Here’s my (sometimes heavy-handed) restatement. The thesis is marked by asterisks.
The author’s expression tends toward the literary and thus reduces clarity by requiring more work from the reader — a point which I find ironic in light of the message conveyed.
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> When I sit down to write … [m]y thoughts are flighty and shapeless … . But when I type, it is as if I pin my thoughts to the table. I can examine them.
> But it is hard to do it right. Not all writing helps me think. Most kinds of writing are rather weak, or even counterproductive, in this regard. You have to approach it in the right way.
> Until last fall, I had not seen anyone properly articulate the mental moves that make writing a powerful tool for thought. …
> But then I read Imre Lakatos’s Proofs and Refutations. … [I]t is, if you read it sideways, a profound exploration of the act of writing. … Because [mathematics is a special type of writing that tends toward great] precision, reading Lakatos gave me a clearer and more precise understanding of [how I use writing to] wrestle with my thoughts.
> **What follows is a series of meditations about thinking through writing provoked by, but not faithful to, Lakatos’s book. … [It] covers the basic mental models that are useful to most people [to use writing to clarify their simple thinking] … .** [A forthcoming essay will explore] more complex patterns of thinking which [may be] useful [in] research or … deep creative work.
> [First mental model: make fluid thinking rigid. That is, give yourself something to work with.]
> [Second mental model: make conjectures.]
> [Third mental model: unfold the conjectures. That is,] “interrogat[e] the conclusion to [hypothesize] why it could be true.” What premises and reasoning chains [could] lead[] to this conclusion? [This opens the conjectures up to greater criticism, which in turn helps to approach the truth, even if the explanation is wrong.]
> …
> [To make and unfold conjectures, I have learned to write a list of] bullet points [that attempt to explain] the intuition[s] behind [my conjectures as] a series of premises [that seem to fit together logically]. [Then I ask follow-up questions and try to find counter-examples.] [Through this process, I more readily find flaws in my thinking and discard or adjust my ideas on the fly.]
> [D]eeper patterns take a longer time to emerge … because they are further from … established thoughts and [therefore] harder to articulate.
> …
> [Writing is like generating] texts filled with hidden doors … . [We shortchange ourselves if we do not take the time and make the effort to open those doors and explore what lies behind them by asking critical questions about what we have written and by searching for general and special counter-examples.]