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Writing is thinking

nature.com

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Re: Writing is thinking

#11

Post by infogulch »

Even speaking is thinking. This is why free speech is the very First Amendment. Whoever denies your right to speak freely is controlling your thinking.

Writing is thinking with a superpower. It's like using the "Pensive" from Harry Potter, depicted in the scene where Harry and Dumbledore pull memory whisps out of their temple to rewatch in a mirror pool. Writing enables you to apply your attention to an idea at multiple levels of analysis with significantly less effort than doing the same while also preserving the idea in your head manually.

Re: Writing is thinking

#12

Post by jll29 »

To add: Reading is also thinking (ideally).

And because reading and writing are thinking we must not delegate it to AI models as a matter of habit. In particular, during students' formative time, they need to learn how to think in reading and writing mode - reflecting, note-taking etc.

Compare it with the use of a pocket calculator: once you have a solid grounding, it's fine to use electronic calculators, but first one ought to learn how to calculate mentally and using pen and paper. If for no other reason, to check whether we made a typo when entering our calculation, e.g. when the result is off by 100 because we did not press the decimal point firmly enough.

I am very concerned that young people delegate to LLMs before reaching that stage.

Re: Writing is thinking

#13

Post by pfoof »

I would also compare reading to being reprogrammed like EEPROM. Although the process is slower, the changes feel more permanent when learning: you need to create connections yourself from examples compared to someone demonstrating it on the video.

Re: Writing is thinking

#14

Post by pryelluw »

Writing what someone else wrote is thinking what someone else thought. My favorite learning technique is reading, listening or viewing something and then typing it into libreoffice. Specially useful when it is something that is transcribed. Works really well for code, too. Give it a try!

Re: Writing is thinking

#15

Post by Isamu »

carlesfe wrote: post #10

While I agree with the underlying message, "writing is thinking" is only circumstantially correct. It wasn’t always like this. We learned to think by writing only after writing became cheap. Yes, we’ve trained our brains to develop ideas by editing raw thoughts on paper, but it is just one of the possible methods. I have read a lot of late 18th, 19th and early 20th century books and diaries, and it is plainly clear t…

You seem to be responding to the reverse, “thinking is writing”, which I agree is not true, you can think without writing.

They are making the point that writing is more than dumping a completed thought. The act of doing that helps you to critique your dumped thoughts, to have more thoughts about your thoughts, to simplify them or expand them.

It’s easier to go meta once you dump your state.

Re: Writing is thinking

#16

Post by sorcerer-mar »

zug_zug wrote: post #2

I see a lot of people say "writing is so important," and I think what they mean is "I feel really smart/good when I write." And I think what they are experiencing is that they've been assembling ideas in their heads for weeks, and only when it's all come together are they ready synthesize that information at a higher level, and they mistake this synthesis for the writing itself (rather than the writing being a sympto…

I disagree. Not sure how common this workflow is, but I write by putting all the different unsynthesized ideas down and rearrange them as the latent structure "reveals itself." At the end you have something synthesized.

Sure some type latent structure was there all along (thus why I put them down), but it wasn't necessarily visible to me, nor optimal, nor did it include/exclude all the right points. The need for iteration itself proves that the act of writing is actually doing the synthesis.

Re: Writing is thinking

#17

Post by carlesfe »

Isamu wrote: post #15
carlesfe wrote: post #10

While I agree with the underlying message, "writing is thinking" is only circumstantially correct. It wasn’t always like this. We learned to think by writing only after writing became cheap. Yes, we’ve trained our brains to develop ideas by editing raw thoughts on paper, but it is just one of the possible methods. I have read a lot of late 18th, 19th and early 20th century books and diaries, and it is plainly clear t…

You seem to be responding to the reverse, “thinking is writing”, which I agree is not true, you can think without writing. They are making the point that writing is more than dumping a completed thought. The act of doing that helps you to critique your dumped thoughts, to have more thoughts about your thoughts, to simplify them or expand them. It’s easier to go meta once you dump your state.

I think you are right and I understood it the other way around

Kind of ironic, though - I wrote, but my thinking process wasn't so great :)

Thanks for the correction!

Re: Writing is thinking

#18

Post by wrp »

zug_zug wrote: post #2

I see a lot of people say "writing is so important," and I think what they mean is "I feel really smart/good when I write." And I think what they are experiencing is that they've been assembling ideas in their heads for weeks, and only when it's all come together are they ready synthesize that information at a higher level, and they mistake this synthesis for the writing itself (rather than the writing being a sympto…

You need to add into consideration that laying things out in visual display provides cognitive support, reducing the effort to reason about more things. So writing out ideas really does allow you to reach a greater scope of synthesis.

Re: Writing is thinking

#19

Post by wrp »

carlesfe wrote: post #10

While I agree with the underlying message, "writing is thinking" is only circumstantially correct. It wasn’t always like this. We learned to think by writing only after writing became cheap. Yes, we’ve trained our brains to develop ideas by editing raw thoughts on paper, but it is just one of the possible methods. I have read a lot of late 18th, 19th and early 20th century books and diaries, and it is plainly clear t…

> writers...developed full books in their mind first

When reading long, closely reasoned passages of medieval philosophy, I've wondered about their development process, when there was no such thing as scratch paper.

> Kids that grow up with LLMs will just think differently.

People are just glibly saying this sort of thing, but what specifically is coming? I'm now wrestling with the problem of dealing with university students who don't hesitate to lean on LLMs. I'm trying to not be dismissive, but it feels like they are just thinking less, not differently.

Re: Writing is thinking

#20

Post by malloryerik »

carlesfe wrote: post #10

While I agree with the underlying message, "writing is thinking" is only circumstantially correct. It wasn’t always like this. We learned to think by writing only after writing became cheap. Yes, we’ve trained our brains to develop ideas by editing raw thoughts on paper, but it is just one of the possible methods. I have read a lot of late 18th, 19th and early 20th century books and diaries, and it is plainly clear t…

Yeah, LLMs are entirely different from "writing" because they're creative agents. So, writing allows me to give my thoughts several passes, to edit over time. It's like I can have several of me to think, write and edit, spaced over time.

LLMs are like I have someone else to do some or all of the thinking and writing and editing. So I do less thinking.

A bicycle lets my own energy go father. Writing. A car lets me use an entirely different energy source. LLMs. Which one is better for my physical fitness?

Btw the idea about Tolstoy and others keeping those massive books in their head and cranking them out over a month is fascinating. Any evidence or others who imagine the same? In Tolstoy's case, he was a count and surely had the funds, no?

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