[ordinaryradical]

The “thinking that precedes the writing” is not where the gold is. That kind of thinking is often confused, internally inconsistent, liable to miss critical details or nuance, and full of deductive leaps which may or may not pan out. Writing demands rigor of thought, it forces us to question premises, find evidence for a point of view, discern between the hypothetical and the factual, and try to organize these such that they cohere.

The thinking _is_ the writing. To be able to write is to be able to think, and if you are surrendering the writing to a machine that’s not ultimately what you’re surrendering—you’re giving up independent thought itself.

[teaearlgraycold]

You misunderstand. I mean the thinking that you say “_is_ the writing”. But the final words aren’t the thoughts that you should be graded on (aka “this is not a pipe”, but your essay is not your thoughts). What a new assessment could look like is an open book debate with a human (or, hell, with a rubber duck LLM). If at the end your thoughts are organized and self consistent you’ve done well.