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Comments (62)

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  billypilgrim
  When I had started my PhD, I thought the writing part of a paper was just the last thing I needed to do to summarize my results, like a boring epilogue to the more exciting science. What surprised me was how much of the scientific process relied on my ability to convey my ideas to someone else. And to be able to do that you need clarity of mind, you need to have worked through multiple drafts to be able to get to your point as efficiently and clearly as possible. So many times I only discovered what I was actually researching during the writing part.The problem with AI writing is that it makes people believe that writing is just writing and not a tool for thinking very deeply about the topic you are writing about. I am not completely opposed to AI assisted writing, but if I see AI writing, it’s telling me that the author tried to take a shortcut in their own thinking and it’s a good heuristic that the ideas will not be thought through enough to warrant my complete attention.
• drewbeck
  This is true for designing, too. I see a lot of people saying Figma is dead because you can prototype directly; for novel UX problems the act of designing — of putting ideas together, assembling a component, even getting good data into a design — is where a lot of my thinking and insights develop. The brain work plus the craft work, the tight loop between thinking and creating is so critical for me and I haven’t found nearly the same feeling when prompting.In writing and designing I think we often have a thought-feeling first: something inchoate that we can’t quite articulate yet. Getting directly to the medium itself — text or frames and layouts — is how we give shape to that feeling and turn it into a concept, insight or design.
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  lilerjee
  Writing code (Programming) is a thinking tool too.When you are writing code manually, actually you are thinking about what you are doing, what you will build actually, what are your or users' real requirements, etc.
• w10-1
  Writing is not helpful just because it has Turing-tape memory or because it reduces noise in your signal to others.It's mainly helpful in changing an exercise for youself into something useful for others, that requires you actually adopt their perspectives and migrate them to yours (or realize the error of your ways). You take on the capability not just to convey ideas but also to change the world.
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  hoppp
  Most of my projects are born out of scribbles on paper, system diagrams with boxes and little arrows to try to describe the system I want to build or my thought process written down like in this post.When I get it on paper and everything feels right I start creating the codebase but I have to get it down first, feels like I remember it more after I save my thoughts to external paper storage.
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  theptip
  Writing is a good thinking tool.But, to the claim of how to think in the age of LLMs, I think it’s worth contrasting the other approach, which is a dialog with the LLM; two things are needed IMO to keep things honest:First, you need to keep asking the LLM to explain things, until you understand what it did. Lots of angles here; have the LLM make a design/product doc, write one-off architecture explainers, write throwaway data-viz tools to explain the data distribution. Then ask a fresh copy to adversarially review the core concepts. Try asking a different frontier model too.Second, you need to push for “proof”, in other words, ask for demos and try it yourself. Imagine yourself a CEO or VC; how do you know if the output of an entire org is vaporware? One thing to beware is launching into a field where you don’t have expertise and can’t actually validate the output. This takes time of course, but for example if you write a stress test script and get CPU/QPS numbers, these complex validators are IME quite reliable when you apply the same rigor from 1) above to their construction.
• sidrag22
  When i started writing i felt the pressure to always go from draft to a polished piece. i posted a couple things i worked semi hard on and received 0 views/reads because i don't really have much of an online presence at all.From there i kinda just moved on and write purely for myself, and use it to up my own thoughts. Very rarely, something will receive a second pass days later, and thats just more to go back on my past thoughts and try to tighten them if i feel that is needed.I tend to split my day into two parts, my work hours and my "unplug" hours, and the writing was mostly landing in those unplug hours as a way to sorta summarize my day. Last week or so I decided im moving that writing into the very first thing I do each day, and it has really been absurdly effective at getting new ideas flowing quickly. I used to depend on my later day brain that was somewhat "depleted", for lack of a better way to describe how i work, and from there that would kinda birth what i work on the next morning, with maybe some iteration while working.Now instead I just do both, I open the day with ~500-1500 words, just anything that comes out, then i potentially get stuck, and ill maybe dump that to a model as just a modern rubber duck, not anything like "write for me, or finish this thought", just a kinda nudge to really toss back at me what im fully considering and then maybe i pivot back and chase down the most interesting of the topics for a few hundred more words, or get straight to work on what i thought was the most vital of all those ideas to chase while im fresh in the morning.
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  ForgotMyUUID
  I endlessly enjoyed the comparison with a Turning Machine. When I study someone's complex work, I do notes to keep several things in my sight scope: a piece of paper, PowerPoint slide or some fancy markdown text editor with syntax highlight. Seems like that this focusing is somewhat the natural way of building neuronal connections: if a logical piece is missing we have to use imagination to complete it and only then it nicely fits into our brain's "hologram" of the world.There is a wonderful book "Exploring Writing" by John Langan. I found it in our library when I was in my PhD writing phase. I highly recommend it to anyone who has problems building text and who wants to learn how to master its structuring.
• beej71
  A common refrain for teachers and writers is that they learned so much producing their work. You think you know it, and then you go to teach it and realize how much you didn't know.I'm a big fan of marbled composition books. They're cheap and durable enough. You can write in them without a table. I have 5-6 of them going at once for various tasks. And somehow (for me) the ideas flow more freely longhand than they do at the keyboard. When full, you can cut the spine off with a box cutter and scan it. G4 compression loses the color, but makes really small PDFs.It's easy to produce better written content than an LLM. And that's good for the reader and the writer.
• yubblegum
  It's an attractive thought, this comparative look at FA and TM. However it is misleading to an extent.A Turing Machine's capabilities exceed the FA's because it has a 'store of knowledge'. It is both recording and reading, repeatedly. There is erasure, too. So if we're aspiring to TM-hood, the guidance seems to be write, and re-read (your own thoughts), and re-evaluate, and re-write. This process is subject to the halting problem. /g
• Aozora7
  Being forced to take notes and write essays in school made me hate handwriting specifically and dislike writing in general. Now that I have a choice, I never use stationery or take notes for any purpose, and everything useful that I learned or did in my entire life has been done without writing being a part of the process.
• baxtr
  Writing as a thinking tool has become sort of a meme these days.And, yes, I also generally believe it’s a good thing to use it as a tool. I try to do use it as often as I can.But… I think it’s also important to note that there are - like with almost anything - pitfalls and downsides. I rarely see them discussed and thus want to bring them up:For highly analytical people, writing may become counterproductive. Especially, when it is used to continuously elaborate thoughts rather than to challenge assumptions, test hypotheses or reach decisions.It can lead to over-analyzing or pseudo-rationalizing.Ask your favorite LLM for scientific references like this one: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40137068/
• thesurlydev
  Two things came from reading this. First, I feel inspired to write regularly again. Second, I need to read more of this blog. Thanks!
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  larodi
  There's always this peculiarity regarding the fact that writing by hand, is not the same as writing by kbd. So I'm always confused which of these two actually authors, mean, though I agree - any sort of note taking is better than none.
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  emil-lp
  Writing is a good (and necessary) tool for thinking.Not all writing needs to be published.
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  raincole
  > Yet the only difference between a FA and a TM is that> the TM, unlike the FA, has paper and pencil.> Think about it.The analogy doesn't works if you really think about it. A TM with a finite tape is equivalent to an FA. The fundamental difference between a TM and an FA is that a TM has infinite space.(Yes, I know I missed the point and am not very fun at parties.)
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  sublinear
  Beyond all this, there's also tailoring your message to your audience.In sales, you might call this finding "words that work" or "the pain points". AI will not know how to do this because it's getting a vibe check of the room.You cannot merely be a sensory part for the AI unless you want to sound as cringe and out-of-touch as the majority of the training data (stale social media). Garbage in, garbage out.
• rubikscube09
  this is great but machines can think better than us now so we don't need to thinkIm even saying this with some level of sincerity
• ares623
  Wow is this the next billion dollar idea? Which startups are tackling this problem?
• patryk_builds
  The place this surprised me most was before writing code. On a recent project I wrote a plain plan file first: numbered stages, what each one should do, what "done" means. Half the real decisions happened while writing it, not while building. Questions like "what happens when the external service is down" only showed up because I had to put the step into a sentence.It also made the work resumable. Coming back after a few days, the file told me exactly where I was and why things were the way they were, which no amount of reading my own code did.
• patrickmay
  "Complexity in prose is usually a place to hide sloppy thinking, or a way to weasel out of taking a stance. If you can't say it plainly, you probably haven't thought it through yet."This hit hard. Great article.
• enoch_hou
  [flagged]