Writing is the Highest Form of Thinking
ideas exist as abstract objects in the platform that the world of language is. the formalization of language is written. But that doesn’t mean it’s equal to dialogue. In fact writing to think gives the cleaned train of thought as a narrative tree.
perfect formulation of a problem is half its solution. This seems simple because it silently implies that formulating a problem is easy. But it can be quite hard to make all the steps explicit. It is half the work required for its solution.
The process of writing has many false starts and the first words you put down are usually not yours. That is because if you are authentically practicing, it will show you how much you don’t know. It will also expose how many wrong suppositions and implied conclusions you had. Your world model will manifest through it. This is what happens when you confront and define ambiguous thoughts.
Putting ideas into words implies continuous rewriting and tweaking. Changing words not only makes ideas more precise, complete and correct. It also changes them. This is why it’s crucial to be open to complete change.
Being open means recognizing your own ignorance and errors. It implies an unassuming humility. Taking each writing session as an opportuinty for surprises. In fact writing is one of the best tools to figure things out.
Because questions lead to more questions. Your appetite grows the more you indulge in it.
Writing living in the cognitive realm is not made to change behavior. But it is to formalize thought experiemnts through which you make decisions, which then change behavior. So writing is the precursor to change in action.
In order to write well one needs to read a lot. The more I read the better I write. The usefulness of reading is not all the information in the book, but rather the updates it brings to your world model. Experience is forgotten but the model persists.
If information is less important than the world model then one has a lot more to gain from rereading books. In fact I think rereading books is underrated. Since the interpretation depends on the headspace and our headspaces change in time, then we will interpret the book differently at different points of our lives. This is also enriched by the accumulated life experience.
Being prolific in reading allows you to see patterns, connect and compress more efficiently. It is by reading that you get to imitate and steal ideas. It is only by going through the imitative phase that you can find your own voice. The utility of reading is also to know what not to write, to avoid reinventing the wheel.
A big part of writing is to clarify vagueness and ambiguity. In fact the more I write the less tolerance I have for them. They trigger me and I am forced to articulate all I have in my mind about those thoughts. Because there are things you know that are only seen when you have to explain them. Otherwise they just work in the background.
What usually happens is I go down a rabbit hole, write a few paragraphs and reach a conclusion. It is only after that that I can summarize the whole train of thought in a small paragraph or a couple of lines. The rest is deleted.
In fact a big part of writing is deletion. This is also because out of all the ideas that I produce, only a few are good enough. Being prolific in writing allows you to have more good ideas. It is easier to see them once you put them down.
One more point about deletion. There is a sweet spot. Being too through to remove all ambiguity is good when you write, but not when you deliver. The longer the sentence, the less space is left to be filled by the reader with interpretations and implications. It also becomes heavy because all the tension is removed.
Seeing a lot of counterfactuals trains you to consider unthinkable ideas. Which makes writing more interesting as an exploratory pursuit. And you benefit by becoming more open minded.
There are a few schools of thought in terms of the delivery. Do I optimize for most virally spreadable or do I optimize for density? They have tradeoffs and the answer depends on the audience.
I personally prefer to write dense pieces. Because they are harder to write and they tend to have an obscure air to them once finished. The tradeoff is a limited pool of readers who can understand. And making the piece much more vulnerable to misunderstandings.
Making spreadable writing is more about memetic messages. Doing all the work for the reader and making it memorable so it can easily repeated and spread. It must be approachable and accessible.
The reason I formalize thought with writing is because I have a rationalization tendency. Since rationalizatoins start with a conclusion and justify it, it is not real reasoning. There is no new information. Reasoning starts with a question with an open ended answer.
Another lever to set incentives right it to publish your writing. Not for recognition or fame, but for feedback and to have skin in the game. So you can’t half ass it. It matters to have an audience because it forces rigor. It’s like when somebody comes over to your house and you feel the need to reorder your room.
Publishing requires courage because writings can be misunderstood and people can get mad. But he who dares not offend cannot be honest. And in order to write well one has to be completely honest and confident.
I don’t think as writing as debating. Even if useful in moderate doses I tend to dislike debate because the incentives it sets maximize winning rather than truth. It shows the limits of language and to some extent logic. Logic is a system to ensure rigor, not meaning or welfare.
Writing is hard because it is a constant act of self authorization. To think out of the norm you need to be skeptical and reject received wisdom. Reject untested and unverified ideas.
Writing is a good tool to calibrate your degree of belief to place bets. To have skin in the game and to own your own thoughts so you can be confident about them.
The mind is the mother womb of ideas. To me writing is not enjoyable, I only do it because I find it necessary. But many times I do it out of proclivity. I often feel like a cat in heat who just can’t help but receive ideas and gestate them in the womb until birth.
when to write. I think there is a time and method where writing is detrimental to clear thinking. Because writing something down can give the illusion of having thought about it. So it is easy to give birth to ideas prematurely and half assing them.
I think it is best to first keep them in mind for as long as possible. Live with the problem or idea day an night. To allow the ideas to get under my skin and then allocate a few uninterrupted hours to writing them out throughly. Formalization is necessary because thinking is slippery and writing is tangible.
I have found two modes of writing. One is puzzle solving and the other is creative. The first is convergent and the second is divergent.
The first is much more difficult and time consuming. I accumulate notes on a topic for some time. Then i strip the form by extracting the words. I create paragraphs of words with high resolution semantics.
Then I solve the puzzle by piecing them together. It is more editing and putting together the pieces than writing. This is a good way to create writing that is dense with meaning. It is about finding the best, most correct, precise and complete form.
The second is a bit easier and more enjoyable. I accumulate thoughts on a topic for some time. Then I lock in for a few hours and write the piece out in one go. It doesn’t have a pre-conceived conclusion.
It is purely explorational. It starts with one piece of the puzzle. The other pieces are created and edited in real time. It gives form to the implicit. You can only see the landscape once it’s finished.
Both give a lot of satisfaction, but I prefer the creative one. Once you externalize you can see it like it were somebody else’s. It is easier to see the flaws in somebody else and distance yourself from that rather than your own. editing is a bit easier than creation.