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personjerry
mck-
If blogging is like a webpage, then a Zettelkasten is like a Wikipedia for your brains.
Inspired by a thread on HN ~2 years ago, I’ve now written 1,075 interconnected notes, and no longer feel that I forget 80% of any non-fiction book I read.
Linking is key; it allows you to connect any new insight to your existing externalized knowledge base, resulting in deeper understanding and retention.
It also creates the space to connect thoughts across disparate domains, which spawns novel ideas at an even greater rate. For example, I might link an idea about neuroscience to my chess writings that links to a note about workout methods which links to a piano technique note. Now I suddenly see a new connection about applying a piano practice technique to leveling up my chess score.
It has changed the way I read, or consume information generally.
A great book that got me started is Ahrens, S. (2017). How to Take Smart Notes
DenisM
So do you take notes as you read? How do you handle charts?
mck-
Yes indeed, anytime anything is worth remembering (or connecting with other notes) I write it down. It interrupts reading, so I don’t churn through as many books.
I used to set goals like x books per year, but now I realize it’s a vanity metric and instead read for insights.
I use Obsidian for note taking, which supports images too.
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silvestrov
When writing you have to actual flesh out the details and figure out what to include and what to omit. It is so easy to skip that in day dreaming.
Thinking is like drawing a bridge on paper. Writing is to actual construct the bridge and test it.
What looks like the strongest bridge (built of paper) is not always the strongest one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtMx7FZUC6A
dEnigma
“It doesn't need to be imagined, it needs to be written down.” ― Philip Glass
syliconadder
I think this level of kindness makes it easy for people to feel okay expressing themselves. Thank you for this beautiful message.
mdp2021
> If you want to be a thinker, you have to write
It's what was done at school, since primary...
But it was "at school", because the learner is to be guided with critical thinking and ability of assessment, over his own or anybody else's production.
sasha_fishter
Simon Willson explanation is actually really good. Thank you for sharing this!
johnny_reilly
What Simon said! I've found that blogging hugely helps me clarify my own thinking on a topic, and flush out areas of ignorance.
Another excellent option for making getting going with blogging simple is Docusaurus - makes it very easy to get up and running!
skydhash
My own blog is on bearblog.dev. There's also nicheless.blog if you want a shorter length as a constraint – and excuse ;). I've tried setting a static generator and even wrote my own, but I spent more time fiddling with them than writing. Now I just write. Pretty much raw thoughts like how I would speak with a friend. Doing more structured writing takes all the joy about it for me.
slorber
Yes, great choice :)
johnny_reilly
Declare your interest Sebastien ;-)
I migrated my own blog to Docusaurus from Blogger about a year and a half ago. I became very enamoured (and still am) with the idea of writing blog posts as markdown, storing them as code and publishing them as a website.
I was delighted at how much Docusaurus aligned with that. So much so that I wrote a guide to help others migrate:
https://blog.johnnyreilly.com/definitive-guide-to-migrating-...
Silverback_VII
>Start a blog!
but do not expect someone to read it! because with GTP-3 automated content creation I'm increasingly less interested in everything which will be or is already heavily affected by it i.e. News articles, blogs and new books...
xboxnolifes
The goal isn't for someone to read it. We just covered that. The goal is more writing, less reading.
User23
> It's interesting that the article's thesis is about reading, but most of the article is actually about writing. And I think that's an understated point.
I got some excellent feedback from my manager’s manager early in my career and it was, paraphrasing, “keep reading, but write more about what you read.”
Publishing doesn’t have to be public either. At a large organization internal communications are plenty sufficient.
antirez
Many of us are programmers. Some of us are also trying to be writers. Trust me: writing is like programming. Reading code is very useful to become a better programmer, but you learn programming mostly by writing code. Similarly you mostly learn how to write prose by writing prose, tons of it. Reading is especially useful if you identify certain books that are very high in style (for me one of such books was "Vite di uomini non illustri" by Giuseppe Pontiggia), for your taste at least, for what you beleive the best writing is. You read these books many times, to understand what's going on, what are the patterns, how to do the same magic. As a casual reader you can read 200 books every year and yet remain a terrible writer.
EDIT: more about that on my blog if you care -> http://antirez.com/news/136
inglor_cz
I wrote eight books, sold about 35 000 copies (fairly huge number for Czechia with its not-quite-11 million people), and I am also a programmer.
The similarities are pretty strong. In both cases, you need to express yourself so that the receiving party may understand you.
That said, human readers are a lot more welcoming and friendly consumers of your written work than computers. Positive feedback from computers is basically nonexistent.
Hendrikto
> Positive feedback from computers is basically nonexistent.
412 tests passed, 0 warnings, 0 errors.
bstpierre
I suspect this is tongue in cheek, but passing tests aren’t really the computer’s feedback. They’re feedback from Past You, who wrote the tests. The computer is just performing the tests. The tests might be incomplete or even wrong. The code might be horrendous. The computer doesn’t care.
Human feedback on the code, design, usability, appearance, documentation, etc. is all very different from passing tests.
inglor_cz
I know, I know.
That said, receiving an e-mail like "I spent a week reading all your books, PLEASE WRITE SOME MORE" is much more satisfying.
barnacled
Incredible work! I'm writing my own book (obligatory mailing list link [0] and description [1]) and I wondered how you tackled the mental side? It is a bit of a rollercoaster I am finding. That constant fear gnawing in the back of your head 'is this really any good at all?' :) I suppose it is the price of caring.
[0]:https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSen0gefOrPWi6ZtEQ25... [1]:https://ljs.io/book.html
inglor_cz
Prior to writing my first book, I already published quite a lot of articles, so I knew that there was some non-empty audience set out there :)
I started a crowdfunding project for the first book too, so that the printing and typesetting costs get covered. They were covered fully, so I knew that I won't dip into red numbers as a consequence. (This was a major worry of mine.)
I was still pretty nervous about acceptance, but it turned out OK. Whew.
henrik_w
Absolutely agree that programming and writing have lots in common. I usually don't write anything longer than a blog post, but even a short blog post takes a lot of time for me. Expressing your thoughts in words is hard! Likewise for programming :-)
When I thought about the similarities I came up with:
- both are about communicating your ideas clearly. For that you need good structure, and having a logical order.
- editing and revising is key. Also, compare with refactoring in coding.
- style - there are lots of ways you can have a unique style, even in programming.
More here: https://henrikwarne.com/2019/03/30/programming-math-or-writi...
kingkongjaffa
I write probably 30-100 emails a day, I struggle with writing longer form things.
RMPR
About Hanselman got you covered
amelius
Personally waiting for the day when you can layout your thoughts in a bulletpoint list, and GPT-3/4/5 turns it into a coherent and pleasant to read whole.
duckmysick
If you don't want to wait, you can get someone on fiverr to do it for you.
jholman
I think there is clear historical evidence that this thesis is, at a minimum, greatly exaggerated. Socrates never wrote, and I think he had more good ideas than Paul Graham ever will. Muhammad was not even literate, and unless he was inspired by divinity, his ideas were extremely powerful.
I mean, I do personally find that writing is a powerful tool for thinking. Maybe that means that Paul Graham and I are normal, and Socrates and Muhammad were atypical. But maybe it says more about humans-in-our-society than it does about the essential human condition. If humans learned "by tape" (as per the SF books from the Silver Age, referenced in TFA's opening para), maybe idea-production would work along different lines.
I admit, I tend to agree with him about the usefulness of writing. But I think it's just an irrational intuition, not the clear argument he implies.
eternalban
> Muhammad was not even literate, and unless he was inspired by divinity, his ideas were extremely powerful.
He used to take retreats in the caves near Mecca to meditate and reflect. It was during one of these sessions that he later claimed that he was overwhelmed with the inescapable presence of archangel Gabriel who commanded him to "Read!". This directive of Gabriel to Mohammad is held to be the first verse of the divine revelation in Islam.
Read!
In the Name of your Lord Who created
Created Man(kind) from a clot of blood
Read!
And your Lord is Ar-Rahman
Who Taught by the 'Pen'
Taugh Man(kind) that which he knew not.
[Q.96 'Al-Alaq']
As mentioned in a comment to a dup post, Paul is neglecting the reflect phase. For some this occurs prior to writing. Others, take time when writing to pause and reflect.
p.s.
> Muhammad was not even literate
We do know that he dictated and others wrote messages [correspondences] that were sent. So no records of him writing, but this was not an uneducated man. He was a merchant, traveled, and conversed with other men at markets, oasis rest stops along the trade route. (And he was not a frivolous man.)
The reason Muhammad is said to have been "illiterate" is because Qur'an refers to him (yes, it is the most meta book I've ever read) as "the un-lettered Prophet". "Ummi".
Personally, I think this is a misreading, since these are technical terms (like 'Pen' in above cited verses), and 'letter' refers to the 'mystic letters* given to Moses'.
i.e. Mohammad the Gentile Prophet. The prophet for the un-Lettered, the Gentile.
*consult your local Rabbi :)
Razengan
> the reflect phase. For some this occurs prior to writing. Others, take time when writing to pause and reflect.
First you load the dataset then you train the model.
eternalban
That's Zen.
selimthegrim
There is some debate about whether that’s better translated as ‘recite’ as opposed to ‘read’
eternalban
Oh, definitely. In fact, Qur'an shares the same root as recite/read and one translation for it is The Recitation (also connoting a lecture). But it is addressing a plurality of audiences.
For the messenger recipient of this message, recite is more sensible, since the knowledge that he lacks is imparted directly by an angel, so he doesn't need to lex and parse, and can just relay and recite. Possibly, though this is certainly not the case with him, the messenger doesn't even need to get semantic with a message - just go and deliver it. Like IP. (Though ours likely has various ears doing deep readings..;)
For us, we have to lex and parse (read & eval), and then we can recite (print). Just like a REPL.
So what's interesting here with these opening verses of the Sura Clot of Blood is that in my 'reading' of this book it is an invitation and instruction on how to read this book.
We are urged to read/recite ['the Book'], in/with the name of our Lord. We have a 'Lord', named 'Ar-Rahman, the Infinitely Good, sometimes rendered Most Gracious*. IT's accomplishments we are told include Creating and Teaching. Creating human. How? From a clot of blood. Then teaches it. How? With a Pen.
And after this, this creature called Man has new knowledge, new information, that it didn't have before (or possibly could never hope to independently obtain).
So, continuing my 'reading', I decided to treat this book as a Hypertext. Without nasty markup, however. So the avenue left is that semantics are links, stuff like that. So here, a reasonable place to start doing full text search to look for clusters with 'Ar-Rahman' and 'Teaching'. Because remember, we're supposed to read in/with our Lord's name.
Sure enough, there is a whole Sura called 'Ar-Rahman'. And right off the bat, looks like we took the correct semantic link:
In the name of Allah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim
ar-Rahman
Taught/teaches the Qur'an
Created Man
Taught him eloquence/expression [for reciting]
The movement of the Sun & the Moon
is *Computed*. [new information - it's a simulation]
And the Stars and the Trees [cosmic & life form scale]
prostrate themselves [no freewill for them/deterministic]
And the Heaven IT raised [spatial or mind/conscious expansion]
and *imposed* 'the Balance' [? tbd]
That you not transgress [it regulates]
within the Balance [it's all around us..]
-- how to eval --
And establish weight in justice [evaluate (REPL) with careful weighting (decision trees)]
and do not make deficient/discount
the Balance. [which is the TAO]
-- continue REPL to load full 'read-with' library --
The rest of the Sura is oddly Buddhist in flavor. A list of reminders of various favors of God, punctuated by a repeated chorus pointedly asking, almost in an accusative 'i-told-you-so' voice 'Which of the favors of your lord, you twain deny?' Now keep in mind some of these favors are in Paradise (good stuff) and the others are in Hell (very nasty stuff). But apparently, they are all 'favors'! And a 'twain' is involved. That would be the sentient 'mind' that needs 'duals' to 'read' reality. +/-. top/down. left/right. good/bad. etc.
So. We are in a simulation. It is governed by TAO. Not everything enjoys choice. We do. Duality makes us see a unity as good and bad, while in actuality it is all good. Optimistic readings, only please. Happy readings.
* God (in general in quite a few religions) has nice names and scary names, corresponding to Grace and Majesty. This is a very nice name. Good and Generous, unlike any.
Arisaka1
Socrates had the ancient agora, which was (oversimplifying) a group of experts gathering in the same place bouncing off ideas from each other verbally. It's time to stop discounting the role of one's environment in personal growth.
photochemsyn
Many people in ancient civilizations were trained in a mostly forgotten art, the recital of long stories, aka 'oral histories'. However, it's doubtful that any one person could retain a whole library of such oral histories, i.e. it was probably closer to one long text per person, given the limitations of human memory. Writing was essentially the creation of an external memory system that other people could refer to. For example, the first records of Icelandic sagas:
https://retrospectjournal.com/2016/10/10/from-oral-to-writte...
thenerdhead
It is a good point, but with time comes change. Plato was an excellent scribe of Socrates and Aristotle after him. Just because Socrates thought it was inhuman to write things down, doesn’t mean his successors did and we are all thankful they did such a diligent job in doing so. But then again the argument of writing things down expands the metaphysics of philosophy, especially Socrates perspective given it’s not in his head.
jholman
The linked essay literally claims that, even if times change, humans need to write to generate good ideas. That's why it seemed fair game to mention societies with different norms and different training.
npunt
There’s much more to the story than writing is a way of thinking, and reading is a big input into writing. Specifically, how each interplay with ideas, as most of us after all are in the business of creating things. And here, the most important bit is not reading, its curiosity. Curiosity about others’ ideas drives reading, curiosity about one’s own ideas drives writing.
The time we spend chasing each type of curiosity is important. If we want to create, reading must have it’s limits, and sometimes pretty harsh limits, else we’ll be infected with others ideas about everything. Some choice quotes on this:
"When we read, another person thinks for us: we merely repeat his mental process..." "This is the case with many learned persons: they have read themselves stupid." - Arthur Schopenhauer
"Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking" - Albert Einstein
"If you read all the time what other people have done you will think the way they thought. If you want to think new thoughts that are different, then do what a lot of creative people do - get the problem reasonably clear and then refuse to look at any answers until you've thought the problem through carefully how you would do it, how you could slightly change the problem to be the correct one. You need to keep up more to find out what the problems are than to read to find the solutions. The reading is necessary to know what is going on and what is possible. But reading to get the solutions does not seem to be the way to do great research. So I'll give you two answers. You read; but it is not the amount, it is the way you read that counts." - Dick Hamming
EDIT: On the other hand, if you first principles all your thinking and just write write write, you may spend hours on something that could be understood and moved on from in seconds. This meme explains the reading/writing spectrum quite well: https://www.reddit.com/r/memes/comments/vwq8yh/this_true/
woolion
Good list of quotes! I would add one by Nietzsche:
“Ultimately no one can hear in things―books included―more than he already knows.”
Reading can help you formalize, or put established concepts upon what you have already understood, even if only unconsciously.
I remember the gist of a quote about the need to read as much as possible in a young age to inform a Weltanschauung (world view) from which in adulthood you're supposed to build on, but can't remember any source.
Kaibeezy
Wild guess… Schopenhauer, Einstein, et al, were referring to their peers and associates, many sigmas out on the curve. I’m imagining a sensor of the larger sample reaching the “reading limit”; it would make a neutrino detector look like fireworks at a disco.
npunt
The quotes are for the most part about ideas and creativity being stifled by reading, and this can happen to anyone - it's related to the curse of knowledge and the preservation of the beginner's mind.
Reading others' ideas, especially polished ones with a lot of authority behind them, can act as a filter on one's own (delicate, barely formed) ideas. Ideas already have a difficult path into reality, and others' biases and filters are one major contributor.
I regularly choose not to read on a given subject if I have an idea I want to explore or to clarify my own thinking, and only afterwards do I consult what others have said. Usually I wind up in the same place (or a crude version of that) but sometimes I find a new insight and those are worth it!
Kaibeezy
It can happen to anyone, but does happen to you. Thank your lucky sigmas.
achow
> ..most of us after all are in the business of creating things.. If we want to create, reading must have it’s limits, and sometimes pretty harsh limits, lest we be infected with others ideas about everything.
The point perhaps is what PG is saying "A good writer will almost always discover new things in the process of writing."
Writing is creating and the process of creation is about discovery. When one is sculpting a clay, one is discovering materials and its properties, one is discovering ones emotions, and infact one could be discovering or understanding oneself (this ignoring the pre creation phase where one is discovering and studying art movements, various sculptors, their ideas and techniques...).
Any creation process roughly follows same patterns unless you are a facsimile creator.
dj_mc_merlin
Excuse me if this is rude but there is an irony to using others' words to argue one should think for themselves more.
npunt
Hah on the surface I suppose. But I’m not arguing whether people should think for themselves, I’m arguing that it matters when people should think for themselves. If you’re more curious about others ideas on a given topic than your own ideas, then you should absolutely read!
woolion
It's a variant on the 'doubt paradox' (somebody telling you "you should not believe everything people tell you") itself a variant of the Epimenides paradox (simply known as the liar paradox): a bunch of people who have read more than you tell you to be careful about not reading too much.
unsafecast
I think this is more about credibility - GP made a pretty good argument without the quotes. But the fact that Albert Einstein supposedly agrees puts a lot more weight onto it.
philwelch
To your counterpoint, I always liked this quote:
“I’m one of the few people you’ll meet who’s written more books than they’ve read.” —Garth Merenghi
amadeuspagel
And when Schopenhauer wrote this, it was much harder to find stuff to read, so his advice is all the more important today.
exhaze
Folks here mentioned that the core point is not about the need to the importance of reading, but the importance of writing. No, it’s really about becoming better at deep, structured thinking. I think that’s quite a good thing to focus on.
The world we live in is becoming more complex. I think it’s because our communication pipelines now have unlimited IO - there’s too much to consume, too much to process, too many thoughts we feel the need to express in response to all these inputs. All of this at the unforgivably quick eventual constituency cross-region replication guarantees afforded to us by Google, Facebook, Apple, Twitter, and many others.
I write more these days.
I don’t share most of what I write.
I write for myself, because I think that writing my thoughts helps to refine these thoughts, retain them for future me, and, on occasion, share them with another person, thru conversion, or by just copy pasting something I wrote.
You don’t need a blog to start writing. Just start writing. VS Code. Notepad. Emacs. A piece of paper. It doesn’t matter. As long as you can do it when you feel like it. Write.
balaji1
Weatherford, in his Genghis Khan book, says there isn't much surviving text about that period and region. But whar sources he uses in that book are all by "chroniclers" of that era - my understanding is that the chroniclers are average reporters of that period, with a decent patronage; just documenting things on paper as they hear/research/study it; without the intention of publishing for widespread readership.
So here's a random idea based on that: Can we incentivize more people to report on a topic/event today? Just write, do not have to publish.
^ If more people just write commentary/summary like this for whatever they consume, it might double as a decent diversion from just consuming content online. And maybe.. maybe it will make us mindful about what we consume online :D
exhaze
> average reporters of that period, with a decent patronage; just documenting things on paper as they hear/research/study it; without the intention of publishing for widespread readership.
We don’t really have that anymore though right?
The current internet is economy strongly incentivizes people to write things in favor of engagement.
Sometimes this aligns with ground truth (e.g. Gergely Orosz, who has documented Musk’s Twitter takeover via daily updates). Many times it does not.
Who is supposed to be the historical record keeper, at this time, when trust in record keepers is at an all time low?
I find myself uncomfortable asking such controversial questions, but I do feel like they should be asked
abledantheman
> Who is supposed to be the historical record keeper, at this time, when trust in record keepers is at an all time low?
All of us.
I don't think we need to get hung up on 'who', not really. I mean with regard to historical sources, how we do know that these were always 'true' reporting and not (deliberately or otherwise) untrustworthy, at best misunderstood, by whoever wrote them because they may have not had all the informarion or reporting second/third hand or an agenda.
Sometimes it isn't necessarily what is written as much as it is who wrote it and when and under what circumstances.
rgrieselhuber
Recently I’ve heard it put in the context of how we can use rituals to build up our personal power (in the energy / ability to get things done sense, not the psychotic sense). This prompted me to make a list of things that can be ritualized for this purpose and writing is a big one.
exhaze
I kind of stumbled upon writing by accident. To me it’s not about ability to get things done (thought it helps). It’s about feeling some semblance of control and structure, something I think so many struggle with in the past few years (Trump, COVID, Ukraine/Russia, recent tech layoffs, etc etc).
As others here mentioned, it’s kind of like programming.
We used it to live in “hello world”.
Now we all got thrown into this crazy distributed microservice world. The language of this new world is still the same. It’s (mostly) English. Except it’s more complex now and you have to be faster and better at writing. So write.
rgrieselhuber
Distributed microservice world is a great way of putting it as formerly monolithic systems dissemble into factions.
wskish
Here is the output of GPT reading and summarizing this (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33748363). Model seems to be hallucinating the author. Any thoughts on how to improve it?
"The Need to Read is an essay written by Kevin Kelly. In it, he argues that reading is essential not just for acquiring knowledge, but for learning how to write. He cites the example of a science fiction book in which reading has been replaced by a more efficient method of knowledge transfer. He argues that even if such a method existed, it would be insufficient because it would not allow for the kind of discovery that writing does. He concludes that people who want to have ideas can't afford not to read."
TekMol
Does GPT-3 offer summaries out of the box? Or do you do it by a prompt like "The summary of the text above is:"?
wskish
we are strategically prompting it as such: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33750013
open to all ideas here
TekMol
Is a "prompt prefix" a thing in GPT-3 or do you mean you combine that prefix with the text of the page into a prompt?
wskish
I tweaked the GPT prompt to include the domain name from the story url as additional context. That fixes this one and a few other problematic ones. Here is a typical summary of this story now:
"This is an essay written by Paul Graham in November of 2022. In it, he talks about how reading is necessary not just for acquiring knowledge, but for learning to write well. He argues that there is no substitute for reading, and that people who want to have ideas need to be good at reading."
zktrust
i think that's also rubbish, just like PG's written opinion piece. How on earth did we then get the great work by William Shakespeare. ShakeSPeare born a time when reading a lot wasn't even possible. There was little to none good content material out there. He was writing more than he could have possible read anywhere else.
pavlov
Shakespeare wrote about Julius Caesar, Titus Andronicus, Richard III, Henry IV, and so on. How did he learn about these people if there was nothing to read?
zktrust
u make one hell of a point that i thought about. this is recursion but in different languages, which is not really applicable with exception of Richard and Henry. Read in latin, then translate it to THE ORIGINAL OTHER LANGUAGE ENGLISH. You are diluting my genuine point that I am making. The content of way back then was negligible to content that exists now. In all fairness, the opinion brought forward by your messiah PG is not really fit for standing judgement because of the point i brought forward.
Good writer, good idea makers exist without the need to have been good at reading.
mikebenfield
So you are under the belief that the written output of one man born in 1564 was of greater quantity than all “good” writing prior to his time? Are you sure you thought this through?
zktrust
no i am not under the belief of anything other than mentioning PG in a slightly bad light will get me downvotes or a ban on this platform.
> So you are under the belief that the written output of one man born in 1564 was of greater quantity than all “good” writing prior to his time? Are you sure you thought this through?
This is not the point i was trying to make.
jamager
A visitor came to Richard Feynman's office. When he saw Fenyman's notebooks, he was excited to see records of Feynman's thinking. Feynman replied: They aren't a record of my thinking process. They are my thinking process.
thenerdhead
If you haven’t yet, try doing 3 handwritten morning pages each day. This technique is pretty well known in helping with unblocking creativity by the author Julia Cameron in “The Artist’s Way”.
Journaling is by far the most effective technique I’ve come across in my life so far. It gets the rumination out. Helps you brainstorm. Gets you reflecting on unresolved things in your life. I wish I started sooner.
wyre
I got so burnt out from doing morning pages I haven’t been able to journal significantly in months. I agree it is incredibly effective, but it took me at least an hour to fill up my three A5 pages, it became hard to make the time in the mornings. Ideally, it wouldn’t take this long. Cameron’s suggestion is when there is a pause in the writing to start writing a mantra, over and over, until more words come, but that’s easier said than done in my experience.
3 pages is not a good control. How big are the pages? How small is your handwriting? I read the Artist’s Way and nowhere did she specify how large the paper should be.
In my experience the deeper insights came on the second page about 30 minutes in, after depleting my brain of its ruminations and searching for more thoughts to fill up the page.
thenerdhead
> In my experience the deeper insights came on the second page about 30 minutes in, after depleting my brain of its ruminations and searching for more thoughts to fill up the page.
She also mentions that this happens 1 1/2 pages in on average which I would agree with. I write using Notability on an iPad and my handwriting is fairly small.
I just looked through a few. I write about 8 words per row and there's 36 rows. Around 300 words on each page, so ~900 words for morning writing.
I do feel you on the burning out part. I almost always get at least 2 pages in a day. Sometimes more than 3, but I timebox it and move on without feeling bad if I don't always get 3.
breck
I highly recommend the book "How to Read a Book" by Mortimer Adler. I've been rereading it every few years since it changed my life in high school (turned me into a lifelong autodidact).
sasha_fishter
I've seen this popping up every now and then. I just put it on my wishlist for next order...
layer8
> A good writer doesn't just think, and then write down what he thought, as a sort of transcript. A good writer will almost always discover new things in the process of writing. And there is, as far as I know, no substitute for this kind of discovery. Talking about your ideas with other people is a good way to develop them. But even after doing this, you'll find you still discover new things when you sit down to write. There is a kind of thinking that can only be done by writing.
Exactly the same is true for coding.
Kaibeezy
I suspect the author is making a good point, but it is far from adequately supported. Merely an assertion of opinion, not a even really a fleshed-out essay.
Here’s the real shit, scariest thing I’ve ever read:
The Erosion of Deep Literacy, Adam Garfinkle, National Affairs, 2020
iillexial
The first comment in your link says basically the same what you have said:
>This article makes far reaching societal claims with essentially no evidence.
and
>I suspect the author is making a good point, but it is far from adequately supported
Kaibeezy
So read the article. It’s way better supported than this one. I’ll be interested in your reactions and happy to engage in a conversation. See you later?
iillexial
Sorry, I didn't mean to claim that article that you sent makes false claims. It was just fun seeing a comment that claims about not well supported article, following the link, and seeing the same comment. Nothing more.
Wowfunhappy
> In the science fiction books I read as a kid, reading had often been replaced by some more efficient way of acquiring knowledge. Mysterious "tapes" would load it into one's brain like a program being loaded into a computer. That sort of thing is unlikely to happen anytime soon [...] because even if one existed, it would be insufficient. Reading about x doesn't just teach you about x; it also teaches you how to write.
Well, but if we could produce a tape that taught x, presumably we could also produce a tape that taught writing.
gonehome
I think he’s referencing Asimov’s profession novella there, though the main point of that story was that the protagonist couldn’t get the tapes because of the capability for original thought (some people had to make the tapes).
And yeah, probably a tape that structured your brain in some way that had the knowledge may include the prerequisites necessary for it to work (better language/reasoning and writing).
But even if it didn’t, Asimov’s story agrees with him - it was insufficient. It’s why they made some people avoid the tapes.
Wowfunhappy
I haven't read that Asimov story. However, I suppose the core question is this: from a neurological perspective, is learning factual information different from learning a skill?
I'm inclined to believe it's not, because we're actually pretty bad at rote memorization. We usually need to understand the memory—how it can be used, or why it's important. Professionals construct "mental palaces", effectively building artificial meaning.
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It's interesting that the article's thesis is about reading, but most of the article is actually about writing. And I think that's an understated point. I myself wrote a blog piece about "Blogging as Structured Thinking" earlier this year.
I think that actually plenty of people do reading in various forms of content. The real challenge is getting people to do more writing.
If you want to be a thinker, you have to write.
It really forces you to address your ideas more formulaically and concretizes your theses.
Start a blog! If you're reading this chances are you know how to buy a domain and spin up a blog in less than 30 minutes. Try Wordpress, or hugo with templates if you want more control. And if you don't know what to write about, this link was recently shared on HN, I thought it was pretty useful: https://simonwillison.net/2022/Nov/6/what-to-blog-about/
And yes, it's important to publish it. It makes your thoughts real. And ideas were meant to be shared.