Comment by begueradj | Hacker News Reader

Comment by begueradj | Hacker News Reader

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I expected much more from the article. It is, especially, poorly argumented. I feel the author wrote it hastily.

To begin with, the following assumption is false:

>To write well you have to think clearly, and thinking clearly is hard.

For most people, most life situations which require clear thinking have nothing to do with writing.

>This is why eminent professors often turn out to have resorted to plagiarism.

What's the percentage of such professors ? In the university I studied, there is no case of plagiarism till today. And plagiarism is not done because professors can't write, but due to other professional factors.

>If you're thinking without writing, you only think you're thinking.

As if writing is the only way to think well/correctly/effectively. My father never wrote a word: still, some of the most thoughtful statements I ever heard in my life were told to me by him during our conversations.

When you face a situation of danger, such as a wolf is running towards you: will you start to write your thoughts about what you should do, or will you just run right away and decide about the safest paths to follow while you are escaping ?

> For most people, most life situations which require clear thinking have nothing to do with writing.

The problem with "clear thinking" is that it is subjective. I think Paul Graham and Leslie Lamport, have experienced something like this: when they sit down to write about a certain topic, they realize that their initial thoughts were not nearly clear enough, and after a number of iterations they became clearer and clearer. Most of us don't write essays, so we simply don't recognize this feeling.

The author: A requires B

You: what nonsense. Clearly, B does not necessarily require A, and yet he says it does, how poorly argued.

Yup, as long as you ignore this quote “If you're thinking without writing, you only think you're thinking.”

Exactly. Isn't it ironic?!

I think he is hinting to when I said: "For most people, most life situations which require clear thinking have nothing to do with writing."

I meant: since most life situation where we need clear thinking do not involve writing, then we are obviously well equipped to think clearly.

And if thinking clearly is not that problematic for most people, then the author can't say we can't write because thinking clearly is hard/or we can't think clearly.

Got it ?

You're still both missing PG's point, and getting your logic wrong for the point you are on. About the latter:

> "I meant: since most life situation where we need clear thinking do not involve writing, then we are obviously well equipped to think clearly."

That's not the QED you seem to think it is. The statement that "most life situation where we need clear thinking do not involve writing" doesn't give any reason to think that most people are good at clear thinking most of the time, nor whether people find clear thinking easier with the help of writing or if writing has no benefit to the goal of clear thinking. You're just putting two opinions you have next to each other and acting like one confirms the other.

And a friendly tip, "have I explained better what I meant before?" would come off as a lot more polite than "got it?", which to anyone who agrees with the rest of your comment could easily read as snide/patronising, while anyone who thinks you're still wrong will see it as smug and wrongly confident. (Apologies if English isn't your first language, in which case you're very good at it, and apologies if you didn't want unsolicited opinions on how your choice of language makes you seem in my view!)

edit to give an analogy: I feel your argument is like if somebody said "control of body movement is key to being a great athlete", and you replied "everyone is always controlling their body movement, clearly therefore it's not relevant to how good an athlete is".

I upvoted for:

> "have I explained better what I meant before?" would come off as a lot more polite than "got it?"

Thank you very much.

PS. English is not my native language.

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