[HN Gopher] Writes and Write-Nots
___________________________________________________________________
Writes and Write-Nots
Author : baxtr
Score : 163 points
Date : 2024-10-27 08:59 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (paulgraham.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (paulgraham.com)
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| 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?
| dartharva wrote:
| 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.
| rcarmo wrote:
| 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.
| mkleczek wrote:
| > 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 :)
| graycat wrote:
| 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!
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| 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...
| samatman wrote:
| I'll be generous and pretend you said intelligence, not IQ.
|
| What is the mechanism you propose, by which the birth of a
| child makes every person now living incrementally dumber?
| MarkusQ wrote:
| Personal anecdote only, but I'd suggest lack of sleep.
| Every time a kid is born, the total amount of quality
| sleep extant adults get drops.
|
| (Kids, if you ever see this, I'm not saying it wasn't
| worth it. But seriously, 2AM every night for months?)
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| 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
| rsanek wrote:
| the simplification of speech and writing is a trend that had
| been going long before the advent of the Internet.
| spencerchubb wrote:
| Devolved by what metric?
| ducttapecrown wrote:
| The usual one: young people are using it!
| dartharva wrote:
| Devolved in the ability to speak on-point without ad
| hominems.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| Others in this thread are likely using their own metrics;
| my responses were all based on declining Flesch-Kincaid
| score of State of the Union addresses (from "20th" grade to
| 8th grade over 200+ years):
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41961710
| detourdog wrote:
| Oral culturals often had other physical representations of
| thoughts in stories. The physical objects that held the stories
| could be women cloth or carved wood. It may not be actual
| writing as much as coherent cultural transfers through objects
| that PG is referring to.
| ggillas wrote:
| We're also on the edge of the read, and read-nots. There is an
| abundance of content to consume and AI lets us consume it in any
| format easily.
|
| Why read a book when we can have an idea distilled in a quick
| infographic, a shortform video, or a pithy tweet? I love a deep
| dive book that lets you immerse yourself in idea and study it
| from multiple angles, done masterfully in Dune or Thinking, Fast
| and Slow.
|
| But are we losing that chance to really contemplate given the
| speed at which more information is being thrown at us across
| every form factor?
| dartharva wrote:
| On the contrary (though it may not be everyone's case), my
| reading is better off with the presence of these shortform
| formats. By just going through these "trailers" I can now
| easily filter out the books that I should actually be reading,
| while still retaining the core ideas of those that I'd rather
| not read fully. It is doing wonders for discoverability in the
| right hands.
| tuukkah wrote:
| All the more important that everyone goes to school and is
| required to write (and think) there. Not everyone will become a
| great writer or thinker, but everyone gets the basics and the
| opportunity.
| dartharva wrote:
| Very scary.
| block_dagger wrote:
| Idiocracy indeed.
| fungiblecog wrote:
| Even smart people completely over-rate "AI" it seems
| dartharva wrote:
| The threat to individual (and overall) development posed by
| easy access to shortcuts like ChatGPT provides is not benign.
| We are seeing very real cases where it's being overused at the
| expense of quality and understanding in not just academics and
| resumes, but also in corporate environments (consulting
| especially). Most people in offices are already refusing to
| compose their own emails and messages, and soon this will
| percolate into the lives of children. It is genuinely scary to
| me what this could bring on in the future.
| mwidell wrote:
| 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 intellectual than physical effort.
|
| But sure, writing (and drawing) is a great tool to aid in deep
| thinking. So are AI tools.
| dartharva wrote:
| Reading and writing are essential for the transfer and
| percolation of knowledge across society.
|
| Stephen Hawking's thinking and imagination wouldn't have meant
| much had he not finally penned them down for others to read,
| and neither would his ideas have been taken seriously had he
| chosen to make tiktoks or podcasts to explain them instead.
| ninalanyon wrote:
| But for most of the rest of us in practice I suspect that it is
| more true than false.
|
| Most of us have neither the intellect of Hawking nor his
| situation.
| leethomas wrote:
| > That writing is the only way to do deep, clear, thinking
| simply isn't true.
|
| You're correct here.
|
| > Stephen Hawking is the first example that comes to mind.
|
| The post is obviously speaking of the general population or at
| best average professional, and in my opinion choosing one of
| the most brilliant exceptional scientific minds of our
| lifetimes is not a good counterargument for a piece that speaks
| of a potential problem with society at large.
| dgacmu wrote:
| As someone who teaches PhD students who are quite far beyond
| "average professional", I concur completely with PG on this
| one. Writing forces you to make very clear and concrete ideas
| that feel like they make sense but are still fuzzy. It's
| certainly not the only way, but it's the most common and easy
| way.
| wyager wrote:
| To use an overextended computer metaphor: serializing data
| structures to a wire format forces lazy evaluation, turning
| up any errors that were previously hidden by laziness.
| brabel wrote:
| I don't disagree, just want to mention that as someone
| married to someone who supervises Phd students, they're not
| by any means "far beyond average professional"... but
| perhaps you're on a exceptionally highly regarded faculty
| where that may be the case.
| dgacmu wrote:
| That is probably the case.
| iterance wrote:
| One of the most exceptional scientific minds of the time,
| who, I might add, despite not picking up a pen, _nevertheless
| wrote books!_
|
| Strange example to pick as someone who did not write.
| baxtr wrote:
| 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.
| JonChesterfield wrote:
| Can you expand on that? I can't see any sense in which an LLM
| improves the structure of the user's thought process
| Veen wrote:
| It's useful for ideation: suggesting ideas and concepts
| that you might not think of. A bit like a conceptual
| thesaurus. But it doesn't replace the hard work of thinking
| for yourself.
| Moru wrote:
| In the same way it can detour your thoughts to the
| mainstream and lead you away from a line of thought that
| might have ended up somewhere else.
| baxtr wrote:
| Here are two examples:
|
| a) No / little data: Whenever you are starting to think
| about a subject, you can ask it to give you a structure /
| categories.
|
| b) Existing data: What I do very often is to give it a lot
| of "raw data" like unstructured thoughts or an unstructured
| article, then I ask him to find suitable top categories.
| moritzwarhier wrote:
| a) Doesn't that mean to limit oneself to bias,
| mediocrity, and preconceived judgements instead of
| actually thinking?
| baxtr wrote:
| Well it helps me to get started. Not more but also not
| less.
|
| For me it's very important to emphasize that AI is a
| tool. You have to use it responsibly. But there is no
| reason not to use it.
| auggierose wrote:
| 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.
| safety1st wrote:
| I think what he's getting at is that while you CAN use an AI
| to assist with "ideation," we will inevitably create new, low
| paying jobs where there is no ideation and the employee just
| operates an AI, because economics. That will in turn create a
| large cohort within society who are functionally illiterate.
| Literacy profoundly alters the brain for the better, and this
| won't happen to those people.
| songshu wrote:
| Best-selling author Stephen Hawking?
| zabzonk wrote:
| A Brief History Of Time?
| wazdra wrote:
| 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.
| samatman wrote:
| > _That writing is the only way to do deep, clear, thinking
| simply isn 't true._
|
| You have committed the Fallacy of the Inverse.
| devnull3 wrote:
| New and non-plagiarized text is essential for all the AI models
| to train on. Without these the AI models will reach the
| saturation point or worse the output will not be as effective as
| it can be.
|
| If AI trains on generated text it is equivalent of an incestuous
| relationship and I don't have elaborate on analogy further.
| ji_zai wrote:
| > 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 can concentrate in our
| age of distractions have a significant advantage over those who
| can't.
| bsenftner wrote:
| 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.
| randomNumber7 wrote:
| 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 your better writing
| style. If it makes you happy ;)
| voltaireodactyl wrote:
| 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 leads
| to one's own greater understanding. Skipping that step with AI
| limits that potential to whatever ended up in the first draft,
| and Hemingway's words apply to far more than fiction.
| randomNumber7 wrote:
| 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.
| watwut wrote:
| Imo, they just don't lead to more actually clarity inside my
| brain. They are just a lot of work on top of it.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| Paul Graham proving himself wrong....
|
| He didn't need to right that article. He is already rich. So why
| did he do it?
|
| Everyday hn is full of articles where people have some some
| amazingly complex thing, entirely for fun. Then they have written
| a blog about it entirely for fun.
|
| Then we get one of the familiar detachments from reality
|
| > In preindustrial times most people's jobs made them strong. Now
| if you want to be strong, you work out. So there are still strong
| people, but only those who choose to be.
|
| Except for all of the people whose jobs still make them strong.
| Scaffolders, tree surgeons, bricklayers, carpenters, et al.
|
| I need to write a document next week. I have begun to analyse a
| complex system that chatgpt will not be aware of. I need to apply
| my specialism to it, to decide what to do with lots of steps.
| Writing it will test my understanding of the system, and
| encourage completeness. It will allow others to know what they
| are expected to do. It will allow a constructive discussion of
| the choices and reasons. ChatGPT wont help me, except perhaps in
| layout, rephrasing a sentence, something like that. My job will
| keep my writing muscles strong. Paul Graham has lost touch with
| reality.
| rcarmo wrote:
| 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). Quality has been
| trumped by mediocre quantity, and the cluelessness of the people
| who do this willingly baffles me.
|
| As someone who's been writing pretty much constantly for over 30
| years and both uses AI code completion to speed up first drafts
| (of code) but switches off everything except macOS's (pretty
| good) word completion for prose--and absolutely refuses to use AI
| to generate work documents or even my blog post drafts--this post
| was a bit of a "oh, so this would be the ultimate consequence of
| keeping all of it on" moment.
|
| Accelerating writing (with simple word completion) is fine. But
| letting the AI generate entire sentences or paragraphs (or even
| expand your draft's bullet points) will either have you stray
| from your original intent in writing or generate overly verbose
| banalities that only waste people's time.
|
| I use iA Writer to draft a lot of my stuff, and its style checks
| have helped a lot to remove redundancies, cliches and filler,
| making my prose a bit more cohesive and to the point. That's been
| around for ages and it's not LLM-style AI (more of a traditional
| grammar checker), but that sort of assistance seems to be missing
| from pretty much every AI "writing aid"--they just generate
| verbose slop, and until that is fixed in a way that truly helps a
| writer LLMs are just a party trick.
|
| Edit: I just realised that I wrote about this at length in
| February - https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2024/02/24/1600#the-
| enshitti...
| mkleczek wrote:
| I agree. See also my comment in a sibling thread about using
| LLMs to write tests:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41961214
| inglor_cz wrote:
| 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.
| frabia wrote:
| 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?
| rcarmo wrote:
| 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.
| meowface wrote:
| >* 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?
| rcarmo wrote:
| Well, I think mine have. There were some weird tweets, but
| on average... yeah.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| > some weird tweets
|
| Sounds like some of the 15% or some of the 28%. :)
| grvdrm wrote:
| What's "worth" in this question?
|
| May be hard to answer. My view from the same behavior: yes,
| worth it.
|
| Was everything productive for a career? For a relationship
| with someone else? Sometimes yes. Sometimes no.
|
| Would love to hear your thoughts on my first question!
| jampekka wrote:
| And when numbers are just rethorical devices you can pull
| them out of thin air.
| lamuswawir wrote:
| 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.
| andoando wrote:
| If 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.
| euroderf wrote:
| 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.
| rcarmo wrote:
| The trouble with that is that it doesn't scale time-wise (not
| with 50+ seat classes)
| euroderf wrote:
| And yet, isn't face-to-face going to be the only reliable way
| to outfox and do an end run around AI?
| karpathy wrote:
| 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 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.
| rcarmo wrote:
| Arithmetic tends to be a one-shot thing to perform a step in a
| daily activity. Writing tends to be about planning or
| communicating more complex things.
|
| Not that, say, doing long division in your head isn't a
| valuable skill, mind.
| sixhobbits wrote:
| I think this is a good comparison.
|
| I wonder if some people would argue that it _was_ disastrous
| though?
|
| We seem to struggle with things like putting people on the moon
| and not making airplanes fail compared to 50 years ago.
|
| Maybe there was some critical mass of mental maths skills that
| engineers had in the 60s that we've lost now? Are we still
| inventing things at the same rate as before?
| ryandv wrote:
| 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.
| nabla9 wrote:
| Yes. The argument is that writing is different and I don't
| think the analogy holds. Calculators are not tools for
| mathematical thinking or communication. Writing is a form of
| processing thoughts and communication.
|
| The "people are mostly fine" is true. People were mostly fine
| at the time when only the elites could write, but the society
| will not be the same. We are moving towards those old times.
|
| Maybe you deal with intellectual elite from the best schools
| and haven't noticed[1], but adult literacy even among college
| educated has been on a downward trend for some time and we can
| see some results. Normal interactions in the corporate world
| are more difficult. People in middle-level management can't
| explain and articulate things as well as they used to. There is
| more communication, but it's not as efficient. One well-written
| report in every two weeks used to be enough. You need to be on
| a Zoom call 2-3 hours weekly for the same thing.
|
| Mediocre or low quality writing is mentally taxing to read. If
| what you read is grammatically correct AI-slob it really kills
| all interest in reading and communicating in writing.
|
| [1] Only about 10% of adults have PIAAC adult literacy level 4
| or 5.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| 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.
| James_K wrote:
| 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 assumes writing is the only way to
| think. Entirely consistent with his massive and unrelenting ego
| and simultaneous total lack of empathy or understanding of the
| differences between people. I shall leave you with this quote of
| his--the most sneering text I've ever read:
|
| "It's not surprising that conventional-minded people would
| dislike inequality if independent-mindedness is one of the
| biggest drivers of it. But it's not simply that they don't want
| anyone to have what they can't. The conventional-minded literally
| can't imagine what it's like to have novel ideas. So the whole
| phenomenon of great variation in performance seems unnatural to
| them, and when they encounter it they assume it must be due to
| cheating or to some malign external influence." -
| https://paulgraham.com/superlinear.html#f12n
|
| There you have it folks. The genius Paul Graham is one of a
| select few people with the ability to have ideas, something which
| those who disagree with him are simply incapable of
| comprehending.
| DandyDev wrote:
| 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 is not limited to only Paul Graham.
| ccozan wrote:
| The people who like to write will still write no matter how
| many chatGPTs are there. New people will start writing
| because it enjoys them and because curiosity.
|
| But there are a lot of others which never liked to write,
| they do not need this for their job and why should not use
| this GPT as a tool like the promised land of AI / robots.
|
| Same will happen with cooking: people who like to cook will
| cook traditionally even after our incoming household robots
| will be able to.
| James_K wrote:
| 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.
| hackable_sand wrote:
| You said the same exact thing as parent
|
| Tf
| beardyw wrote:
| 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.
| ccozan wrote:
| 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.
| bsenftner wrote:
| He doesn't get it. It is not "those that can write", it will be
| those that can communicate, really communicate versus those that
| cannot. It's amazing now how few people can explain themselves,
| without thinking that act of explaining themselves is somehow a
| punishment or a lead up to a punishment. Beyond that, how few
| developers can explain what they do without the use of empty
| acronyms and a host of gobbledygook that they probably only know
| as a pile of gobbledygook because they don't work in that stuff,
| they just use it, tangentially.
|
| But the real issue is people that are not already engaged and
| knowledgeable about what one another are doing, the key moment
| when a non-tech needs to discuss a tech need with someone from
| the tech developer sphere: can they even communicate, and I'm not
| talking through a salesperson, but actually discuss what one
| needs and what one provides without resorting to empty jargon?
| Real communications needs no jargon and does not use jargon, it
| modifies itself to be understood by the audience, using the
| audience's terms.
|
| This is critical in the coming decades: learn to communicate,
| professionally communicate, and I'm not talking about being a
| media talking head, I'm talking about learning how to speak to
| anyone anywhere from any stature. It's a critical skill and it is
| damn well needed now as well as tenfold in our fast approaching
| future.
| yawboakye wrote:
| 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!
| mikewarot wrote:
| I follow Paul's argument about the consequences of the churning
| of low quality output by AI, but I think there's a second order
| effect that's more concerning. The ability to judge other
| people's knowledge of a subject area will become exceedingly rare
| and priceless.
|
| Unlike younger generations, who are growing up surrounded by AI-
| generated content, many of us older folks have had the experience
| of engaging directly with people and evaluating their competence.
| We developed a knack for quickly determining someone's skill
| level through just a few minutes of face-to-face conversation--a
| skill that was essential for navigating various life situations.
|
| Now that anyone can use AI to generate seemingly competent text,
| videos, and more, and as in-person interactions decline, the
| conditions that once allowed us to gauge competence are fading. I
| worry that in the future, no one--including AI trained on our
| outputs--will be adept at making these assessments.
|
| Those of us who take time to carefully compose arguments and
| revise them, as Paul suggests, will have a better handle on this,
| so that's a helpful consideration.
|
| I worry strongly about a future like that in Ideocracy[1], where
| nobody has a clue bout actually judge competence, and instead
| goes with the best sound bites.
|
| The one path out that I can see, and it's unlikely, is to teach
| the skill of explicitly tracking history, and reviewing how well
| someone predicted the future, over time.
|
| The explicit generation and curation of a reputation is part of
| that priceless nexus that they'll all be seeking in future
| generations, and yet it'll pale in comparison with the ability to
| size someone up in a few minutes of interaction.
|
| [1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/
| hackable_sand wrote:
| Yes
|
| I been intentionally changing up my candor so that people
|
| Who get caught up in the structure, lose the message
|
| If u know you know
| ndarray wrote:
| Judging other's competence will only be a problem if brain-
| computer interfaces become widespread before AI largely
| replaces the competent workforce, and my money is on AI
| replacement coming first.
|
| - Only a brain chip could make AI usage undetectable in
| practice. Without that you can tell if the person is checking
| his phone etc. Though you're right that an in-person
| interaction will be needed, otherwise there's no way of knowing
| what the other person is doing or if he's a real person at
| all... And since the latter problem (dead internet) will only
| grow, perhaps beyond the rectifiable, in-person communication
| will surely be in business again.
|
| - Once AI replacement of competent humans has reached a certain
| threshold, what do you stand to gain from testing a human's
| level thereof? Are you interviewing for "above AI" positions?
| If not, relying on AI will be as normal as relying on a
| calculator.
| neilv wrote:
| > _many of us older folks have had the experience of engaging
| directly with people and evaluating their competence. We
| developed a knack for quickly determining someone 's skill
| level through just a few minutes of face-to-face conversation--
| a skill that was essential for navigating various life
| situations._
|
| I think I have a bit of this knack, in some areas, tempered by
| an awareness of some of my blind spots, but most people don't
| even claim to have this knack...
|
| As evidence from our own field: before the explosion of LLM
| cheating, we had the explosion of Leetcode hazing.
|
| Because, _supposedly_ , good experienced software developers
| couldn't plausibly recognize each other just by talking with
| each other.
|
| So instead we whip out these douchetastic did-you-prep-for-this
| rituals. And afterwards you still have no idea what the other
| person would be like to work with (except that you now know
| both of you are willing to play fratbro nonsense games).
| jamalaramala wrote:
| > And yet writing pervades many jobs, and the more prestigious
| the job, the more writing it tends to require.
|
| I would say that it's quite the opposite! The most prestigious
| the job, the more likely the person will have one or many
| assistants to help them write.
|
| Think of presidents, governors and CEOs. They must *read* much
| more than they write. Their response can fit in a post-it
| attached to the paperwork.
|
| The next level also reads more than they write. Instead of a
| post-it, they will probably come up with bullet points which will
| be fleshed out by people below them.
|
| The people who *really* have to write stuff is the people at the
| *bottom* of the hierarchy.
|
| Writing well could be a way to go up the ladder. But it is
| definitely not required at the top.
|
| What will change, in the future, is that *everyone* will have
| assistants.
| globular-toast wrote:
| The point was that it was difficult to get into such a position
| without having learnt to write. I doubt that people in such
| positions, having already learnt to write, just start dictating
| to staff and having them completely rewrite it. They would
| still use those writing skills to communicate with the staff
| and directly with other correspondents.
| hnaa wrote:
| Writing done entirely by AIs is currently pretty awful, but I'm
| sure that it will get better over time. There was a prof on
| Twitter (can't find the tweet now) who assigned his class to
| generate and then critique an essay written by ChatGPT and it
| caused all of them to stop using it.
| y04nn wrote:
| Can LLM/AI have the opposite effect?
|
| People would start writing more and getting better at it with the
| help of LLM. This would create a positive feedback loop that
| would encourage them to write more and better. LLM should be used
| a tool improve productivity and quality of output. Like we use a
| computer interface to write faster, move and edit text, instead
| of using a pencil and an eraser, today you can use a LLM to
| improve your writing. This will help people to get better at
| organizing their thoughts and think more clearly instead of
| replacing the thinking.
| graycat wrote:
| Sorry, while I have a lot of the Graham essays, hopefully all
| them, now also including this one, here I nearly fully disagree
| with Graham:
|
| (1) Due to computer-based word processing and spelling and
| grammar correction, writing, and good writing, are much easier
| now than before personal computers (PC). Indeed, a quip is that
| the typewriters killed off the ink pens, and the PCs killed off
| the typewriters; writing got easier and likely better, not less
| common. People got a lot more practice.
|
| (2) Email, Internet blog posts, and other communications generate
| more writing. Can we find some data on total US email volume and
| compare that with old USPS mail volume, letters to the editor of
| newspapers, etc.?
|
| (3) Now there is a lot of competition for _good_ writing: At
| Hacker News, bad writing, especially from bad thinking, gets
| _down voted_. On Web sites using Disqus, part of getting voted up
| is clear, short, maybe just one sentence, maybe sarcastic,
| clever, and humorous, say, succinct, on the point, and maybe fun,
| and that means in some respects _better_ writing. Maybe Disqus
| could tell us how Internet blog post writing volume has
| increased? A lot?
|
| (4) For the _media_ , via the Internet and Web sites, that is now
| much cheaper to produce than old newspapers, magazines, TV news,
| and I'd guess that the total of _media_ as writing or as oral
| reading of what was written is much greater than before. For the
| future, I anticipate many more words per day, i.e., more writing.
| Uh, the _writing_ at Hacker News has been going down, up, or
| staying the same? There is Facebook, X, Reddit, Wikipedia. There
| are sites for narrow interests. Sounds like a lot more writing.
|
| (5) People have smart phones with them nearly all the time; net,
| that can mean more communications, and writing is less intrusive
| on the receiver than in-person voice. From good STEM field
| communications or just _mature socialization_ , to avoid being
| misunderstood or offensive, good writing is important.
|
| (6) Sure, now some Google searches result in AI answers, and for
| some simple questions the AI answers can be a little okay. But, I
| don't take the AI answers seriously, and the old Google search
| facility works fine and, also, of high importance, gives the URLs
| for the search results.
|
| (7) Looking back at my writing, from personal letters to
| academics, on-line political discussions, etc., I see no way AI
| could help -- the AI writing is worse, not better.
|
| (8) Since supposedly Taylor Swift is now worth $1.6 billion,
| there can be increased interest in guitar playing and the claim
| that such music is based almost entirely on the four chords I,
| IV, V, and VI. So, my niece wanted to know, and I wrote her an
| essay, 6,200 words with several YouTube URLs with pictures and
| sound. For some music with a lot of chords included URL
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZsqnHhyub0
|
| Sorry, but for my niece I found nothing nearly as good as what I
| wrote and believe that AI would be a poor substitute.
|
| (9) The world is changing, especially related to writing, at
| likely a uniquely high rate, and no AI training data can report
| today what is new tomorrow and needs good writing.
| vajdagabor wrote:
| 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
| begueradj wrote:
| 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 ?
| amenhotep wrote:
| The author: A requires B
|
| You: what nonsense. Clearly, B does not necessarily require A,
| and yet he says it does, how poorly argued.
| brabel wrote:
| Exactly. Isn't it ironic?!
| begueradj wrote:
| I think he is hinting to when I said: "For most people,
| most life situations which require clear thinking have
| nothing to do with writing."
|
| I meant: since most life situation where we need clear
| thinking do not involve writing, then we are obviously well
| equipped to think clearly.
|
| And if thinking clearly is not that problematic for most
| people, then the author can't say we can't write because
| thinking clearly is hard/or we can't think clearly.
|
| Got it ?
| gqcwwjtg wrote:
| Yup, as long as you ignore this quote "If you're thinking
| without writing, you only think you're thinking."
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| Use it, or lose it.
| BOOSTERHIDROGEN wrote:
| Which books are best for learning good writing?
| drcwpl wrote:
| Just write - but in seriousness, On Writing Well: The Classic
| Guide to Writing Nonfiction by William Zinsser and Dennett's
| Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking
| TedHerman wrote:
| I too wonder if the writing-is-thinking thesis holds. Does Han
| Kang (Nobel Prize in Literature, 2024) think through writing?
| Have I read something thrilling, funny, mysterious, spiritual, or
| revealing of human nature written by PG? No. He may well be
| correct about a particular subset of writing, but I do not take
| his views as authoritative about writing in general (nor am I
| convinced that hackers are just like painters).
| drcwpl wrote:
| One of the best indications / talks on writing and thinking is
| Jordan Peterson - the best advice he gives anyone is to write - 5
| minute video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kwjw2J6ByJo
| tim333 wrote:
| >in a couple decades there won't be many people who can write
|
| seems quite wrong to me.
|
| If anything the trend seems to go the other way - when I was
| younger pre internet most communication was face to face or voice
| over the phone.
|
| Now the predominant thing seems text - sms, whatsapp, this text
| box I'm typing into now. I saw a stat the other day that online /
| app dating had gone from a minority to over 50% of how couple
| meet. And that is mostly a combination of some photos and text.
| Be able to write text or fade from the gene pool!
|
| That said long form text may be different but those who write
| novels and the like were always a minority.
|
| (source for the dating thing - not sure how accurate but kind of
| scary
| https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/1fzqgvk/...)
| safety1st wrote:
| 10-15 years ago I think this take was correct, the Internet was
| about writing.
|
| It isn't anymore, not for newer generations - e.g. Gen Z
| spending most of their time on Tiktok and phones, and not
| knowing how to use a word processor.
|
| In the span of ~30 years pg is talking about I can absolutely
| imagine some job where you speak to the AI and it writes the
| documents for you and you never learned how to write one
| yourself. It will not be a good job but millions of people will
| hold it. They will not be able to write with much
| sophistication themselves ergo they will not be able to think
| with much sophistication either.
|
| Online dating is not about writing. It was before Tinder, but
| it's not anymore. Like Instagram, it's about being skilled with
| photo filters and/or hiring a professional photographer. No one
| bothers to hire a profile writer - because no one reads the
| profile.
|
| If the other person's photos are hawt you will click a button
| and the AI will send some funny jokes and if you're hawt too
| you'll share locations and shag. Idiocracy or some
| Eloi/Morlocks world will be real
| hackable_sand wrote:
| Less internet for you.
|
| More going outside for you.
| tim333 wrote:
| Curious about your hypothesis, I went on Tiktok and clicked
| trending. The top thing (clips from Superstore I think) had
| 16535 text comments on it though mostly stuff like
|
| >"Don't you hate Tuesdays?" "AHHHHHH"
|
| so not really long-form essays. Maybe the future is that
| stuff?
| astrobe_ wrote:
| The present is already non-written communication with
| Emojis. This supports TFA's thesis, as these forms of
| communication are about emotions, not thinking. Maybe it is
| a bit unfair to pick a media that focuses on video/image,
| though.
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| TikTok videos are embedded in text -- titles, usernames,
| descriptions, comments. It's very different from TV, and if
| anything if it replaces TV it will make newer generations
| more literate, not less.
| Swizec wrote:
| > It isn't anymore, not for newer generations - e.g. Gen Z
| spending most of their time on Tiktok and phones, and not
| knowing how to use a word processor.
|
| This is a classic fallacy as old as society. "Whatever the
| hoi polloi are doing is by definition not the good stuff".
| But long-term whatever the masses are doing always wins.
|
| You know Shakespeare? He was the rube who thought plays could
| be entertaining to the masses. How quaint and silly, who
| would expect _a commoner_ to appreciate a play. pfft.
|
| Mozart? Taylor Swift of his day.
|
| Printing press? Don't even get me started, ew the commoners
| think they can just, like, write things down? How rude.
|
| I'm as much an anti-fan of the short video communication
| trend as anyone, but it works. When bandwidth is cheap and
| video recording ubiquitous, video is a great medium. Who
| cares what you say, _show_ me.
|
| edit to add an uncomfortable truth: The in-crowd _talks_ to
| develop ideas. What you see in writing is weeks, months, or
| even years behind the bleeding edge.
| samatman wrote:
| There should be a term for the fallacy on display here. The
| Spurious Generalization Fallacy perhaps?
|
| At no point did you address whether the shifting habits of
| younger generations will be bad for their literacy, instead
| making a general point that new trends in society are
| routinely panned by older members of such a society.
|
| As a counterpoint, before radio and the phonograph, musical
| ability was quite widespread. Now, it's much rarer.
|
| You haven't even attempted to address whether various
| developments in society and technology might do this to
| literacy the way earlier trends did to musical skills. I
| think that result is quite likely, by the way.
| dig1 wrote:
| The issue with the modern internet is that it's primarily used
| for communication (via short writing), often resulting in
| poorly written messages. Animals communicate through sounds,
| but this doesn't mean they can talk.
|
| I agree with PG on this point and have noticed that people
| around me are often surprised when they receive well-written
| wsapp/sms messages that include proper punctuation and other
| linguistic markers. Additionally, many people rarely engage in
| handwriting today, and handwriting is known to improve clear
| thinking and literacy skills.
| watwut wrote:
| Which is still massively more then amount of writing people
| did pre-internet.
| brabel wrote:
| > Which is still massively more then amount of writing
| people did pre-internet.
|
| I wonder if your answer it intentionally badly written or
| that's a sign of the problem already affecting even us on
| HN :D
| thih9 wrote:
| > That said long form text may be different but those who write
| novels and the like were always a minority.
|
| I think this is the article's point - that this minority is
| going to shrink even more.
| screye wrote:
| That minority only flourished for a brief period in the 20th
| century when universal literacy was achieved through
| schooling and proliferation of white collar work.
|
| For most of history, writers were a tiny minority. It
| exploded 100x in the last few decades. If it goes down 10x,
| it's still way above where we were in the 1800s.
| soneca wrote:
| Interesting, I just finished the manuscript of a sci-fi novel
| where one of the narratives is set in an idilic small town, with
| no scarcity, with AI systems making the life easy for everyone
| and where learning how to read and write is frowned upon.
|
| Everyone uses voice interface, so writing is looked as an
| antiquated habit.
| fud101 wrote:
| is there a way to block any PG posts from my feed?
| ducttapecrown wrote:
| I think of writing as similar to a linear extension of a partial
| order. Your brain doesn't think a single letter at a time,
| instead, all of your neurons are doing neuron things all at the
| same time. But writing is linear. This forces order and I think
| is partially responsible for the "clear thinking" ascribed to
| writing!
|
| Hopefully I'll live the couple of decades to find out if PG's
| prediction is correct, I would bet against it.
| throw_pm23 wrote:
| As someone working on linear extensions of partial orders (some
| of the time), I found your observation very insightful, a
| perspective I haven't considered before.
| evanmoran wrote:
| To add to this, when I think of ordering I'm reminded of the
| NP complete traveling salesman problem. It's easy to make a
| program to visit all locations, but optimal order is so much
| harder.
|
| I suspect thinking is similar, which brings up questions
| about LLMs as well. We all can now quickly write hundreds of
| generic business plans, but knowing what to focus on first is
| still the hard part.
| disqard wrote:
| I don't always agree with everything PG writes.
|
| Here however, I do agree with his articulation -- "writing is
| thinking" -- and like you, I've thought a bit about the linear
| nature of writing.
|
| My view is that the "jumble" of ideas/concepts/perspectives is
| just that -- a jumbled mess -- and the _process of linearizing
| that mess_ requires certain cognitive aspects that we (humans)
| generally consider as constituting intelligence. IMO, the rapid
| generation of grammatically-correct + coherent linear sequences
| by LLMs is one reason some folks ascribe "intelligence" to
| them.
|
| I liked his analogy about how the disappearance of widespread
| physical work meant that one now _had_ to intentionally invest
| Time and Effort (at the gym) to maintain physical health. The
| facile nature of LLMs ' "spitting out a linear sequence of
| words" will mean fewer and fewer people will continue to
| exercise the mental muscles to do that linearization on their
| own (unassisted by AI), and consequently, will experience
| widespread atrophy thereof.
| watwut wrote:
| Reading is linear. Writing is not.
| deskr wrote:
| There will also be many more people that can't read. Sure, they
| can read simple sentences but not an article.
| qntmfred wrote:
| writing offers relatively high information density in a low
| bandwidth medium. but video offers high information density in a
| high bandwidth medium. the challenge in both cases is coming up
| with something to say that requires a high information density.
| for those who do manage to find something to say that requires a
| high information density format, speaking will be more effective
| (newspapers/books were replaced with radio which was replaced
| with tv). https://x.com/kenwarner/status/1840060518461010225
|
| the infrastructure of the internet has matured enough now that we
| don't have to talk to each other in ASCII characters any longer.
| being online increasingly will mean using your voice and face (or
| suitable synthetic alternatives) to talk to the rest of humanity.
| not like TikTok though with its algorithmically driven mental
| corruption. and not like YouTube with its copyright oriented
| business model. More like early days twitter. Just everyday
| people talking to each other. But video. And realtime.
| abhayhegde wrote:
| I agree very much with Paul here. Many a times as I'm thinking, I
| realize none of those are legitimate thoughts until I can put
| them in words. Describing your intuition is fundamentally a hard
| task, because it is trying to decipher the vague strands of
| reflection. Clarity emerges only when focused harder.
| jampekka wrote:
| And often when you have to implement what you've written in
| code you notice the written thought wasn't so legitimate after
| all.
| lukev wrote:
| Lots of comments in this thread are reacting against the idea
| that writing is required for clear thinking. I think this is
| true, but a little more nuanced.
|
| Writing and clear thinking are are related in at least two ways:
|
| 1. Both good writing and good thinking require structured
| thought, which is the ability to organize and categorize ideas in
| relation to eachother.
|
| 2. Both good writing and good thinking require meeting other
| minds: expressing your ideas in such a way that they are also
| comprehensible to someone who doesn't share our own brain. This
| is important because it's entirely possible to _think_ you have a
| good thought without actually having a good thought. The ability
| to articulate a thought is an effective discriminator between the
| two scenarios.
|
| It's probably possible to think clearly without writing, if these
| two elements are still present. But writing well is an effective
| forcing function, which is why they're so closely related.
| jilles wrote:
| If you haven't read William Zinsser "Writing to learn" you're
| doing yourself a disservice
| charles_f wrote:
| > I'm usually reluctant to make predictions about technology, but
| I feel fairly confident about this one
|
| It's interesting to be usually cautious but then predict
| something so radical, and yet with no real argument other than
| "AI is gonna replace us".
|
| Painting should have been replaced by photography, but it hasn't
| been. In my opinion, there are still plenty of people who want to
| write, so there will still be plenty of people who know how to
| write.
|
| And maybe my opinion is wrong, because it's an opinion. But to
| have to transform it to a certainty, I'd have to see much, much
| more data than a feeling and a conviction.
| analog31 wrote:
| I'm not a photographer, but a musician. I won't say that
| musicians have been replaced by automation, but the ability of
| someone to earn a living from their abilities as a musician has
| been eroded considerably over the past century. The
| preservation and advancement of many musical styles is
| occurring primarily in living rooms, or is performed for tiny
| audiences of enthusiasts. I'm happy to help keep jazz alive in
| that way.
|
| Writing may become the same thing. In the workplace, if someone
| is writing, they're probably doing it for their own
| entertainment. Some people write at home, writing journals,
| blogs, etc. Nobody will know that you're writing, unless it
| affects your thinking, and your thinking affects your work.
|
| I think we already reached the stage where people stopped
| writing, before AI entered the picture. I rarely see anybody
| write a lengthy report any more. Reports have been replaced by
| PowerPoint, chat, e-mail, etc. One consequence is that
| knowledge is quickly lost. Or, it's developed by writing, but
| is communicated verbally.
| wrs wrote:
| My imminent concern is that it seems like increasing numbers of
| people can't _read_ anything more complicated than a tweet. Do we
| end up with a tiny group of people who can seriously read and
| write, just communicating with each other? I think we had
| something like that several centuries ago? Is this whole
| "universal literacy" concept just doomed?
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| I write software that solves hard problems and makes money. I am
| very good at it. Computers do what I tell them, and people are
| happy.
|
| The biggest obstacle to my job is when I need to convince other
| people of a course of action. People do not do what I ask of
| them, because people need a nice narrative. Indeed the reaction
| of others to my writing is so negative I can get into
| disciplinary proceedings just for writing facts. Yet, when the
| shit hits the fan, and people need a leader and a plan, suddenly
| people do what I ask and are successful, presumably looking past
| my communication issues because of the imminent and larger
| threat.
|
| I am Autistic. I look forward to the day when my email and slack
| client, my JIRA client, automatically take my statements of fact
| and turn them into something neurotypical people won't have a
| social signaling reaction to and respond to as a threat.
|
| Also, thinking can also be doing.
|
| And while I'm here, there's plenty of people who can write and
| not think. And more who cannot think critically. Electrolytes:
| it's got what plants crave.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| This would be better differentiated by one's ability to _express_
| rather than to write. Of course, a person who knows how to read
| as well as how to express an idea will do fine with writing as a
| means of expression but one can also express an idea orally and
| use that oration to refine their idea.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging
|
| As a person who frequently uses writing to focus my thoughts, I
| don't see why one would see writing as the _only_ way to focus
| their thoughts.
| neilv wrote:
| For awhile, I'd guess there will be requirements to work through
| a thinking&writing task by oneself.
|
| But already there's a large number of people cheating at those
| tasks.
|
| So, we could also say we'll have the Thinkers and the Cheaters.
|
| Sadly, I don't expect the Thinkers to be the Haves.
| bachmeier wrote:
| I largely agree with the point he's making, but would say it's
| less about writing than it is about one's attention span (people
| are always checking phones and devices to avoid long stretches of
| thought) and willingness to avoid conformity (our society has
| changed to reward being part of a group). Thinking and writing
| requires both in order to be good. It feels to me that those
| activities are being discouraged and even punished in the US in
| 2024.
| localghost3000 wrote:
| I understand his point and think it's an interesting observation,
| but honestly I disagree. What AI is _great_ at is handling all
| the bullshit writing tasks that you have to do that no one reads
| or cares about. For example I got asked to write a blurb for a
| company newsletter recently. Told an LLM the things I needed to
| talk about and how long it should be, and the tone I was shooting
| for. Done in less than a few minutes. Previously that would have
| taken me at least an hour.
| cmpalmer52 wrote:
| I am a professional writer (in the sense that I have published
| short stories that were paid for, even though it is a hobby).
| Recently, my wife was participating in an event where she had
| to portray an historical figure and she had a fact sheet and a
| couple of articles about the person (she wasn't super famous).
| I used Perplexity with ChatGPT-4o and prompted it with all the
| materials we had and asked it to generate a 5 minute monologue
| in first person for the event. First draft was excellent, I
| touched up a few lines and printed it out. Done.
| n4r9 wrote:
| I don't think this example refutes the article. LLMs can
| obviate bullshit writing tasks _and_ remove the appeal of
| writing altogether for some people.
| jll29 wrote:
| > But the middle ground between those who are good at writing and
| those who can't write at all will disappear.
|
| This observation of Paul Graham may generalize beyond writing:
| modern technology appears to turn populations into bi-modally
| distributed populations - for example, those that write/consume
| human-written prose and those that produce/consume AI-generated
| prose; those that can afford human medical doctors and those that
| can only afford to consult ChatMedicGPT or Wikipedia; those that
| can afford human teachers for their childrens and those that let
| EduGPT train them, etc. Generally speaking, I expect a trend that
| more affluent people will use higher quality human services and
| the rest has to live with automation output.
| joshdavham wrote:
| That's actually a super interesting idea that I've never
| considered.
|
| It's interesting to think of humans as being like a premium
| service where AI's are a sort of knock-off/budget human
| service.
| naveen99 wrote:
| Chess has seen rating inflation because of youtube, stockfish and
| leelazero, and chess.com. basketball is seeing a boom in 3 point
| accuracy. More people than ever know about squats and deadlifts.
| I would learn to program much faster today with chatgpt than I
| did without it. Legalese and flowery prose and even rhymes were
| really unnecessary for pure communication and thought. we know
| thought, search, computation is infinite, so there will be no end
| to progress.
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