I like and believe too the notion that writing IS thinking and that cultivating this skill helps you form clearer thoughts.
One question about this: I'm trying to engage more and more in writing for this reason, but I seem often not to know what to write about. For example, as PG has a lot of experience when it comes to startups, I feel I don't have as much knowledge to share, or if I have some opinion, I don't feel as confident in sharing it. Any tips on how to cultivate writing as an exercise in thinking in this situation?
Writes and Write-Nots
21–30 of 158 posts
Re: Writes and Write-Nots
#22If the point of writing is to share your precise thoughts, there is no use of an LLM. Your prompt would be become equivalent to the writing you wanted to share in the first place.
If on the other hand, you need to generate a bunch of content for a school paper, blog or etc then its immensely helpful.
Re: Writes and Write-Nots
#23That writing is the only way to do deep, clear, thinking simply isn't true. Stephen Hawking is the first example that comes to mind. He developed a remarkable ability to perform complex calculations and visualize intricate mathematical concepts entirely in his mind. He once mentioned that his ALS diagnosis, which limited his physical abilities, led him to focus intensely on theoretical physics, as it required more in…
It is weird he doesn’t think of AI as deep thinking tool at all. Sure some will thoughtlessly copy and paste but for many AI helps to structure their thoughts and they think clearer as a result.
Can you expand on that? I can't see any sense in which an LLM improves the structure of the user's thought process
Re: Writes and Write-Nots
#24The idea that there will be a "middle class" that relies on AI to churn out missives without much thought scares me a lot more than having people who don't write a lot, honestly. I'm seeing that happen today with corporate documents (there's always that one enthusiast in each team who says "oh, let me improve that with [LLM]", and it's a slog to go through pages and pages of things that could be a bullet point). Qual…
I agree. See also my comment in a sibling thread about using LLMs to write tests: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41961214
Re: Writes and Write-Nots
#25I like and believe too the notion that writing IS thinking and that cultivating this skill helps you form clearer thoughts. One question about this: I'm trying to engage more and more in writing for this reason, but I seem often not to know what to write about. For example, as PG has a lot of experience when it comes to startups, I feel I don't have as much knowledge to share, or if I have some opinion, I don't feel…
Just get going. Quoting https://randsinrepose.com/archives/your-writing/ :
* Less than 1% of your writing will be life-changing.
* 3% will be trivial to write.
* 4% will strongly resonate with others in a way you didn’t expect.
* 5% will be quite good.
* 15% probably should’ve never been published.
* 26% will elicit a reaction you did not expect. Positive or negative.
* 28% will become vastly better because you chose to edit.
* 30% will start as one piece but finish as another.
* 40% will be good solid writing.
* 45% will do much worse than you expect when published.
* 60% of your writing will never be finished. Be ok with that.
* 100% of your writing is worth your time.
Re: Writes and Write-Nots
#26If an AI can barf up a first draft before I need to actually engage my brain with the underlying material, is that a bug or a feature? Probably the former.
If I were teaching at a university, I think I could not assign essay grades until i sat down with every student for a quick Q&A on the subject of their paper. That would reveal the plagiarists and charlatans and lame non-thinkers.
Re: Writes and Write-Nots
#27Can this be put in analogy to arithmetic and calculators? People had to be a lot better at mental math and calculator removed the pressure. You could imagine making similar arguments that losing the ability would be disastrous. The reasons it wasn’t was 1) people still learn and get tested in school without calculator 2) they still need to do enough mental math in day to day life without a calculator at hand so the ability hasn’t just gone to zero. Net result is people are mostly fine and there is a net improvement in arithmetic correctness across economy. Other similar aids: spellcheck, google translate, …. I feel some hesitation that these concerns are time invariant. The argument is probably that writing is different.
Re: Writes and Write-Nots
#28If an AI can barf up a first draft before I need to actually engage my brain with the underlying material, is that a bug or a feature? Probably the former. If I were teaching at a university, I think I could not assign essay grades until i sat down with every student for a quick Q&A on the subject of their paper. That would reveal the plagiarists and charlatans and lame non-thinkers.
The trouble with that is that it doesn't scale time-wise (not with 50+ seat classes)
Re: Writes and Write-Nots
#29I like and believe too the notion that writing IS thinking and that cultivating this skill helps you form clearer thoughts. One question about this: I'm trying to engage more and more in writing for this reason, but I seem often not to know what to write about. For example, as PG has a lot of experience when it comes to startups, I feel I don't have as much knowledge to share, or if I have some opinion, I don't feel…
I have found journalling to be pretty effective about anything. Most times when I meet a block, I write about it. Doesn't require tons of experience to journal about stuff.
Re: Writes and Write-Nots
#30Another (albeit optimistic) possibility: today we have an informal oral culture contrasted with a formal literary culture, so Graham perceives the latter as synonymous with thinking. However, before literacy was widespread there was, on top of the informal oral culture, also a formal oral culture, so maybe with the popularity of short video clips we might see a resurgence in structured speech?
If you observe the trend speech has actually devolved with the arrival of popular internet networks. Today's elites talk in a fashion that would embarrass even their immediate parents, let alone their ancestors. Just look at the quality of presidential debates and political discourse we've been having for the past decade. Not just in the US, but all over the world. The situation is perilous.
The total IQ on the planet remains constant even as the number of people increase, I guess. Although I really wasn't expecting the average to go down this fast--consider the idealistic and rationally thorough political speeches of the 70s and 80s, and the way things went quickly downhill from there...
As someone said, it's no wonder The Matrix chose the 90s as the peak of human civilization.