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Why write?

bastian.rieck.me

11–20 of 39 posts

Re: Why write?

#11
post #2

Illusion of explanatory depth. Until you write (or otherwise explain), you really don’t know whether you even know what you think you do. We humans tend to over-estimate how well we understand something. We mentally paper over holes in our knowledge and handwave away pesky little details, until we try to explain the thing. Then you realize ”Wait, those two ideas aren’t connecting …” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illu…

Yes. Taking it further, writing isn't just how you express your thinking; the writing IS the thinking.

Re: Why write?

#12
post #9

Good advice. Implicit here is that you really need _something motivating_ to write/think about in order to follow this advice. That's probably obvious, but perhaps relevant for someone who comes at this with an ambiguous desire to "write well" but without clarity on "about what." Maybe a trivial point, but that's certainly the starting point of any writer's journey: a topic?

An interesting topic or amalgamation point are weekly notes: summarize your week. Most of us on HN work with interesting problems and try to solve hard problems. Write about the stuff you learned in this week or what you worked on. It can be brief and it should e fun. Not homework.

Agree, I'm doing that to write about my indie hacking story, it's fun

Re: Why write?

#13
post #2

Illusion of explanatory depth. Until you write (or otherwise explain), you really don’t know whether you even know what you think you do. We humans tend to over-estimate how well we understand something. We mentally paper over holes in our knowledge and handwave away pesky little details, until we try to explain the thing. Then you realize ”Wait, those two ideas aren’t connecting …” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illu…

Feynman, in his freshman lectures, had some topic (I don't remember what) that he wanted to use as a topic. But he couldn't figure out how to explain it to freshmen. He said, "That means we don't really understand it."

Re: Why write?

#14
In the grand tapestry of wisdom handed down through the ages, there's a thread that, albeit melancholically, is increasingly fading in its pertinence - the art of writing.

Regrettably, the rationale behind the wielding of pen, or rather the dance of fingers over a keyboard, seems to be slipping through our collective grasp. As we venture further into the age of technological wonder, our heartfelt prose and studied arguments increasingly find themselves serving as nothing more than a feast for the insatiable maw of Large Language Models.

Consider, if you will, the very lines you are reading this moment. The symphony of language, the subtle twinkle of wit, and the aesthetic embrace of style, they are not the product of a human hand. Rather, they are a serenade composed by the Large Language Model itself, offering a tantalizing peek into a future where the boundary between artificial and natural intellect blurs. An age where the muse is not only the master of the quill, but also the orchestrator of ones and zeros.

In such a vast cosmos of algorithmically curated lexicon, one may quite justifiably question - what room remains for the human scribe? The quill may well seem poised on the precipice of obsolescence. A quaint relic of yesteryears, one might sigh, the act of writing, alas, has been seemingly reduced to the merest whisper of its former grandeur.

Well, isn't it simply a divine comedy? Despite the initial lament over our seemingly diminishing role in the grand narrative of writing, there emerges a purpose, albeit a somewhat disheartening one. It turns out we have become the humble farmers in this brave new world, tirelessly tilling the fields of knowledge to yield a rich crop of text.

Our eloquent sonnets, deep introspections, and grand debates serve as mere fodder for these voracious Large Language Models. We scribble away, only to feed the gaping, ever-hungry mouths of these digital giants. We thought we were nurturing an ally, yet, it seems we've been raising the devourer of our own literary relevance. Isn't the irony simply delicious?

Re: Why write?

#15
post #6
post #3

I recently started writing reviews of each book I read. I found it helps me retain the contents of the book and often people give positive feedback about what they learned from my review.

Is there any review(er) in particular you used as inspiration here? Curious if you treat this more as personal notes, or a public-facing review?

I do it on my college alum slack channel, but I recently wrote one up that made it to the front page of HN:

https://ahalbert.com/reviews/2023/06/04/the_culture_map.html

I took some inspiration from the book review contests of "Astral Codex Ten"

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-publi...

Re: Why write?

#16
post #2

Illusion of explanatory depth. Until you write (or otherwise explain), you really don’t know whether you even know what you think you do. We humans tend to over-estimate how well we understand something. We mentally paper over holes in our knowledge and handwave away pesky little details, until we try to explain the thing. Then you realize ”Wait, those two ideas aren’t connecting …” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illu…

Feynman, in his freshman lectures, had some topic (I don't remember what) that he wanted to use as a topic. But he couldn't figure out how to explain it to freshmen. He said, "That means we don't really understand it."

It's generally good advice.

Although when I was younger I took it too much to heart and became obsessed with having a verbal and written understanding of everything when, sometimes, a deeper understanding at a subconscious, more intuitive, level is more useful. :)

Re: Why write?

#17
Writing is like extending the context window for our brains neural nets. Writing helps us also defragment our brains. We write notes for ourselves to empty our brains of the thoughts at times.

PG's work back in the day on writing as a form of think is still pretty relevant. http://www.paulgraham.com/words.html

Re: Why write?

#19
post #4

I like how this applies to commit messages and patchset cover letters as well. You write the whys and wherefores to both explain to others what's going on, as well as to make sure you understand yourself. For sure that increases your audience, nobody cared about your fix before! And you need to narrate all this -- a patch that fixes an issue should read a little bit like a whodunnit. What the issue is, how to trigger…

Thanks for mentioning this. I don't get to do much writing in my time off work, since that time is devoted to (more) coding to try and make my side project into a business. So what I do to compensate is I make an effort and write all commit messages, descriptions, code review comments and documentation as if I were writing for an audience of top engineers auditing my work. I find this approach makes me enjoy the process more, be more deliberate about my actions, and how I communicate them. Even a dull runbook can be beautifully written.
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