhmann claimed would sometimes happen.
I think the system being developed by Roam Research does more than simply note-taking and cross-connection, but still doesn't achieve what Luhmann described.
Time will tell. Meanwhile, I continue my efforts to see how they compare.

NathanTinker · Answer

Aha, I wrote vim script to achieve that function, not difficult at all.