Principlev1

Recognize that choosing a primary hierarchy is a priority

Recognize that choosing a primary hierarchy is a priority decision that reveals what you are optimizing for by making certain retrievals easy and others difficult.

Why This Is a Principle

Derives from Goals as Perceptual Filters (goals determine relevance) and Abstraction Necessarily Discards Information (abstraction discards information). This reframes hierarchy choice as a values question: your structure prioritizes certain access patterns over others. It's diagnostic (reveals implicit priorities) and sets up the bridge to L-0276 on priorities. Highly general and conceptually powerful.

Source Lessons

L-0275

Multiple valid hierarchies for the same data

The same set of items can often be organized in several equally valid hierarchical structures. Each hierarchy foregrounds different relationships and obscures others. No single arrangement is canonical — the right hierarchy depends on what you are trying to see, find, or do. Recognizing this multiplicity is a precondition for deliberate knowledge design.

Connections

Derived From (2)

AxiomGoals as Perceptual Filters AxiomAbstraction Necessarily Discards Information

Back to Concepts