How to think in writing
henrikkarlsson.xyz
henrikkarlsson.xyz
On the one hand, he's right: Writing helps refine your thoughts.
On the other hand, if your goal is to probe the validity of your thoughts, this is painfully inefficient. You'll get much further if you do one or two simple passes on your writing, and then pass what you've written around and ask for feedback.
I think I learned this in one of Haidt's books, and it has jived with my experience: If your brain has a bias or a blind spot, it's fairly unlikely you'll uncover it by pure thought alone. Perhaps if you put in as much effort as this author has, you'll uncover 20-50% more than the average person, which still leaves you with a lot of gaping holes. But outside feedback will uncover them very quickly!
I had a friend who thought like this person, and it was rarely hard to find flaws in his thoughts that he had not considered. He's as smart as I am, so it wasn't an intelligence flaw.
Very true. Indeed I would go further and say that unless you are capable of expressing your thoughts as words, then those thoughts will have no more substance than steam.
I thought I was a clear thinker until I entered academia. The many reports, instructional materials and academic papers soon enough showed me how wrong I was.
Edit: the illustration to this article is one of the most appropriate I have seen.
The article talks about counterexamples. It's hubris to think you will find most of the relevant counterexamples on your own. It's also hubris to think you'll do it quicker than others.
As for scalability, I'm confused. If you have a crowd of followers, for example, you'll reach lots of people quickly, whereas by writing for yourself you'll never get feedback from more than one person. It's the perfect example of something that doesn't scale.
Heck even writing a comment on HN often leads to more efficient feedback. Sure, I probably could have thought of everything other commenters point out to me, but it would take much more time and effort, and the effort does not lead to a vastly better understanding. At best only marginally better.
Past a point you're in the zone of diminishing returns. You can spend two hours and get a 5% better understanding or you can talk to someone and in ten minutes get a 20% better understanding.
That's a big if, and that's the problem with relying on feedback. The more specific the topic, the less people you'll find that can give relevant feedback. Even within a team (less people but more specialized in your problem domain), it can be difficult to get relevant feedback.
It still works because it is a form of "rubber-ducking". But the less involved in your topic the "crowd" is, the less efficient it is.
Moreover feedback has the same problem as tests (and code reviews): it can show the existence of an inconsistency or a blind spot, but positive feedback doesn't prove that you are entirely correct.
You often don’t need to be 100% sure that everything is correct before you move from “writing notes” to “doing something”. At that point, I find that note-taking becomes counter-productive because of the time it requires.
I say this as an avid note taker myself: I’ve often caught myself procrastinating by polishing my notes 100%, instead of moving on and getting things done.
Might this be based on some unsound assumptions?
We might have accidentally stumbled into a real-world test of the proposition here. :)
I agree that public forum like HN/Reddit is a good, scalable way to review (some) ideas, but it works for a fraction.
I literally wow-ed out loud.
I've always felt everybody around me is much smarter than me. Now I have found the opposite personality — somebody who is fully confident about themselves.
Of course I do get your point that I should consider whether both he and I are simply not that intelligent and that's the reason I find flaws in his arguments. It's logically sound, but I'll cling to my doubts regarding it's accuracy :-)
I'm not saying they should. In fact, I'll now say: they shouldn't. But whatever defect this habit is evidence of, it isn't necessarily a defect of their intelligence. Sometimes, but not always, or even usually.
Before you write the code, your ideas may be so poor that they don't even hit the happy cases when you try to code them. You go "Oh, what was I thinking; it's obvious now that it could never work that way ..."
Of course, it's coding we are talking about; there will be bugs. Fewer than in some wishful prose, though.
Sure, writing code will help you understand the problem better, and may let you see more corner cases. But not all (which was my point).
The step of putting propositions into a proper form such that tests can be written against them is arguably half the benefit.
And how do you avoid having to start with a blank page. I have been reading "How to take smart notes", which delves into Zettelkasten, and the point of writing and linking notes is, indeed to refine your thoughts, and to be able to collect them into a larger essay/article/what have you.
As a self-taught person with an incredible idea-making brain and terrible note-taking skills, it's taken me almost 4 decades to learn that writing is a crucial component of understanding complex systems, and it doesn't start by the essay, which, as you say, only needs one or two simple passes. The essay is the tip of the iceberg, the important stuff is all the research and writing that leads to a topic or theory.
Planning projects and what you want to do?
From the description, I'd personally think I could be labelled a scanner, but I'm trying to work out if this is a read now or read later book/
At present I'm interested in unpacking more of what's going on in my head and putting it down on paper, and I'm curious to know what reading the book gave you and if it will be useful in pulling out interesting stuff from my thoughts =)...
It doesn’t have to be perfect from the first paragraph. You will share fixed up version later.
> You'll get much further if you do one or two simple passes on your writing, and then pass what you've written around and ask for feedback.
I've found that the more time you spend "intellectualizing" your own thoughts, it'll become harder to back down, because you get so invested in your ideas.
The only thing I would argume with is:
> We just talked about it aimlessly, read randomly, and made small notes. This cost us time and caused confusion.
No, this is part of the process. It’s part of noticing and a precursor to the step of examination. This is data gathering.
—
The other thing I’ve learned over the years is that this kind of thinking/writing scares people.
I’ve made the mistake of sending an edited analysis to a cofounder. Because they didn’t have a similar practice they couldn’t perceive it as an examination of our startup’s situation, and instead received it as anxiety and uncertainty.
It’s unsettling to question assumptions.
> If writing down your ideas always makes them more precise and more complete, then no one who hasn't written about a topic has fully formed ideas about it.
It’s a logical error. It’s like saying: people who point out logical errors in internet comments look foolish, therefore no one who hasn’t done that looks foolish. Clearly there are other ways to look foolish.
So even if writing always clarified thought, it’s wrong to infer it’s impossible to have clear thoughts without writing.
But since the writer here committed this mistake, he demonstrated that writing does not always result in clear thought.
Incidentally, I wrote this comment to clarify my thoughts .
Or, say, people who have caught a Snorlax have more Pokemon, therefore no one who hasn't caught a Snorlax has all the Pokemon.
This assumes that there's such a thing as a "fully formed idea" (which means an exception to "always" - you can't clarify your thoughts more and more by writing about them forever). If there isn't, it's still true, but it's not saying a whole lot.
The quote is, as you explain, technically correct due to its use of "always". Take this word away and the sentence is correct English, but the meaning now is incorrect (and would match the interpretation of the comment you replied to). Making the correctness hinge so directly in the subtlety of the presence of the quantifier makes the sentence brittle and convoluted.
It feels almost manipulative, as if the writer hopes the reader won't inspect the sentence so closely (and thus will miss this subtlety) and will understand something slightly different ("if you don't write, it's impossible to have clear thoughts"), so that the conclusion sounds much stronger. And readers do get the incorrect interpretation, as evidenced by the comment you replied to, which attacks the misunderstanding of that sentence.
So while I fully agree with you, I still think the sentence quoted is an example of terribly unhelpful and confusing writing. Especially because the full premise "writing down your ideas _always_ makes them more precise and complete" is debatable (you just need to find one counterexample).
(Incidentally, my recollection of Graham's writing is that this type of misleading sentences (that are technically correct but appear to say something else, something that isn't), as if they were deliberately cultivated.)
A much better sentence would be something like:
* "Writing down your ideas is great to make them more precise and more complete. It's hard to have fully formed ideas about a topic without writing about it." This matches the understanding of a quick glance of the sentence.
* "Writing down your ideas always makes them more precise and complete." Closer to the actual meaning, but doesn't do a slight of hand to hide the main point.
Would you have us believe that there is zero utility in this conversation (which was catalyzed by the flawed writing)?
Possibly relevant, and don't miss the "see also" section:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causality
Also note that this topic is different than this one (they often appear to be the same, because of causality):
The argument is either merely asserting the conclusion or invalid. I guess it's a matter of judgment which one is the charitable interpretation of the author's meaning.
Perhaps the most charitable interpretation is that the quoted bit isn't intended as an argument at all, just a restatement to cast an already-established conclusion in a different light. It's presented as a "shocking" additional implication, but perhaps it's the shock that's supposed to be novel, not the implication.
― William Knowlton Zinsser, Writing to Learn
One of the books that got me into writing for myself.
For example, I can start write "We are using X instead of Y because..." and realize I do not truly know the reason. Which leads me to investigate and then finish the sentence.
What a great book! Zinsser uses such crisp, engaging prose. He covers how to write, why to write, and what to write. He uses lots of examples from his own writing and from others -- good and bad. Stories abound. This is not a boring grammar book.
Here's a taste -- he starts the chapter called "The Lead and the Ending" with these stark statements: "The most important sentence in any article is the first one. If it doesn't induce the reader to proceed to the second sentence, your article is dead." Punchy and self-referential.
There's a decent amount about good technique, but it's more about style and voice. The second half of the book covers topics like "Writing in Your Job" (without sounding passive or using buzzwords) and "Writing Family History and Memoir" (that's actually why my brother lent me the book). And it finishes with an inspiring chapter on the craft of writing called "Write as Well as You Can".
If you want to learn to write better, read this book. If you don't, definitely read it.
This article is sprinkled with "people this" and "people that" terminology, which is mirrored in our broader culture. But I say it is actually "some people this" and "some people that." Don't be a word-chauvinist.
To be fair, I do appreciate that a lot of the author's sentences started with "When I ..." and similar. Makes it more palatable to me.
----
This idea I just wrote down was fully-formed in my mind, and I could have just moved on with my life. I chose to put it into words (and pick those words, and re-edit them, spending my short time on this planet to do so) in order to communicate it to you, dear reader. Not to help me think (:
(though I do sometimes use words to help me think, too. Let's not get too black-and-white about it)
Can you expand on why do you strive to be non-verbal?
Mostly, I feel it slows me down. I'd rather continue on to the next thought than translate the current one into words in my head. It's a semi-conscious decision. I can almost feel the word-making machinery gearing up, but if I race ahead it doesn't have time to grab on.
Also, it can be a bit overly-constraining. Sometimes constraints are good, like the article mentions — they force you to make decisions and face issues. But sometimes I feel like ideas are better served left in an "un-collapsed" state, at least for a time. I feel like much of my most valuable thinking happens in that state. And sometimes manifesting the thought is better accomplished through artwork, or physical activity, or something else that's not writing.
So I guess there's a "to manifest or not manifest the thought" decision, and after that, there's a "to manifest in writing/words vs. another medium" decision.
I remember as a teenager talking to some friends about thinking, and the idea of thinking without words was surprising to them — for them, thinking was words. And I gather this is true for many people. But I also gather it's not true for many people, myself included (: Apparently, there are some people who have word-thoughts appear as text floating in their mind, which is wild to me — lots of weird mental variety out there[1].
Over the years, I've come to see my thoughts as more "tactile" than anything else. Lots of physical textures and movements involved. Just earlier, I was wrestling with an issue that has been on my mind, and it was like trying to solve one of those "separate the ring from the rope" puzzles — lots of turning, twisting, pushing, pulling. I've been struggling with this task, and writing about too, but I feel like I made more progress with that recent mental wrangling than I had with pen and paper. Though I can't quite (yet) put into words the progress I've made!
Anyway, when people write about "how to think" topics, I sometimes feel left out because there's often an implicit assumption/bias towards wordiness, and the primacy of words in thinking. Unsurprisingly, these writings are written by writers who love words, so there's a bit of a self-selection bias going on. Words sometimes get ascribed near-mystical powers ("In the beginning was the Word...", magic incantations, runes, etc), and they are kind of magical. But I also know from my own inner world that there's a nameless, wordless magic, too. But writers don't write about that as much ("write what you know"), so you don't hear about it, and it doesn't hold as much cultural sway.
So, I try to speak up for the alternatives, encourage people to keep a broader perspective.
[1] In case you're interested in such things, some interesting research: https://news.wisc.edu/that-little-voice-in-your-head-if-you-...
My thoughts are mostly verbal. I do hear an inner voice all the time. I cannot easily catch the moment before words start to form. This excessive wordiness often leads me to a negative experience, it’s relatively easy to fall down on a spiral, worrying to much, going over and over about all the things that can go wrong. I just wish I had the ability to stop. I’m looking into meditation because of this.
One bit of research that stuck with me is the "split brain" experiments in the 1960s [1][2]. There do seem to be multiple different "personalities" at work, fairly independent of each other, with different strengths and weaknesses. The idea of a non-speaking but more spatial/visual consciousness in the right half of the brain resonates with me. The verbal side does seem to be reluctant to give up control, sometimes[3].
For me, on some low level, I've always wanted to be comfortable in my own skin, so I feel like my various parts can ultimately agree on that goal, and it helps avoid conflict. There is some level of self-trust that's required for wordy-me to give up some control to the bigger, quieter, less predictable me(s).
I definitely feel like I understand what you mean about the spiral of worrying and I too associate that with the wordy/controlling part of myself, somewhat. I wish you luck on trusting yourself(s) and releasing that grip a bit, from time to time.
[1] Some direct footage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCv4K5aStdU
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split-brain
[3] A book that theorizes about broader implications of this stuff (I haven't read it myself) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Master_and_His_Emissary
Perhaps a LLM could wrap it all up for me lol.
So ... music is trivial?
Dance is trivial?
Sculpture is trivial?
I have to say I think P Graham needs to get out more.
If indeed all the author's ideas are incomplete until written, his mistake is ascribing this to the power of his writing rather than the limits of his ideation.
Apparently, even writing it down didn't help the author with this flawed deduction.
Regardless, I've experienced this effect a lot when writing design docs. Iteration and objective criticism on a tangible thing (a doc) is an extremely effective way to see the problem from all sides.
But the quote above says "If..." and then makes a statement that isn't true and then having a conclusion based on that false premise. I can tell you it isn't true because I can recall countless times in the last few months alone where writing down my ideas has resulted in a muddier thought; lost ideas while writing them down; confusing me and missing some parts; it does not "always make them more precise and more complete". So the rest of the statement is just silly.
Sure, sometimes writing down ideas helps clear things up. Most times even. But always?! Definitely not.
* Although it's not really right to use this kind of language here (premise, conclusion, deduction). It's a casual statement, so I suppose people can somewhat reasonably argue about it, but the assertion is tautological ('if something is incomplete, it isn't fully formed').
Similarly, if walking North always brings you closer to the North Pole, then you can never reach the North Pole without walking North, or at all. But look out for oceans.
The correct statement from a logical point of view is: if A implies B, then not B implies not A.
In this case, even if writing down your ideas makes them more precise, there might be other methods that make your ideas more precise. Again this is just the logical point of view, out of context.
The statement in TFA is not that though. Instead, it is "if A implies B, then not A implies not C."
A: writing about thoughts
B: thoughts become more complete
C: thoughts are most complete
f: a function indicating how complete the thoughts are.
A: writing about thoughts.
EDIT: shortened sentence
If you want to get to real analysis/topology the typical sequence is
1. Logic and Set theory (recommendation: How to Prove It, Velleman)
2. Linear Algebra (don't have a good recommendation)
3a. Real analysis (recommendation: PMA, Rudin)
3b. Topology (recommendation: Topology, Munkres)
I'm not sure I'd recommend learning math. It's an extremely expensive skill -- though pretty valuable in the software industry. People who go learn math are generally just drawn to it; you can't stop them even if you wanted to.
But be aware, (1) you'll have no one to talk about math with. And (2) you'll be joining a club of all the outcasts in society, including the Unabomber.
> Apparently, even writing it down didn't help the author with this flawed deduction.
I think that it can be rescued, at some expense of awkwardness, by grouping not as one would expect ("(fully formed) ideas"), but in a slightly non-standard way:
> "If writing down your ideas always makes them more precise and more complete, then no one who hasn't written about a topic has fully (formed ideas about it)."
That is, if you haven't written about the topic, then you haven't understood it as precisely and completely as you could. While this is obviously exaggeration, I think that it's (1) logically consistent, (2) possibly what pg meant, and (3) a useful slogan, even if intentionally over-stated.
This is, of course, even worse than a logical error.
What is a definition of an idea that is fully formed and that is sufficiently complex enough?
Writing about something fixes (most) wrong thoughts, and since you are wrong in 99% of cases you can safely say that you are wrong unless you have written about it.</div>
Whether logically rigorous or not, that excerpt seems to be the essay’s author’s way of rhetorically opening his reflections on the idea that writing verbally crystallizes thought.
As a reader, I do not believe that the author is making a claim that the quoted Paul Graham statement, reduced to symbolic logic, is in all respects valid or sound.
Salt is necessary to bring out the flavor in pretty much all food. So no one who doesn't use salt has made a good meal.
Because salt is much more irreplaceable than allspice in cooking, just like writing is difficult to replace in honing ideas.
... or this writing improved an even more flawed original.
The author’s expression tends toward the literary and thus reduces clarity by requiring more work from the reader — a point which I find ironic in light of the message conveyed.
- - -
> When I sit down to write … [m]y thoughts are flighty and shapeless … . But when I type, it is as if I pin my thoughts to the table. I can examine them.
> But it is hard to do it right. Not all writing helps me think. Most kinds of writing are rather weak, or even counterproductive, in this regard. You have to approach it in the right way.
> Until last fall, I had not seen anyone properly articulate the mental moves that make writing a powerful tool for thought. …
> But then I read Imre Lakatos’s Proofs and Refutations. … [I]t is, if you read it sideways, a profound exploration of the act of writing. … Because [mathematics is a special type of writing that tends toward great] precision, reading Lakatos gave me a clearer and more precise understanding of [how I use writing to] wrestle with my thoughts.
> **What follows is a series of meditations about thinking through writing provoked by, but not faithful to, Lakatos’s book. … [It] covers the basic mental models that are useful to most people [to use writing to clarify their simple thinking] … .** [A forthcoming essay will explore] more complex patterns of thinking which [may be] useful [in] research or … deep creative work.
> [First mental model: make fluid thinking rigid. That is, give yourself something to work with.]
> [Second mental model: make conjectures.]
> [Third mental model: unfold the conjectures. That is,] “interrogat[e] the conclusion to [hypothesize] why it could be true.” What premises and reasoning chains [could] lead[] to this conclusion? [This opens the conjectures up to greater criticism, which in turn helps to approach the truth, even if the explanation is wrong.]
> …
> [To make and unfold conjectures, I have learned to write a list of] bullet points [that attempt to explain] the intuition[s] behind [my conjectures as] a series of premises [that seem to fit together logically]. [Then I ask follow-up questions and try to find counter-examples.] [Through this process, I more readily find flaws in my thinking and discard or adjust my ideas on the fly.]
> [D]eeper patterns take a longer time to emerge … because they are further from … established thoughts and [therefore] harder to articulate.
> …
> [Writing is like generating] texts filled with hidden doors … . [We shortchange ourselves if we do not take the time and make the effort to open those doors and explore what lies behind them by asking critical questions about what we have written and by searching for general and special counter-examples.]
I suppose there are other ways to work with the mind’s symbols, such as visual art, music, etc. But the author seems confined to language and language-based logic.
The top-down elaboration of bullet points is what middle-school students should've been taught, outlining.
The conjecturing and counterexamples are reasoning critically about your own ideas.
All of this is easy said but it's all well known and high school education should've taught the basics of this, the rest is just lots of practice.
One of the many chilling effects of modern AI is that there’s now a CAPTCHA for writing anything that people read unless you’re really famous or something.
1) that sounds like a Montessori school? 2) I feel like Walter White is one of the more memorable character names (w/ the alliteration, no?)
This is very flawed logic. This assumes that only writing can result in fully formed ideas, and that is simply a false assumption. I can't believe that it was even typed out as-is, it's so wrong. It's wrong on its face. It's wrong if you think about it for 1/10th of a second. It's wrong if you think about it for a minute. It's wrong if you think about it for an hour. It's even wrong if you write it out.
Yes, writing can be a productive focusing mechanism, it can also provide you with good reflections. But so can meditation, so can a good walk. It's a tool, not a requirement. It also has it's own downsides in that it forces you to think a certain constrained way, and while that is also one of its strength, it does limit your ability to think creatively.
Similar to how using ChatGPt to draft writing or code, there is a strong biasing effect pushing you towards something non novel.
Alternatively I have had ideas in mind that get stronger and stronger and at some point I just have to work them and so I work on them without writing them down and I actually bring them to fruition while writing down might have oddly killed that motivation or obsession.
It is mainly various side projects. The act of writing somehow diminishes that motivation or reward feeling as opposed to immediately starting to build the side project.
Maybe I lack the vocabulary? Writing skills? Maybe I'm self censoring? Maybe it's my perfectionism optimising the local maxima?
I don't know but I do know writing has ruined some, not all, of my ideas.
This also wasn't my main issue above. I was more concerned that the idea you can't have good ideas without writing them down was deeply flawed and a bit gatekeepery.
There are similar quotes about meditation and walking so they are all part of the same toolkit (and it is great if you can use any part of it).
is that supposed to be a good thing? if the goal is developing ideas, i would wager that it's not.
I find it very hard for external sources to support my thinking (if they do I don't read them but save for later comparison). If anything they prove me wrong when I am on the wrong path.
That "nontrivial" qualification makes this an unfalsifiable bunkum.
James Joyce was a novelist. The article is about writing essays.
Paul Graham is one of our leading essayists. Measured by impact on "builders" he's probably the foremost essayist.
If you want to learn how to make documentaries, would you rather learn from the best documentarian or from Spielberg?
I don't see what "Hungarian" has to do with it, and, though I do see what "Stalinist" might have to do with it, it probably shouldn't. (Someone's politics don't have to be good for them to make a valuable contribution to knowledge.) But, according to Wikipedia, this isn't true literally as written, unless one takes the view "once a Stalinist, always a Stalinist:"
> After his release, Lakatos returned to academic life .... Still nominally a communist, his political views had shifted markedly, and he was involved with at least one dissident student group in the lead-up to the 1956 Hungarian Revolution.
> ... He received a PhD in philosophy in 1961 from the University of Cambridge; his doctoral thesis was entitled Essays in the Logic of Mathematical Discovery, and his doctoral advisor was R. B. Braithwaite. The book Proofs and Refutations: The Logic of Mathematical Discovery, published after his death, is based on this work.
It's just additional information...
The only way to never fail is to never try.