What is following connections?

Following connections is a concept in personal epistemology: Following connections through your knowledge graph generates new insights.

Example: A researcher studying climate policy starts at the node "carbon tax" in her knowledge graph. She follows a depth-first path: carbon tax leads to economic incentives, which leads to behavioral economics, which leads to loss aversion, which leads to framing effects, which leads to political messaging. Six hops from where she started, she has a novel argument about why carbon taxes fail — not because the economics are wrong, but because the policy is framed as a loss rather than a gain. She never would have reached this insight by thinking harder about carbon taxes. She reached it by traversing her graph — by following connections through territory she had already mapped but never walked in this particular sequence.

This concept is part of Phase 18 (Knowledge Graphs) in the How to Think curriculum, which builds the epistemic infrastructure for knowledge graphs.