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Comment by pxtail | Hacker News Reader

Oh, another one - I'm wondering if this is like the story about shoeshiner giving the advice about stock market and investments. When everyone and their mother is telling you that you need to write then is it really good time to start to write?

For some reason idea of reading a book which content was partially generated is really really of putting to me. I already noticed multiple people claiming in the comments that they are using generative AI tools for writing and oh man I'm glad that I already read my share of SF/fiction so I can completely avoid new books from whole genre and especially new, non renowned authors.

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> Oh, another one - I'm wondering if this is like the story about shoeshiner giving the advice about stock market and investments. When everyone and their mother is telling you that you need to write then is it really good time to start to write?

However, it can be challenging to avoid taking things to the extreme. For example, consider the internet. Eventually, even your shoeshiner might start talking about how cool the internet is as it becomes more mainstream (let's imagine we're in the 2000s). But should you avoid it simply because it's becoming more popular?

In the case of the internet, that might've been a good idea...

I hear what you’re saying but writing can become even less lucrative and still be a very good tool for yourself, your thoughts, your reasoning, your feelings etc. It doesn’t even have to be read by anyone else to help one get their thoughts sorted out. It could also be a therapeutic activity.

I think the key difference is that writing is less of a zero sum game than trading stocks for financial gain. One goal of getting better at writing is improving your ability to clarify your thoughts to the point where words come easily. Everybody writing more in principle /should/ reduce coordination barriers which pushes out the boundary of Largest Useful Group Size for any system of coordinating.

> Everybody writing more in principle /should/ reduce coordination barriers which pushes out the boundary of Largest Useful Group Size for any system of coordinating.

LargestUsefulGroupSize is already way underfilled due to the bottlenecking on GroupInterestSyncRate

> I'm wondering if this is like the story about shoeshiner giving the advice about stock market and investments.

This reminded me of when I recently overheard a server in a restaurant passionately talking about crypto investing like it was going to make him rich.

I’m writing a short sci-fi piece about a world that’s rotation was linked to the psionic energy of the creative thoughts of its inhabitants, and one day they discover mechanical tools to think for them. As the natural harmonic waves of psionic energy deminish the world starts to spin slower and slower.... and now I’m finished writing it. Very short indeed.

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