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How to ThinkIn the Age of AI

Question

What is connection mapping?

beginner

Quick Answer

The connections between things carry as much meaning as the things themselves.

The connections between things carry as much meaning as the things themselves.

Example: You have notes on 'working memory,' 'cognitive load,' and 'externalization.' Separately, they're three isolated facts. But the moment you map the relationships — working memory limits cause cognitive load, externalization reduces cognitive load, reduced load frees working memory — you've built a causal loop that none of the individual notes contain. The insight lives in the edges, not the nodes.

This concept is part of Relationship Mapping in the How to Think curriculum, which builds the epistemic infrastructure for relationship mapping.

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