{"id":852,"date":"2005-08-09T11:47:34","date_gmt":"2005-08-09T16:47:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alevin.com\/?p=852"},"modified":"2005-08-09T11:47:34","modified_gmt":"2005-08-09T16:47:34","slug":"purple-pro-and-con-the-insight-and-the-argument","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/?p=852","title":{"rendered":"Purple pro and con: the insight and the argument"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Chris Dent writes<a href=\"http:\/\/www.burningchrome.com\/~cdent\/mt\/archives\/000420.html\">in praise of purple numbers<\/a>. These paragraph-level identifiers enable re-use of content.  Chunks of good ideas are locked inside larger units, within documents and discussion threads.<br \/>\nThe benefit of purple numbers is that they unlock insights, increasing the liquidity and flow of ideas.  The drawback is that they break apart arguments.  Insights may be captured in paragraphs. But arguments are conveyed across multiple paragraphs. You need more than one paragraph to provide context, to set up a contrast, or to draw a causal connection.<br \/>\nSometimes, picking apart the individual points is what&#8217;s needed to find the holes and strengthen understanding. Sometimes, picking at individual points is a sign of a flamewar &#8212; people are searching for points of disagreement. Picking at points can increase the quality of thought, or reduce the quality of thought by reducing the incentive to build toward a larger theme.<br \/>\nIn general, the wiki form is conducive to concensus, by bringing people literally on the same page. It will be interesting to see how wiki+purple affects the quality of thought and level of agreement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Chris Dent writesin praise of purple numbers. These paragraph-level identifiers enable re-use of content. Chunks of good ideas are locked inside larger units, within documents and discussion threads. The benefit of purple numbers is that they unlock insights, increasing the liquidity and flow of ideas. The drawback is that they break apart arguments. Insights may &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/?p=852\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Purple pro and con: the insight and the argument&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-social-software"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/prDRq-dK","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=852"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/852\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}