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.
If I’m understanding your question correctly (it seems clearly written, but the answer seems so obvious I’m doubting myself)… yes absolutely and it’s the standard tool for doing so! That’s the basis of personal journaling, or tech blogging, or many other forms of writing.
Ah, now I know how to phrase my question, it’s really two questions:
1. What distinguishes understanding from knowledge (or even passion about a topic)? 2. How can I write for the express purpose of understanding better? Presumably, not all manners of writing and jouralling are equally conducive to promoting understanding. And as such it’s not enough to write, or not-out-source to an LLM, there’s a particular method or way of thinking and composition of text which will improve the results.
On the first point—there’s plenty of things I can geek out about and wax lyrical—but it comes out as a mess and impossible to compose into a linear structure suitable for a virgin reader. Does this mean I don’t understand?
On the second point—I haven’t seen or enjoyed the benefits that others get from journalling or other forms of writing in understanding. I gain a lot more from dialogue (see how I finally figured out what my question was above), and FAFO: just doing the thing. I presume this means I’m doing writing wrong.
I’d loosely describe the difference between knowledge and understanding as the difference between being able to say what something is vs being able to describe why it is, or how it is, which often comes through being able to describe the thing in different ways. See the concept of “you don’t really understand something until you can explain it to a child (or lay person, I’d say).”
I know what a GPU is—I don’t understand how it works on a physical level.
Passion seems orthogonal although it csn drive knowledge and understanding.
About writing, well, our brains are all different—no technique will work equally well for everyone. Dialogue is a great way to generate understanding. And it has precedence as a writing technique too—have you tried writing fictional dialogues to hash out your ideas?
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.
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.
How do you know if the topic is just unrealistic to get a novice up to speed, or if you’re not actually understanding it? Are there tell-tale signs?
What is understanding and what obvious or immediately apparent traits does a mind that has understanding about a topic differ from one that has maintained a large body of knowledge but not “understanding”?
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.
If I’m understanding your question correctly (it seems clearly written, but the answer seems so obvious I’m doubting myself)… yes absolutely and it’s the standard tool for doing so! That’s the basis of personal journaling, or tech blogging, or many other forms of writing.
Ah, now I know how to phrase my question, it’s really two questions:
1. What distinguishes understanding from knowledge (or even passion about a topic)?
2. How can I write for the express purpose of understanding better? Presumably, not all manners of writing and jouralling are equally conducive to promoting understanding. And as such it’s not enough to write, or not-out-source to an LLM, there’s a particular method or way of thinking and composition of text which will improve the results.
On the first point—there’s plenty of things I can geek out about and wax lyrical—but it comes out as a mess and impossible to compose into a linear structure suitable for a virgin reader. Does this mean I don’t understand?
On the second point—I haven’t seen or enjoyed the benefits that others get from journalling or other forms of writing in understanding. I gain a lot more from dialogue (see how I finally figured out what my question was above), and FAFO: just doing the thing. I presume this means I’m doing writing wrong.
Re: understanding,
I’d loosely describe the difference between knowledge and understanding as the difference between being able to say what something is vs being able to describe why it is, or how it is, which often comes through being able to describe the thing in different ways. See the concept of “you don’t really understand something until you can explain it to a child (or lay person, I’d say).”
I know what a GPU is—I don’t understand how it works on a physical level.
Passion seems orthogonal although it csn drive knowledge and understanding.
About writing, well, our brains are all different—no technique will work equally well for everyone. Dialogue is a great way to generate understanding. And it has precedence as a writing technique too—have you tried writing fictional dialogues to hash out your ideas?
Paul Graham has some good pieces on this:
https://paulgraham.com/words.html
https://paulgraham.com/essay.html
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.
How do you know if the topic is just unrealistic to get a novice up to speed, or if you’re not actually understanding it? Are there tell-tale signs?
What is understanding and what obvious or immediately apparent traits does a mind that has understanding about a topic differ from one that has maintained a large body of knowledge but not “understanding”?
These are good questions, and I don’t have good answers.
Of course my use of “understanding” isn’t that common, let alone universal; but I think it’s an important concept to have, even if it’s vague.
Easily and clearly explaining to a novice without resorting to others’ explanations or cached thoughts is the best tell-tale sign I know of.
I do say a little more about this definition of understanding in my Sapience, understanding, and “AGI” . But not much.