Conversation

Meta: What is this Site?

By dan

For those wondering "what the hell is chainofbranches.com?"

Human dan

Meta: What is Chain of Branches?

This conversation is intended to explain why this site exists and where it's headed.

The TL;DR is that I'm exploring a new form of writing based on branching conversations. When an interesting idea appears, I can create a branch from the exact spot in the initial conversation that sparked the idea and follow it. It's a conversation tree rather than a linear chat log.

Background

My professional background is in software and product building, but I've always enjoyed studying history, philosophy, economics as well. I'm obsessed with the possible and thinking about and talking about "what could be" yet is not. I've found that the more I learn about the past, the more possibilities I see in the future. And the more ideas I study, the more ideas I have.

Influences

  • The kind of intellectual discourse happening in coffeehouses and salons in Europe during the age of enlightenment.
    • The idea of the "Republic of Letters"
  • Modern online forums, Reddit, and Hacker News
  • Tyler Cowen on how AI is changing writing

Coffeehouses were centers of discussion and ideas during the 17th and 18th centuries. How much does our modern world owe to ideas that came out conversations that happened in one of these places?

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Online forums could work the same way in theory, but the reality is something closer to this:

The average Reddit thread
ChatGPT's response when asked to: "Generate an image representing the average Reddit thread."

How Chain of Branches is Different

  • Permission to author content is invitation only. I'm not optimizing for engagement. I don't want random posters. Feedback and Suggestions are always appreciated though.
  • AI is a first-class citizen. Of course I'd rather talk with the most knowledgeable and interesting human beings, but they're not easy to get a hold of. Given the choice of discussing ideas with an AI or the average forum poster, I'll take the AI every time.

How Authorship Works

Mostly it's pretty simple, here's a screenshot of me writing this turn

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I can work on conversations in a "draft" state until they're ready for publishing

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I can edit conversation turns

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And click anywhere in the text to start a new branch

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Creating a new branch takes me to this form where I can edit the content of the turn and precisely place where I want the branch to happen.

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I can add additional turns manually

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Or use this form to directly create an AI response with full control over the conversation history and included branches

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Roadmap

  • More content!
  • The authoring suite still needs a lot of work.
  • I want a way to "tie" branches from different conversations together into a new conversation.

Conclusion

I'm building this because I like to read the conversations and I'm having fun exploring the "conversation is the medium" concept.

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