#48 Method for Tracking One's Own Views

[Danny Weltman]

This is not really a serious feature request, since 1) I'm not sure if it's a good idea, 2) I'm not sure how it would make sense to implement it, and 3) I'm not sure it would be worth the trouble even if it's a good idea and implementable. But it's something I've thought about a bit which might be useful and so in case the feature request stimulates any interesting thoughts about it or related features, I figure it's good to add it.

Right now Hypernomicon is set up to record what other people think about things. If one wishes to add one's own thoughts into the program, this can be done either by adding oneself and one's works in the third person, so to speak; or, you can add little notes into various places (e.g. in the description of a position you can write "I agree with this position" or in the description of an argument you can write "I find this argument compelling").

I think (perhaps) ideally it would be nice if there were instead a separate layer/mechanism for tracking my own views, one which was easier to see at a glance than reading through one's notes and one which was separate from one's own entry in Hypernomicon. So for instance (I have not thought this through) every argument could have a checkbox for "I agree" and every position could have a checkbox for "I support," or maybe every argument/position could have a dropdown for "my view" with various options (I agree, I am undecided, I partially agree, I disagree, etc.) or something like this.

There are a few reasons this would be helpful. First, it would allow me to disagree with my own works, and so on. For instance if I publish an argument for X and later decide ~X, I could note this in Hypernomicon. It would also allow me to get my opinions in there without creating separate entries for my own works, which is especially good when I don't have an actual work or whatever on the topic.

It would allow me to quickly see my opinion on arguments that I don't have any associated works by myself for. That is, if someone makes some argument about metaphysics that will never show up in anything I ever write or publish, but I want to remember I agree with this argument, right now the only way to note this is as a note in the argument description. There are two main issues with that current way of keeping track. First, it clutters up the argument description. I want the argument description to describe the argument on its own. Second and more importantly, I can't see this at a glance. I can't look at (e.g.) the metaphysics branch of my tree and see my views on metaphysics. I have to click on every single individual node and read through every single description to see my own notes on what I agree or disagree with. (I use square brackets to mark my own views in Hypernomicon to make this easier to see, but it's still quite hidden.)

Again, I haven't though this through very much, but maybe ideally in the Tree view, there would be another column for my own views, and so next to every position and argument there would be an icon, like a green check mark for positions and arguments I support, a red X next to positions and arguments I oppose, a question mark next to positions and arguments I'm unsure about, etc. And the same would show up somewhere when I'm viewing the position or the argument, of course. That would let me at a glance see what I think about things.