human writing is evidence of human thinking. If you try writing something you don’t understand well, it becomes immediately apparent; you end up writing a mess, and it stays a mess until you sort out the underlying idea.
Can you elaborate more on this. It feels like quite the opposite to me—the more I’ve thought about something, the messier it comes out. The harder it is to unknot the spider-web of thoughts into a linear rhetorical structure which is readily comprehensible to a virgin reader. Particularly topics I have a tendency to ‘geek out’ on. Does this mean that I don’t truly understand them, or that they are lacking a unifying underlying idea? Am I perhaps confusing passion and knowledge for understanding?
Or is it only evidence of thinking about the writing—the words on the page/screen the reader is looking at right now? And one can have a personal understanding of something which is clear in their own head (or perhaps even readily conveyed to others with similar domain knowledge—like that XKCD comic), but not readily translatable to the page?
I think there are two separate claims lurking here:
If you don’t have a clear idea, your expression of it will be a mess
If you do have a clear idea, your expression of it will be clear
I think the first is basically true, while the second isn’t necessarily true because writing can be hard. There are lots of ways for a clear idea to not make it into clear writing, like inferential distance as you mention.
The main thing to me is, if you start writing and it’s just not working, one hypothesis is that your thinking has still not really crystallized. And if you go straight to an LLM to “clarify this” you accidentally tend to throw out that hypothesis.
What’s your explanation for how LLMs can create non messy writing without conveying a clear point, and in your view do humans ever do it? I’m finding myself simultaneously agreeing with your first claim and also thinking “but English class”, and I’m not sure how to square these conflicting ideas.
English class always seemed to me to be about saying absolutely nothing in flowery language. Almost like a politician speech, where the point is to talk in such a way that the point is to make the words sound so nice that you don’t notice that the content is missing. Only I don’t think it’s intentional, just a byproduct on focusing on the language without having anything interesting to say.
And if you go straight to an LLM to “clarify this” you accidentally tend to throw out that hypothesis.
I’m not sure how to ask this question—but can writing cultivate understanding, even in the absence of new data about the theme or topic? And when I, or anyone, goes straight to an LLM to clarify an undercooked idea, or theory, or network of thoughts, they are not only outsourcing the work to express it verbally, but also are missing out on an opportunity to think and understand? As per the cliche “writing is thinking”.
You have no idea how many times I’ve tried to redraft this question, all while resisting the urge to get an LLM to rephrase it for public consumption.
I personally think you’re confusing knowledge with understanding. If you know a ton about a topic but can’t explain it clearly to a novice, you have a lot of knowledge of the details but not something we might call understanding, or knowledge of how it all fits together and why someone might/should care about any of it.
I agree that writing is often crucial for me to resolve my knowledge and thinking about a topic into understanding of that topic.
Can you elaborate more on this. It feels like quite the opposite to me—the more I’ve thought about something, the messier it comes out. The harder it is to unknot the spider-web of thoughts into a linear rhetorical structure which is readily comprehensible to a virgin reader. Particularly topics I have a tendency to ‘geek out’ on. Does this mean that I don’t truly understand them, or that they are lacking a unifying underlying idea? Am I perhaps confusing passion and knowledge for understanding?
Or is it only evidence of thinking about the writing—the words on the page/screen the reader is looking at right now? And one can have a personal understanding of something which is clear in their own head (or perhaps even readily conveyed to others with similar domain knowledge—like that XKCD comic), but not readily translatable to the page?
I think there are two separate claims lurking here:
If you don’t have a clear idea, your expression of it will be a mess
If you do have a clear idea, your expression of it will be clear
I think the first is basically true, while the second isn’t necessarily true because writing can be hard. There are lots of ways for a clear idea to not make it into clear writing, like inferential distance as you mention.
The main thing to me is, if you start writing and it’s just not working, one hypothesis is that your thinking has still not really crystallized. And if you go straight to an LLM to “clarify this” you accidentally tend to throw out that hypothesis.
What’s your explanation for how LLMs can create non messy writing without conveying a clear point, and in your view do humans ever do it? I’m finding myself simultaneously agreeing with your first claim and also thinking “but English class”, and I’m not sure how to square these conflicting ideas.
What do you mean by “but English class”?
English class always seemed to me to be about saying absolutely nothing in flowery language. Almost like a politician speech, where the point is to talk in such a way that the point is to make the words sound so nice that you don’t notice that the content is missing. Only I don’t think it’s intentional, just a byproduct on focusing on the language without having anything interesting to say.
I’m not sure how to ask this question—but can writing cultivate understanding, even in the absence of new data about the theme or topic? And when I, or anyone, goes straight to an LLM to clarify an undercooked idea, or theory, or network of thoughts, they are not only outsourcing the work to express it verbally, but also are missing out on an opportunity to think and understand? As per the cliche “writing is thinking”.
You have no idea how many times I’ve tried to redraft this question, all while resisting the urge to get an LLM to rephrase it for public consumption.
I personally think you’re confusing knowledge with understanding. If you know a ton about a topic but can’t explain it clearly to a novice, you have a lot of knowledge of the details but not something we might call understanding, or knowledge of how it all fits together and why someone might/should care about any of it.
I agree that writing is often crucial for me to resolve my knowledge and thinking about a topic into understanding of that topic.