I don’t know what this is about yet, but that’s the point. I’m reading in [1] Rose Horowitch “The Age of Reading is Over”, a sentiment I have encountered also through Sam Harris too, but it is a good reminder to see it again. She writes that writing is the space where you realize what you actually think. She also says it is how you share this with others. This kind of also reminds me of Daniel Dennett’s thought pump but also of Socrates’s method, which elevate thoughts into reasoning. But coming back to the beginning of this idea, it’s almost like you are the first person you are trying to convince. And how is it that you don’t know what you think until you write it? Do you literally not know yet how to put it into words or are you improvising on the spot? And maybe the answer to that is in the realm of philosophy or psychology, but I think until you linearize your thought, either by speech or pen, you are only deluding yourself if you think you really know. This is very much like the Feynman line,
“You never really know a subject unless you can prepare a freshman lecture on it.” [2]
So the extreme form of this is self delusion, and to stretch the Feynmanian quantum link here, you perhaps both know and don’t know what you think simultaneously until you deploy it into the real world.
And reaching to Feynman, I realize I have to sort of counter one of Horowitch’s points in her article about the degradation of writing over time. She was writing that, “the books that people do read are simpler than they used to be.” And although she does concede that a longer sentence isn’t necessarily better, she does point out that less complex writing sells more these days. Today a young-adult Hunger Games novel was the top-seller while in 1958 it was Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak, which I haven’t read, but she excerpts–so I will too–:
“On that warm gray morning in the mountains, Zhivago felt sorry for the Tsar, was disturbed at the thought that succh diffident reserve and shyness could be the essential characteristics of an oppressor, that a man so weak could imprison, hang, or pardon.”
So I have qualms with asserting complex is better from a personal point of view, because in much of my life I have been reminded that my statements are doing too much work. But that can very well be that, again, until you field test your delivery, your signal to noise ratio is too low. Perhaps Mark Twain would have rewritten the above line, to,
“The Tsar was a contradiction and Zhivago saw it. How could the Tsar send people to hang and yet still be so shy? This disturbed Zhivago and made him feel sorry for the Tsar.”
Is plain language worse? What Douglas Murray conveys about social justice writing in Madness of the Crowds [3] is definitely the other extreme. Murray highlights, “their writing has the deliberately obstructive style ordinarily employed when someone either has nothing to say or needs to conceal the fact that what they are saying is not true.” And then, “when it is nearly impossible to tell what is being said, almost anything can be said and exceptionally dishonest arguments can be smuggled in under the guise of complexity.” I don’t specifically recall the context, but in school I had also encountered a lot of needlessly fiber-rich writing that was, to me at least, impenetrable. And then later in software/systems engineering, my line of work, I think fighting complexity in code and design is common to my career arc.
When you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back
Refined and clear thinking communicates well and writing helps you untangle the ball of knotted yarn that is your inner monologue, I will agree with the author [1] on that definitely. And I think with respect to outsourcing your thinking to AI, I think she makes a stronger point even that critical thinking is not just discovering what you think, but are actively building something new. That’s why Feynman’s learning technique [5] is a sort of loop. Yes the Greeks do argue you are tapping into a muse for inspiration, but then it is up to you to refine that raw material and engineer an outcome. The ancients were also right that when you ask the genie for immortality or riches, you get unintended consequences your didn’t wish for directly. Or that you didn’t prompt for directly, wink wink.
References
- Atlantic, Rose Horowitch “The Age of Reading is Over”
- https://wiki.c2.com/?RichardFeynman
- Madness of the Crowds, pages 60-61.
- https://x.com/Math_files/status/2047956277914128812 , on Feynman
- https://fs.blog/feynman-learning-technique/