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How to think in writing

henrikkarlsson.xyz

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Re: How to think in writing

#41

Post by random3 »

BeetleB wrote: post #33

I'm torn about this article. On the one hand, he's right: Writing helps refine your thoughts. On the other hand, if your goal is to probe the validity of your thoughts, this is painfully inefficient. You'll get much further if you do one or two simple passes on your writing, and then pass what you've written around and ask for feedback. I think I learned this in one of Haidt's books, and it has jived with my experien…

Unless you have few, very simple thoughts, feedback is not really effective, nor scalable, compared to self validation for which writing is required.

Re: How to think in writing

#42

Post by rednafi »

I liked the thesis of the piece but not the delivery. Personally, I prefer a Hemingway-esque style in my writing, so it was a chore to penetrate through the layers of metaphors in this text.

Re: How to think in writing

#43

Post by 2143 »

BeetleB wrote: post #33

I'm torn about this article. On the one hand, he's right: Writing helps refine your thoughts. On the other hand, if your goal is to probe the validity of your thoughts, this is painfully inefficient. You'll get much further if you do one or two simple passes on your writing, and then pass what you've written around and ask for feedback. I think I learned this in one of Haidt's books, and it has jived with my experien…

> He's as smart as I am, so it wasn't an intelligence flaw.

I literally wow-ed out loud.

I've always felt everybody around me is much smarter than me. Now I have found the opposite personality — somebody who is fully confident about themselves.

Re: How to think in writing

#44

Post by kazinator »

BeetleB wrote: post #33

I'm torn about this article. On the one hand, he's right: Writing helps refine your thoughts. On the other hand, if your goal is to probe the validity of your thoughts, this is painfully inefficient. You'll get much further if you do one or two simple passes on your writing, and then pass what you've written around and ask for feedback. I think I learned this in one of Haidt's books, and it has jived with my experien…

If your brain has a blind spot, stop writing English and write code, with test cases that hit all corner cases.

Re: How to think in writing

#45

Post by QuadrupleA »

codelord wrote: post #6

"If writing down your ideas always makes them more precise and more complete, then no one who hasn't written about a topic has fully formed ideas about it." Apparently, even writing it down didn't help the author with this flawed deduction.

"If allspice makes food taste better, than no one who doesn't use allspice can cook well."

Re: How to think in writing

#48

Post by BeetleB »

random3 wrote: post #41
BeetleB wrote: post #33

I'm torn about this article. On the one hand, he's right: Writing helps refine your thoughts. On the other hand, if your goal is to probe the validity of your thoughts, this is painfully inefficient. You'll get much further if you do one or two simple passes on your writing, and then pass what you've written around and ask for feedback. I think I learned this in one of Haidt's books, and it has jived with my experien…

Unless you have few, very simple thoughts, feedback is not really effective, nor scalable, compared to self validation for which writing is required.

I would urge you to seek feedback from a more diverse crowd then.

The article talks about counterexamples. It's hubris to think you will find most of the relevant counterexamples on your own. It's also hubris to think you'll do it quicker than others.

As for scalability, I'm confused. If you have a crowd of followers, for example, you'll reach lots of people quickly, whereas by writing for yourself you'll never get feedback from more than one person. It's the perfect example of something that doesn't scale.

Heck even writing a comment on HN often leads to more efficient feedback. Sure, I probably could have thought of everything other commenters point out to me, but it would take much more time and effort, and the effort does not lead to a vastly better understanding. At best only marginally better.

Past a point you're in the zone of diminishing returns. You can spend two hours and get a 5% better understanding or you can talk to someone and in ten minutes get a 20% better understanding.

Re: How to think in writing

#49

Post by BeetleB »

2143 wrote: post #43
BeetleB wrote: post #33

I'm torn about this article. On the one hand, he's right: Writing helps refine your thoughts. On the other hand, if your goal is to probe the validity of your thoughts, this is painfully inefficient. You'll get much further if you do one or two simple passes on your writing, and then pass what you've written around and ask for feedback. I think I learned this in one of Haidt's books, and it has jived with my experien…

> He's as smart as I am, so it wasn't an intelligence flaw. I literally wow-ed out loud. I've always felt everybody around me is much smarter than me. Now I have found the opposite personality — somebody who is fully confident about themselves.

I get that the comment came across as arrogant. However you misunderstood the point. It's not that I'm very smart, but that a superior intelligence was not the factor in me finding glasses in his reasoning. It can't be, because as I pointed out, my intelligence is not superior to his.

Of course I do get your point that I should consider whether both he and I are simply not that intelligent and that's the reason I find flaws in his arguments. It's logically sound, but I'll cling to my doubts regarding it's accuracy :-)

Re: How to think in writing

#50

Post by BeetleB »

kazinator wrote: post #44
BeetleB wrote: post #33

I'm torn about this article. On the one hand, he's right: Writing helps refine your thoughts. On the other hand, if your goal is to probe the validity of your thoughts, this is painfully inefficient. You'll get much further if you do one or two simple passes on your writing, and then pass what you've written around and ask for feedback. I think I learned this in one of Haidt's books, and it has jived with my experien…

If your brain has a blind spot, stop writing English and write code, with test cases that hit all corner cases.

By the very definition, if your brain has a blind spot it'll not think of all the corner cases to test. That's why we do code reviews.
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