Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Writes and Write-Nots

paulgraham.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 158 posts

Re: Writes and Write-Nots

#41

Post by yawboakye »

the world of greek philosophy is marked by two eras, with the socrates as the inflection point. as far as we know, he wrote nothing. we only know of his ideas from his students, and they are pretty good ideas. socrates sharpened his wits in conversations. plato’s dialogues are a homage to this fact. it appears that productive thinking happens in conversations. unless you’re engaged in a mere manipulation of symbols within some grammar (as happens in mathematics) can it be accepted that solo thinking via writing is a great aid. this is leslie lamport’s domain. it should influence how one understands his statement on thinking and writing. about complex, irregular ideas solo thinking only gets you so far. the sort of solo thinking you do when you write is what has misled paulg to write this incomplete think piece. if he had discussed this idea in a conversation someone would have pointed out to him that socrates, jesus, and muhammad wrote nothing but have left behind some huge edifices of thought.

maybe someone would have even pointed out to him from what activity the peripatetics derived their name. but alas!

Re: Writes and Write-Nots

#42

Post by zabzonk »

songshu wrote: post #33
mwidell wrote: post #8

That 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…

Best-selling author Stephen Hawking?

A Brief History Of Time?

Re: Writes and Write-Nots

#43

Post by mkleczek »

rcarmo wrote: post #30
dartharva wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> The total IQ on the planet remains constant even as the number of people increase

IQ, (from “intelligence quotient”), is a number used to express the relative intelligence of a person.

So for the whole population it is constant by definition :)

Re: Writes and Write-Nots

#44

Post by ccozan »

beardyw wrote: post #37

There seems to be a modern fallacy which says that everything is knowable, and what is knowable is expressible. It seems all thoughts should have a lead weight tied to them so that they stay nicely on the ground where they can be admired, discussed and replicated. No wonder our age so pedestrian.

I also do not agree to this thinking/writing duo. Most of my thoughts are free floating, so to say, and I ( and possibly anyone) can derive/enhance/combine ideas in my head without any writing necessary and even come to a conclusion how to act on that thoughts.

As opposed to the writing at one end, these thoughts are rooted in an experience, an emotion, and this association never dissapears. Add the above act on them, it is like writing.

Maybe the author is referring strictly to communication or to the art of writing.

Re: Writes and Write-Nots

#45

Post by bsenftner »

ji_zai wrote: post #13

> So a world divided into writes and write-nots is more dangerous than it sounds. It will be a world of thinks and think-nots. I know which half I want to be in, and I bet you do too. I'd disagree with "half" here because I can't imagine it being anywhere close to 50/50. I expect a power law distribution: most won't be able to write well. The ones who do will have a massive advantage, in the same way that those who c…

Look at the situation now: I don't think 25% of the population can write a single paragraph on some non-banter non-gossip topic that does not appear as if it were written by a 4th grader. Look at the business communications actual people write, it's jargon and very simple directives like "did x happen?" Look at the logical flow of the sentences in technical white papers and wish the authors had more basic writing, basic communications practice, because their sentences do not flow.

We're already in a poverty of quality communicators. All that nonsense with Bitcoin was fast talking nonsense that sounded plausible. This is what happens when real communications breaks down: fraudulent technical products surrounded by a word salad of abused language and people afraid of looking stupid so they never ask for clarifications of the gobbledygook.

Re: Writes and Write-Nots

#46

Post by wazdra »

mwidell wrote: post #8

That 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…

I think you have understood "writing" in a very narrow sense. As mentioned in other replies, Stephen Hawking was a very prolific author. He did not write much, but he sure knew how to write.

PG is obviously talking about the mental process of writing, i.e. of organizing a complex network of thoughts in a linear hierarchy that others can grasp, not the physical one.

Re: Writes and Write-Nots

#47

Post by [deleted] »

rcarmo wrote: post #30
dartharva wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

Re: Writes and Write-Nots

#48

Post by 082349872349872 »

dartharva wrote: post #9
082349872349872 wrote: post #2

Another (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.

Political speech probably chases not even the median, but the marginal, voter, so you'll see that US SOTU addresses having been going regularly "Dick and Jane"-wards for the last couple of centuries.

Lagniappe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwPnJXXX5Ic

Re: Writes and Write-Nots

#49

Post by auggierose »

baxtr wrote: post #17
mwidell wrote: post #8

That 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.

Very good point. I often use AI to see things from multiple points of view. It is a good tool to check if you have included obvious things in your argumentation. Spell checking is just one of those obvious things.

Re: Writes and Write-Nots

#50

Post by ryandv »

karpathy wrote: post #27

Can 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 a…

The difference is that with arithmetic and calculators I am simply playing the rules of a formal game without regard to the semantics of those numerical symbols. I don't care so much what the numbers mean as much as I care that I have executed the rules correctly and arrive at the "right number."

With language however we are attempting to refer to some kind of underlying meaning or reality, and an LLM will not give you the understanding of the things being referred to - only the outward representations themselves. If you are indeed interested in meaningless exchange of symbols a la Searle's Chinese Room then perhaps there is some utility in this; otherwise it's the act of digesting and comprehending meaning, and the internal cognitive processes that go into the production of the written artifact that matter, not just the written artifact itself.

Post reply on HN