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Writes and Write-Nots

paulgraham.com

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Re: Writes and Write-Nots

#61

Post by euroderf »

rcarmo wrote: post #28
euroderf wrote: post #26

If 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)

And yet, isn't face-to-face going to be the only reliable way to outfox and do an end run around AI?

Re: Writes and Write-Nots

#62

Post by randomNumber7 »

voltaireodactyl wrote: post #34
randomNumber7 wrote: post #18

I think this is a bit too simple. Some people might be good at thinking (e.g. in math) but bad at writing. AI can just help them to do their job better. I am for example very good at math and reasoning etc. But when I write something I tend to construct long complicated sentences (probably because I think that way^^) and the result whould often be considered badly written. Now of course you can feel superiour, for yo…

For what it’s worth, I don’t think “reasoning” and “conveying that reasoning via writing” are quite as siloed as you suggest. Many people write long and complicated sentences in a first draft, but it is the subsequent drafts where that initial block of mental marble is carved and honed into a compelling argument. I believe it is in fact that very act of redrafting — seeing one’s work through the eyes of others — that…

But I can also achieve the same (act of redrafting) by refactoring my source code, working on a math formula or you know just sit there and think in my mind.

All of those are related to language, because our thinking (and also math and logic) is based on language.

But just because we think in language, does not imply that writing is the only form of reasoning. It is ok when it is your preference and certainly has a value - like other thinks.

Re: Writes and Write-Nots

#63

Post by meowface »

rcarmo wrote: post #25
frabia wrote: post #21

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…

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…

>* 100% of your writing is worth your time.

Just curious, but do you think my collective 20 years of random posts across 10+ social media platforms, often with thousands of posts per platform, has been worth my time?

Re: Writes and Write-Nots

#64

Post by inglor_cz »

rcarmo wrote: post #20

The 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 read an interesting remark once, that current growth of bureaucracy, NIMBYism et al. was greatly assisted by Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V.

During the typewriter era, anyone's ability to produce pages and pages of text was limited by their ability to type. Nowadays, you can copy/paste large blocks of code and thus inflate documents to enormous sizes. Which works just like sand in a gearbox of the decision-making process.

I wonder if the future of ESG, DEI and such is that one AI will produce endless reports and another AI will check if the correct buzzwords are used in correct frequency. And instead of yearly reports, they could easily become daily or hourly reports...

It would be a way to tout "allyship" on the social networks without actually doing anything substantial.

Re: Writes and Write-Nots

#65

Post by vajdagabor »

I agree with Paul. Our creative and intellectual abilities are so powerful, yet there’s a real danger in handing them over to AI. That said, I think AI is still extremely useful for writing, if it complements one’s skills.

I recently published a [major philosophical work][1] that is the result of decades of thinking and three months of writing. I’m not a native English speaker, and although I know what I want to say, I often don’t know how to write it. I may not know or can’t find the right terms or phrasing, or I might make grammar mistakes. Sometimes, I can describe my ideas in a clumsy way, and I need help refining my sentences.

So, I use AI. I think, write my thoughts in my own way, and then work with AI to bring them closer to what I want. It’s hard work. Although AI can be an amazingly good writing partner, it often alters my text in ways that change the meaning completely. Even replacing a single word word with a synonym or adding a comma can turn a sentence into something totally unintended. It can be a lot of back-and-forth work to find the right paragraphs. Still, AI is a tremendous help, and my work would have been more immature and unpolished without it, even if it sometimes feels a little artificial.

Of course, it’s much more ideal to master English fully and to practice writing until it feels natural. But AI helps with that, too.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41954302

Re: Writes and Write-Nots

#66

Post by inglor_cz »

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…

Calculators don't really help you think. You need to have a concept of the calculation beforehand and you only run the technical steps on the calculator.

Writing is different. It is more akin to the left leg, when the right leg is your thinking. I am a weird combination of an author and a mathematician-turned-programmer, and both these skills are very useful in either activity; I wouldn't be able to program half as well if I didn't dump my messy ideas to a doc first, especially when the model is far from straightforward.

Writing things down is a huge feedback loop for thinking. Plenty of edge cases stick their head out of the doc once you write everything down.

Re: Writes and Write-Nots

#67

Post by begueradj »

I expected much more from the article. It is, especially, poorly argumented. I feel the author wrote it hastily.

To begin with, the following assumption is false:

>To write well you have to think clearly, and thinking clearly is hard.

For most people, most life situations which require clear thinking have nothing to do with writing.

>This is why eminent professors often turn out to have resorted to plagiarism.

What's the percentage of such professors ? In the university I studied, there is no case of plagiarism till today. And plagiarism is not done because professors can't write, but due to other professional factors.

>If you're thinking without writing, you only think you're thinking.

As if writing is the only way to think well/correctly/effectively. My father never wrote a word: still, some of the most thoughtful statements I ever heard in my life were told to me by him during our conversations.

When you face a situation of danger, such as a wolf is running towards you: will you start to write your thoughts about what you should do, or will you just run right away and decide about the safest paths to follow while you are escaping ?

Re: Writes and Write-Nots

#69

Post by 082349872349872 »

graycat wrote: post #60
rcarmo wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 recent political speeches at the economic clubs of Detroit and Chicago were a little deeper than Dick and Jane! Also 21 Nobel Prize economists found the content to be deep enough to disagree!

Yes, I picked SOTU because that's a general audience, unlike economic clubs.

And heading in the direction of Dick and Jane doesn't mean that we ever reached it; according to https://community.jmp.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/8926i... recent SOTUs should be comprehensible to high school freshmen.

(full discussion at https://community.jmp.com/t5/JMPer-Cable/Regression-to-model... ; through 2018 — anyone have 2022?)

EDIT: keep in mind that the expected "general" audience for the SOTU has also expanded dramatically due to technological change in between 1790 and 2018...

Re: Writes and Write-Nots

#70

Post by James_K »

DandyDev wrote: post #40
James_K wrote: post #31

Yet again, Paul Graham states his view that people other than him are incapable of thought. I'm shocked at how frequently he does this. I would be embarrassed to make such an assertion in public even once, let alone repeatedly. While the notion that AI will replace writing is somewhat prescient, the idea that it will replace thought most certainly isn't. Paul Graham is someone who writes to think, therefore he assume…

How is that your takeaway? Please quote the sections from his essay that led you to your conclusion. My takeaway: people that know how to write, that have trained that muscle, are better at thinking in a structured way and articulating their thoughts. The number of people that know how to write is declining, at least in part due to the advent of GenAI. The number of people who know how to write is still non zero and…

From the essay:

> Instead of good writers, ok writers, and people who can't write, there will just be good writers and people who can't write.

> writing is thinking. In fact there's a kind of thinking that can only be done by writing

> 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.

PG states, clear as day, that he expects the world to be divided into people who can think (him) and people who can't (almost everyone else). When I say Paul Graham imagines only he can think, this is hyperbole. I'm sure there's a small group of people with views very similar to his to whom he would also attribute the ability of thought. I am commenting on the clear and undeniable pattern of PG writing that huge swathes of the population are incapable of thinking.

https://xkcd.com/610/ about sums up my views on his attitude.

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