by recording the connections, we document how we came to our conclusions, which may be useful to us (or our colleagues) later. As much as is possible, we should Prefer fine-grained associations. By contrast, Tags are an ineffective association structure.
Fine Grain Association | Links between materials in an information system can be fine-grained (like a citation in the middle of a sentence of a paper) or coarse-grained (like a “see also” section).
It’s generally better to make fine-grained associations. For instance, rather than evaluating a jumbled list of papers related to the paper you’re reading, it’s more helpful to see that I noticed paper X relates to paragraph N.
This is particularly true when links are bidirectional, since you’ll need help to see why the “backwards” relationship makes sense.
it's a conversational association between two concepts as opposed to a reference
As opposed to Tags - by regularly creating "fine grained association" documentation of our research and referencing our notes we can create detailed write ups on how different concepts relate to each other - this is what I'm hoping to accomplish with my My Thoughts section of Roam.