Writing is thinking
Clear thinking starts with reviews
I read Paul Graham’s essay Writes and write-nots.
The core idea PG makes is that, until recently, what it meant to be a writer was on a spectrum. You had folks who couldn’t put together a meaningful e-mail on one end. And novelists like Stephen King and Neal Stephenson on the other. But now, with the rise of AI, there’s no range anymore. You’re either a writer or you’re outsourcing your writing to AI.
There’s no need for people who don’t like writing to care anymore.
Invitation card? Ok AI.
Resignation e-mail? Ok AI.
History paper? Ok AI.
And yes...a love letter to your crush? OK AI!
PG gives the perfect analogy to emphasize his point.
This situation is not unprecedented. 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.
As LLMs only get better, it will come down to whether you care or not to be a good writer.
So why should you care? Well, let’s go back to the gym analogy.
If you’re an average American that walks here and there, tries to eat healthy half the week, plays a bit of frisbee with friends on the weekend, and doesn’t over drink, then you’ll probably live a pretty normal life and even make it to the age of 75!
Not bad at all. In fact, it’s amazing. What a privilege it is to live that life!
And now let’s say that you’re someone who consistently does strength training, you get in a few cardio sessions per week, meal prep for the weekdays, and sleep the right amount. You might also only live till 75. But! The catch is not in the lifespan but rather the quality of your life.
Chances are that this version of yourself picked up on some great habits. How to be disciplined, how to overcome resistance, how to increase your confidence, and so on. And these learnings influenced other parts of your life as well as how you showed up for your goals, loved ones, and yourself.
It’s not that the healthy version of you needed to be healthy. But by choosing to do so, you went through the quest of life with secret weapons others didn’t have access to.
Similarly, with writing, you can probably get through your career by outsourcing all your writing to ChatGPT. But as PG notes...
Is that so bad? Isn’t it common for skills to disappear when technology makes them obsolete? There aren’t many blacksmiths left, and it doesn’t seem to be a problem.
Yes, it’s bad. The reason is something I mentioned earlier: writing is thinking. In fact there’s a kind of thinking that can only be done by writing. You can’t make this point better than Leslie Lamport did: If you’re thinking without writing, then you only think you’re thinking.
Writing enables is clear thinking.
And remember, not all writing needs to be performative! Meaning you can practice the skill of thinking in private notebooks and knowledge graphs. No one but you needs to read your stuff. Your sentences don’t have to sound eloquent. And you don’t need to worry about how many retweets your epiphanies get.
The consistency of writing, like the gym, makes you stronger. If not for writing, you’ll go through the motions of life just consuming without taking a second to stop and use your brain.
Recently, I’ve been convinced that the best way to start thinking is by writing reviews. They can be about anything you consume really. Every successful creator you know probably started off by making simple comments about a book or movie or play.
The reason reviews are helpful initially is because thinking (and therefore writing) is hard! Reviews help you build your intellectual scaffolding and solves the cold start problem. Over time, as your brain gets stronger, you start developing your own ideas without needing a springboard.
And now, with AI, there’s no forcing function to write anymore. So it’s really up to you whether you want to continue sharpening your brain or not.
There’s a funny meme floating around about how you need to make generational wealth before AGI arrives. I’m now convinced that the real time crunch is being able to think and write for yourself before AGI saps away the need to use your brain once and for all.
That’s what I’m trying to do with this Substack - write reviews and share takeaways from the blog posts and podcasts I consume.
So if you’re reading this, my recommendation is to just start. It can be as simple as picking a single tweet during your daily doomscrolling and writing 140 characters about the post. Don’t just retweet, quote tweet!
