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alphabet of thought

alphabet of thought

Jakus

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8 installs
| (1) | Free
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alpha (.aot)

Alpha is a lightweight, readable, text language. Designed for real-world cognitive and collaborative work, for teams who want to formulate, connect, communicate, and automate their knowledge. It’s not about organising information - Alpha helps you abstract meaning from existing knowledge and share understanding with others and yourself over time.

What is Alpha?

Alpha is built on a few powerful principles:

  • I think uniquely, but I always extend existing thought structures to think.
  • Structured thoughts are ideas that connect to each other.
  • Knowledge works best when organised as a tree - not linear text, visuals, or code.

Elements

Alpha has ideas and connections between ideas to build structured thought. Here's how it works:

Idea Types (What you're describing)

context

  1. Concepts – Capitalised terms (e.g. Person)
  2. Attributes – Lowercase terms (e.g. full name)
  3. Aliases – Alternatives in parentheses (e.g. Person (Natural Person))
  4. Maps – Indicate omitted or incomplete data (e.g. ... irrelevant data not included)

content (data)

  1. Attribute Defaults – Expected values (e.g. age: 42)
  2. Examples (e.g. - Mark Zuckerberg)
  3. Code – Inline snippets (e.g. for person in persons:)

Connection Types (How ideas relate)

  1. is-a - Concepts organised hierarchically (indentation implies inheritance)
    Organisation
        Business
  1. has-a – Concepts have attributes
    Person
        full name
  1. value-is – Assign a value to an attribute
    full name: Gottfried Leibniz
  1. has-another-name – Aliases using parentheses
    Person (Natural Person)
  1. has-example – Instances of concepts, attributes or other examples
    Person
        - Mark Zuckerberg
  1. attribute-is-a-concept – Attributes that are also concepts
    Years
    age years: 5

Example: From RDF/Turtle to Alpha

Here’s the same information written in both Turtle (syntax) and Alpha.

Turtle

@prefix rdf: <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#> .
@prefix dc: <http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/> .
@prefix ex: <http://example.org/stuff/1.0/> .

<http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-syntax-grammar>
  dc:title "RDF/XML Syntax Specification (Revised)" ;
  ex:editor [
    ex:fullname "Dave Beckett";
    ex:homePage <http://purl.org/net/dajobe/>
  ]  .

Alpha

Report
    - http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-syntax-grammar
        title dc: RDF/XML Syntax Specification (Revised)
        editor ex: Dave Beckett
Editor
    - Dave Beckett
        full name ex: Dave Beckett
        home page ex uri: http://purl.org/net/dajobe/
Prefix (Namespace)
    Dublin Core (DC)
        uri: http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/
    Example (Ex)
        uri: http://example.org/stuff/1.0/
    Resource Description Framework Syntax (RDF)
        uri: http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#
        is necessary for this example: no

This example shows how Alpha retains all structure and meaning — but in a clearer, more accessible format that is infinitely extendable.

Design Principles

Readability

  • Use full words, fix misspellings
  • No synonyms for the same thing
  • Use singular terms consistently

Generality

  • Avoid redundant concepts
  • Use the most general valid term
  • Add qualifiers where needed

Granularity

  • Concepts should reflect their parts
  • Only go deeper if it’s worth the effort

Inspiration

Alpha is influenced by:

  • Charles Peirce’s How to Make Our Ideas Clear
  • Leibniz’s Alphabet of Human Thought
  • Practical modern software development

Ideal for knowledge workers

  • Formulate and communicate complicated ideas effortlessly
  • Reduce confusion and duplication
  • Use as a problem solving tool or remembering problems already solved
  • Documenting business knowledge for automating work with AI

Perfect for:

  • Knowledge workers & analysts
  • Business documentation
  • Systems thinkers

[1] Aspects True thoughts are hard won. They emerge from incorporating many aspects while myopic thoughts dies from not adjusting from self-contridiction and counter-examples.

  • States
  • Metrics
  • Time
  • Stakeholders
  • Functions
  • Entity
  • Data Types (trees, graphs, associatives, composites)
  • Location
  • Operational (cause and effect)
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