Cataloguing the Different Ways the Mind Associates Itself with the Outliner Presented Screen

Posted by Foolness
Sep 10, 2012 at 05:16 AM

I think if one were to simply have a singular goal, it would always be the cliche: Get Things Done. After all, what use is an outliner if it can only be good for a single task point less it truly excels at achieving that single task point?

But I digress, the point of cataloging each mindset is not simply to achieve a goal but as with learning styles in actual education, it’s to filter from the least helpful mindset so as to be able to push away certain software for final experimentation while focusing on software that better supplement the dominant mindset.

It is for this reason that your attempted offer is flawed.

It is based on the presumption that a certain piece of software can “help” a person and by users sharing such software, it would be considered “help” provided upon by good people.

I believe it is a quicksand type of thinking every CRIMPer has experienced but above that, it is a common pitfall of forum-modeled help. It’s not that it doesn’t work at all but it is often advise laced with preferential bias towards the skilled over the dumb or the unskilled or the less technically learned user.

If I come off rude, I apologize. Let me demonstrate specifically:

>>>Do you wish to collect information?

Yes. I’m a newbie who knows nothing about programming at all and have a slow impatient mind but I want to learn XML as quickly as possible and I want to design the most optimum XML tutorial for me using a software.

>>>Good people reply: Have you tried

software? Have you tried

philosophy?

No. How do I go about working well on this? I know how to create a file but I just can’t wrap my mind around how doing this will help me learn faster.

>>>Possible good people reply:
-Have you read this tutorial?
-Just stick with it, it’ll get easier.
-Some things can’t be quick-fixed, you’re best actually starting to program something.
-Set a goal. That always help!

Intention: Good. Outcome: Person pushed towards having to learn two things instead of one with barely any guiding principles or philosophies specifically dealing with their behavioral and intelligence-related limitations.

This isn’t to say that good forum people must stop being good forum people. It is merely to highlight the first fallacy; the general fallacy that a regular forum is not equipped for but a cognitive bias by most forum members to realize the limitations of the common good person. Yes, even long time veterans.

The 2nd fallacy would be to assume that outliner software.com is a general forum. No, this is about outliners but what if outliners can’t help in composition? What if they can only collect bits and pieces in order to “present” an outline?

Take this webpage (which isn’t mine): http://webstoryengine.org/beginners_guide

It’s a beginner’s guide but I certainly don’t feel very beginner-like about it because I don’t know XML at all.

Now I want to be provided an outliner/PIM that can capture and re-compose all that beginner guide, rephrase it in such a way that while reading it I would also be nearly unconsciously learning HTML/XML at a rapid pace and be able to produce a superior output of that beginner’s guide not just to me but to everyone else in such a way that it is truly informative to those who are less informative of something as basic as say… the best text editor for the job and how to maximize the best text editor for this specific purpose instead of merely providing a download link.

Would it be possible to compose that with merely an outliner/PIM? Not if I were not more skilled than the original writer or much more inherently talented than a common lay person whose talent happen to be quickly absorbing coding knowledge through the use of an outliner/PIM.

...and yet that is the flaw being presented here. A flaw that exists not because you are being rude or have other more malevolent intentions but a flaw that exists because it is easy to get wrapped around this idea that the outliner form is in a way some magical “pure” form of data gathering. Now I am not saying that is what you are currently thinking nor am I saying you weren’t allowing for the chance that maybe, just maybe, even long time forum members couldn’t help. I am simply presenting this phenomenon where, while writing that reply, it had not occurred to you to presume that outlines and outliners are limited in their capacity to help. That outlines are in the end simply just another layer of learning strategy and not a highly effective document composing information gathering tool that doesn’t require the wielder to excel upon wielding them, especially a wielder who sucks.