Top voices on writing: Paul Graham, George Orwell, Ted Chiang, Gergely Orosz and 37 others.
Now that a model writes for anyone, most here say the thinking happens in the writing; a few say owning it is enough.
Our reading of what a group of claims have in common, one level above a korrent: a korrent is our reading of what somebody said, a view is our reading of what several korrents share. The claims are printed under it, so the sentence can be checked against them.
Nobody is filed under a view — claims are. A person is named here because a dated claim of theirs sits under it, and somebody whose claims sit under two views appears under both.
Max HodakMarc LittlemorePaul GrahamDavid PerellAndrew BosworthGeorge Orwell
Steve YeggeGergely OroszDerek ThompsonDaniel W. DreznerAddy OsmaniAdam GrantMartin KleppmannKyle KingsburyDavid Perell
Steve YeggeGergely OroszAnn HandleyEliot PeperJacob FalkovichAnil DashMolly WhiteMaggie AppletonPeter SteinbergerTed ChiangGeorge Orwell
Zvi MowshowitzDan ShipperJason LemkinJacob FalkovichSteve Coast
Derek SiversRuss CoxAndrew ChenGergely OroszDavid PerellAndrew BosworthJeff Bezos
Steve YeggeMichael NielsenAndrew ChenAustin KleonGergely OroszDavid PerellAndrew BosworthJeff Bezos
Tobias SjöstenDerek SiversSteve KrugGreg MankiwGeorge OrwellWilliam Strunk Jr.Blaise Pascal
A viewour reading
Their wordsWell, I mean first of all, I think that talking or writing is thinking.
Their wordsI love that writing helps to clarify your thinking as you have to write something down and make it coherent.
Their wordsThe reason so many people have trouble writing is that it's fundamentally difficult. To write well you have to think clearly, and thinking clearly is hard.
Their wordsWriting about something, even something you know well, usually shows you that you didn't know it as well as you thought. Putting ideas into words is a severe test.
Their wordsHalf the ideas that end up in an essay will be ones you thought of while you were writing it. Indeed, that's why I write them.
Their wordsIf 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. And someone who never writes has no fully formed ideas about anything nontrivial.
Their wordsPutting ideas into words doesn't have to mean writing, of course. You can also do it the old way, by talking. But in my experience, writing is the stricter test.
Their wordsWhat I'm saying is that however much you learn from exploring ideas in other ways, you'll still learn new things from writing about them.
Their wordsRe-writing is re-thinking. It’s the best single best way to sharpen your ideas.
Their wordsI believe in this concept so completely that I’ll take the importance of writing a step further: I find it valuable to write even if only for my own benefit.
Their wordsWriting is a linear process that forces a tangle of loose connections in your brain through a narrow aperture exposing them to much greater scrutiny. In my experience, discussion expands the space of possibilities while writing reduces it to its most essential components.
Their wordsI think it's far more important to write well than most people realize. Writing doesn't just communicate ideas; it generates them.
Their wordsIt becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible. Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly
Their wordsBut if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.
A viewour reading
Their wordsFrom my pov there are two reasons to write your own stuff, even if it's a struggle. First, it's fitness training for your brain. If you struggle to write, your brain is flabby. Having a fit brain will be a key differentiator in the new era.
Mental modelLess, but better
Their wordsWriting is thinking, and we are interested in your own thoughts and observations, not a sharp, one-sentence observation turned into three paragraphs of blob text by an LLM.
Their wordsThe act of writing is an act of thinking, and to automate our paragraphs is to populate our screens with words without filling our minds with the ideas necessary to conceive of them.
Their wordsI am extremely concerned that this trend will eliminate paper-writing as an assignment, and that is a core function of most professions requiring a graduate degree.
Their wordsthe models are going to in some cases, I think, provide a homogeneous take on what writing looks like. And you start to feel like, wait, what was my writing style, you know?
Their wordsalthough students' personal statements seem more creative because they use more varied words, they actually feature less original ideas. AI writing produces an illusion of creativity.
Their wordsIt's more that for myself, the process of writing is the way how I figure things out. And figuring things out is really my goal here. So, I'm I'm trying to figure it out in my own heads, and for that I just have to write it myself.
Their wordsML assistance reduces our performance and persistence, and denies us both the muscle memory and deep theory-building that comes with working through a task by hand
Their wordsWriting is like weightlifting for the brain. Just as you’ll improve your food diet if you start cooking, you’ll improve your information diet if you start writing. Testing the limits of your ideas is the fastest way to improve them and raise your intelligence.
A viewour reading
Their wordsThere may not be many people left in 10 years who can write, or want to read, things longer than a page or two. But there will be at least a few of us, and we'll be a powerful club.
Their wordsI'm usually reluctant to make predictions about technology, but I feel fairly confident about this one: in a couple decades there won't be many people who can write.
Their wordsSo a world divided into writes and write-nots is more dangerous than it sounds. It will be a world of thinks and think-nots.
Their wordsInstead of good writers, ok writers, and people who can't write, there will just be good writers and people who can't write.
Their wordsThe task that generative A.I. has been most successful at is lowering our expectations, both of the things we read and of ourselves when we write anything for others to read.
A viewour reading
Filed here becauseSaid in reply to the claim beside it, about developers publishing AI slop.
Their wordsAnd second, we would all rather read your "bad" writing than polished AI writing. Trust me on this one. We can spot even one sentence of AI writing and it stinks.
Their wordsI see too many devs writing low quality slop with AI. Hopefully this helps those of you who want to share more of your own experiences, using your own words - we need more of these!
Their wordsThe reason for this hardline stance is that we believe in the value of human thought and experience, as told by people with first-hand knowledge. It’s also about the audience: The “audience” for AI-written code is usually a machine, whereas the writing in Pragmatic Engineer is for humans, by humans. AI produces a statistical average in its output which creates uniform, dull text that’s an inferior reading experience to human writing – at least today it is.
Mental modelValue moves to what stays scarce
Their wordsAnyway, the bottom line is that human-written language reliably untainted by AI is becoming valuable.
Mental modelValue moves to what stays scarce
Their wordsThe only new thing is that writing about anything else is less valuable than it used to be, and it was never that valuable in the first place.
Their wordsThe prerequisite to good writing is having something you want to tell people about, which AI doesn't.
Mental modelValue moves to what stays scarce
Their wordsAs publishers see the danger from AI bots expand, they retreat to putting more and more content behind either password protection or payment walls or both, leaving the only publicly-accessible content to be AI-generated slop; open resources like research work, scientific analysis, and fair use of content all suffer as a result of people responding to the bad actors, since legitimate uses of open content are no longer possible.
Their wordsWhat is out there is buried among ever-growing piles of useless content farm material or, increasingly, AI-generated garbage.
Their wordsThese new models are poised to flood the web with generic, generated content.
Mental modelValue moves to what stays scarce
Their wordsBut I much rather read your broken English than your AI slob. You know, of course there's a human behind it, and yet they, they prompt it. I'd much rather read your prompt than what came out. Um, I think we're reaching a point where I value typos again.
Their wordsSo, I, I completely moved away from that. I, I, everything, everything I blog is organic, handwritten and maybe, maybe I, I, I use AI as a fix my worse typos. But there's value in the rough parts of an actual human.
Their wordsLet me offer another generalization: any writing that deserves your attention as a reader is the result of effort expended by the person who wrote it.
Their wordsReferencing obscure concepts, friends who are real but not famous, niche interests, and recent events all make you plausibly more human.
Their wordsIn a world of automated intelligence, our goalposts for intelligence will shift. We’ll raise our quality bar for what we expect from humans.
Filed here becauseWritten in 1946, about ready-made phrases rather than machines.
Their wordsIt consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug. The attraction of this way of writing is that it is easy.
A viewour reading
Their wordsThe transgression isn't using the machine. It's hitting a button, not reading what comes back, and publishing it under your name.
Their wordsYou can use AI without handing it the work you love doing, or the work that means something to you.
Their wordsBut I don't think we should judge content based on the tool that made it. Um I think we should judge it based on the content, the point of view, the person behind the content.
Their wordsBut I’m increasingly of the opinion that sharing unreviewed content that has been artificially generated with other people is rude.
Their wordsI’m happy to use LLMs for all sorts of purposes, but I’m not going to use them to produce slop. I attach my name and stake my credibility on the things that I publish.
A viewour reading
Their wordsThe average person finds AI writing appealing because they rarely read, and they have not been inundated with AI writing patterns optimized to look good to them.
Their wordsI think that we will be reading way more AI generated writing in documents and emails and we will like it.
Their wordsAnd what we've learned is now we just send it. We We just send it and no one cares.
Their wordsUltimately, the only thing that matters is if you think the writing is good, not how much effort I put into it.
Their wordsAs of today, computers write pretty good articles but lack the direction and insight of human editors.
A viewour reading
Their wordsI'm trying to thoroughly write my thought processes, values, and worldview, so that you can remember it, re-create it and improve upon it.
Their wordsBut writing a trick down is the first step to making sure everyone can do it: magic tricks can be basic but not obvious.
Their wordsAnd in particular, I find writing to be much more powerful than going to conferences.
Their wordsWith remote work and distributed teams becoming more common, strong writing skills are a baseline for most engineering leadership positions.
Their wordsIf you are a software engineer at a high-growth startup or Big Tech, the chances are you write more words per day than you write code.
Their wordsBy writing well, you can scale your ability to communicate efficiently to multiple teams, to an organisation or across the whole company. And the ability to communicate and influence beyond your immediate team is the essential skill for engineers growing in seniority
Their wordsWriting becomes essential to make thoughts, tradeoffs and decisions durable. Writing things down makes these thoughts available for a wide range of people to read.
Their wordsBut writing online connects you with the people in your future.
Their wordsDemand for quality writing far exceeds the supply of it. Since people who don’t write in public are blind to the benefits, there’s relatively little competition for those who take the craft seriously.
Their wordsI know of no more scalable way to engage a large audience than the written word.
Their wordsInstead, we write narratively structured six-page memos. We silently read one at the beginning of each meeting
A viewour reading
Their wordsYour bad writing is fine. Just do more of it, every day, to get in shape and stay in shape.
Their wordsI've written sometimes 10,000 word essays in you know, a couple of days and I've written them in you know, 3 months or 6 months. Uh I I feel like I did I I didn't learn very much from the ones that that that only took a couple of days.
Their wordsfocusing too much on quality is a great way to procrastinate. It leads to endless editing, turning what could be a quick tweet storm into a months-long essay project.
Their wordsThe frequency of creating helps you build the muscle for more later.
Their wordsHence, the necessity of shitty first drafts.
Their wordsBut in my opinion, almost everyone seeks too little feedback.
Their wordsWriting in public is like inviting guests to your house for dinner. You have to clean and double check everything.
Their wordsBy far the best pots were produced by the second group of students, whose assignment had been quantity rather than quality.
Their wordsWhile great editors help you see your writing from another perspective they are not responsible for the final content. That means don’t take their notes unless you really believe them. Never abdicate responsibility for your content to your editors.
Their wordsThe great memos are written and re-written, shared with colleagues who are asked to improve the work, set aside for a couple of days, and then edited again with a fresh mind.
A viewour reading
Mental modelLess, but better
Their wordsThe less you say, the more clearly you communicate. Not in terms of number of words or minute of discussion - that seems to never be enough - but in ideas and directions.
Mental modelLess, but better
Their wordsDelete any sentence not worthy of its own line.
Mental modelLess, but better
Their wordsGet rid of half the words on each page, then get rid of half of what's left.
Mental modelCurse of knowledge
Their wordsAvoid jargon. Any word you don’t read regularly in a newspaper is suspect.
Their wordsThe great enemy of clear language is insincerity.
Their wordsWhat is above all needed is to let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way about. In prose, the worst thing one can do with words is to surrender to them.
Their wordsIf you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst follies of orthodoxy. You cannot speak any of the necessary dialects, and when you make a stupid remark its stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself.
Mental modelLess, but better
Their wordsVigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.
Mental modelLess, but better
Their wordsThis requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that he make every word tell.
Mental modelLess, but better
Their wordsThe present letter is a very long one, simply because I had no leisure to make it shorter.
Mental modelLess, but better
Their wordsmy attitude was was always I will only put out stuff if if it's the best that I can do. It's up to the reader to decide if it's good or useful. Um, and if so, if I don't have that, I'm just not going to publish.
Matched by wording, not yet read into a view. The archive grows on its own, so this is where new claims wait for somebody to read them.
The full chronology, with every quote: writing as a timeline · person by person, side by side · all topics · Something wrong? Tell us