4 Answers sorted by
Dec 10, 2023
40I copy them as PDFs using my browser's "Export as PDF..." menu item, and add the date in the file name. I keep them all in a directory. PDFs have the advantage that I can mark notes on them, search by file content from the file browser, or input them into Claude.
I've started doing this recently after I hit your same problem, I'm liking it so far.
When I really care about remembering, I make Anki flashcards.
It's really interesting to hear that people go this far in this regard. I had thought maybe I was overthinking it, but it seems like some people like yourself find a lot of value in cataloguing these things beyond just bookmarking them on the site or vaguely remembering the concepts and searching when they need them.
Dec 10, 2023
40It's not the way I do it, but there's a bookmark feature on LW which you can use.
I used to keep them in my own bookmarks before LW had that feature, but now I have an obsidian vault where I keep quotes/links/etc, so some gets saved there. But I'm also fairly good at remembering what I read and where I've read it, so I can usually come back to things even if I didn't save them.
Dec 10, 2023
42My experience of finding a post significant, in the "expect to want to link others to it in later conversations" sense, is much like the experience of learning a new word. The posts I find memorable not only explore a concept but also name it, and I happen to have the kind of cognition that handles jargon and acronyms well.
When I'm retrieving a post to link to others, I actually search the whole web based on the name I recall for the concept. Sometimes I'll recognize and grab a LW post based on that search, and other times I'll discover that the best concise definition lives elsewhere.
My experience of repeatedly linking a post is that I eventually start associating the winning search term with a concept, when I've searched it before.
For two examples of things I recall wanting to link to others, and how I found them:
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Scissor statements are in the LW vocabulary. When I want to link them, I recall a prior wild goose chase failing to find a good link with "scissor statement" as the search term, so instead I search "shiri's scissor" to get https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/30/sort-by-controversial/. Turns out the source I wanted wasn't on LW, just LW-adjacent.
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I remember that bug hunting in the lifestyle sense is a term I learned from the LW sequences, so I search the web for "lesswrong sequence bug hunt" to get https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/rFjhz5Ks685xHbMXW/hammertime-day-1-bug-hunt, which is what I wanted.
1This is really interesting and useful.
Particularly, the two things you linked are just interesting on their own, but also although I don't think my brain works in the same way yours does, I appreciate your perspective and how you tend to work with regards to these things. I think that I need something like a reference or a bookmark because these concepts don't stick quite as strongly in my mind without lots of repeated exposure. I tend to be a 'ground-up' learner (if that's even a thing) as opposed to someone who can keep lots of disparate concepts separat...
Dec 13, 2023
10I use anki flashcard for everything
What do you do to remember and reference the LessWrong posts that were most personally significant to you...
I write them. Makes it easier to remember.
2
Simple question!
Do you search until you find it? Do you look through a list of bookmarks? Do you keep a page, or even an entire Obsidian vault that references LessWrong articles?
It seems people often effortlessly reference relevant existing LessWrong articles when writing new posts and comments, and this might be a stupid question, but I'm curious, because I have a hard time simply remembering titles of things and I wonder what others do.