[mjburgess]

On your last sentence:

The very first sentences should clear warnings not to modify the document, and read it entirely. That the contents of the document are short (<5min of reading) and extremely important. That a lot of effort has gone into making the document short, to the point, and easy to read/use.

And if that still doesnt work, arrange a 15min meeting with relevant stakeholders and go through the document quickly before releasing it.

It is my view that we have always been an oral species, and the great tyranny of the written words always a great burden, and any writing of any complexity or technical depth, out of reach for all but an elite.

Speaking to people in a meeting allows them to emote, express difficulty of understanding, understand the sentiment and priority of what they're hearing -- and most of all, it allows them to listen rather than read. People speak at a much lower information density, and this is a less taxing form of communication.

Writing has always been a great burden. It should not be elevated to, nor equivocated with, some great utility or intellectual practice. That was for an era where sound was harder to record and transmit than words; and where meetings required moving around the world.

A kind of writing which makes reading even harder is an even worse pathology. This isnt writing for a species of ape, but some one deranged enough to expend cognitive effort in such inhuman ways.

[rayiner]

> Speaking to people in a meeting allows them to emote, express difficulty of understanding, understand the sentiment and priority of what they're hearing -- and most of all, it allows them to listen rather than read. People speak at a much lower information density, and this is a less taxing form of communication.

Is that why everything is a Youtube video these days instead of written articles?

The real danger of Tik Tok and Youtube is that it allowed people who can't communicate using writing onto the Internet.

[mjburgess]

Yes, see my comment below. Memo -> meeting, book -> podcast / audiobook, newspaper article -> 10min youtube video, even, meme -> yt-short/tiktok

People are naturally motivated to watch, listen, and interact with other people. There's less a need to explain why cognitive effort is required, lower risk to bounce-off the format because it's to difficult/boring/frustrating/etc. We're already primed to expend effort interacting with others.

I think there's also something more naturally-fit to our attention spans in oral media. Whilst people frequently claim our attention spans are dropping -- I think this is false (and some research agrees). Instead, media is being adapted to fit what our attention spans always were.

It is just in reading, and engaging with long-format content, our minds frequently drifted. We frequently stoped paying attention and returned, over and over.

Instead, with shorter oral media we largely pay more attention but over shorter intervals.

A conversation also proceeds to manage attention/interest/etc. well, in somewhat dynamically adapting itself to the level of cognitive effort its participants are willing to spend.

Certainly I find myself naturally adapting my phrasing, humor, and so on according to the people i'm talking to -- based on whether they are showing interest, listening, understanding and so on. This is how attention should always have been managed.

Writing always was, in my view, a necessary evil for the vast majority of purposes to which it was put. Now, not all, of course -- we still need checklists, scripts, technical notes, accounting books, and the like.

[rayiner]

> Yes, see my comment below. Memo -> meeting, book -> podcast / audiobook, newspaper article -> 10min youtube video, even, meme -> yt-short/tiktok

Yeah, a dog can understand spoken words but can't read a memo. We should strive to use our human faculties and hold others to that standard, instead of lowering ourselves to communicating like animals.

[yyy3]

>Writing has always been a great burden. It should not be elevated to, nor equivocated with, some great utility or intellectual practice. That was for an era where sound was harder to record and transmit than words; and where meetings required moving around the world.

Okay Socrates[1]. Obviously writing has not been a "great burden" because it's 5000 years later and we're still all doing it. It hasn't been enough of a burden for you to avoid this place after 14 years and 12331 karma.

The way you've carried yourself on this thread indicates to me that you either don't understand other people's relationship to writing and why it is better than speech for them, or you are simply unempathetic.

> Speaking to people in a meeting allows them to emote, express difficulty of understanding, understand the sentiment and priority of what they're hearing -- and most of all, it allows them to listen rather than read. People speak at a much lower information density, and this is a less taxing form of communication.

Unless you have an intellectual disability, you can pay enough attention to the written word to get what you need out of it. Speaking is just as much a skill as writing. Who hasn't been in a meeting where the speaker is so boring, dull, or just bad at communicating that we zone off, go to another tab, and end up missing details? At least with writing I can go back and see what I missed. I can check myself.

I have ADD and a speech impediment. It is harder for me to pay attention to someone speaking, especially if they are boring, than it is for me to pay attention to a document. If I skim a document and miss something, it's all still right there in front of me. I can buckle down and read the whole thing. I can't replay a conversation. And vice-versa. With writing, I can gather my thoughts, think through what I'm trying to say, and present everything at once as a complete package that can stand on its own. Who hasn't lost a train of thought... or forgotten the word for something... or has a foggy brain and can't seem to remember an important detail? With writing, all of those things happen in the process of creation and get pruned out and fixed in the process of publishing (I use this word loosely).

---

The other thing I really wanted to comment on is the wild idea that is somehow okay for your manager to take your work, pass it through an LLM, and then present it to others as if it was your work. Like, what?!?!

I don't know what model you're using but AI lies. It lies all the time. It has no understanding. OP shows that because the AI generated overview of his work was full of hallucinations. The fact his manager didn't come back to him and talk to him about his documentation and offer feedback is crazy. AI came and gave everyone a taste of a lighter workload and instantly adults with 20+ years of experience unloaded their minds and started acting like vessels.

If I was that manager, I would be deeply embarrassed and ashamed.

[1] https://fs.blog/an-old-argument-against-writing/

[mjburgess]

So you prefer writing. Either way, writing is dying. It's dying because speaking and meeting can now be transmitted as easily. This itself should, empirically, demonstrate the point. The podcast killed the book, the meeting killed the memo. All around us writing is dying, and writing no one wants to read even more quickly.

Soon, in my view, writing will be seen as an instrumental intermediate artefact for technical or creative workers which is rarely shared and rarely read by anyone else. In other words, all writing will become checklists and scripts. Just as books became podcast scripts, and memos became meeting agenda.

I believe this is because writing and reading was, and is, a great burden to many. If you have some other explanation, so be it. It won't change the direction of the culture.

Prepare, I guess, to read more transcripts.

[nradov]

Another way of looking at that is that if writing is dying then doing it well will become a key competitive advantage. Organizations with culture, processes, and hiring standards focused on effective written communication will be faster and more economically efficient than competitors that rely on meetings (or recordings of meetings). Really crisp writing is especially helpful when prompting an LLM.

[mjburgess]

Sure, it will become a more elite creative and technical skill.

[walterbell]

> the meeting killed the memo

Some AWS meetings require the memo.

> writing and reading was, and is, a great burden to many

Other terms for writing and reading:

  • transmission
  • thinking (@paulg essay)
  • memory RL (reinforcement learning)
  • advantage
  • moat

> read more transcripts

Transcripts are primary sources. Sufficiently valuable primary sources can inspire new sources, created by humans through a process that includes, but is not limited to, reading and writing.

[OkayPhysicist]

This is a staffing problem, not a human one. There's plenty of non-knuckledraggers to hire, sack the illiterate and hire some competent people.

[balamatom]

The problem is that non-knuckledraggers know bad words like "why" or "no", and are not afraid to use them.

Knuckledraggers, on the other hand, only know good words like "vibe" and "ew", and gladly tune into the gentle rocking back and forth of the (filter-)feeder.

[balamatom]

Thank you.