[mewpmewp2]

I think writing is summarizing your thoughts outside of thinking. Thinking happens at least for me before I write. I know what I want to do before I write, and writing is just one medium to get it out there. If there was a faster way, to get my thoughts there I would use that.

[palmotea]

> Thinking happens at least for me before I write. I know what I want to do before I write, and writing is just one medium to get it out there. If there was a faster way, to get my thoughts there I would use that.

A lot of people observe that their thoughts get better when they do the work to write them out. It's not just a straightforward encoding process (as maybe a software engineer would conceive of it).

[mewpmewp2]

Yes, it gets better, but not because of writing, it gets better because of building, playing it out and observing the results. The trial and error. It wouldn't matter whether I built via voice to command AI or wrote the code myself.

E.g. I iterate and see the architecture or the system work out, or I get other ideas because of something I don't like, etc.

[lelanthran]

> Yes, it gets better, but not because of writing, it gets better because of building, playing it out and observing the results. The trial and error. It wouldn't matter whether I built via voice to command AI or wrote the code myself.

This is a poor argument. The trial and error is the LLMs trial and error of your intention (ironically driven by you), not your trial and error.

It's like saying "It wouldn't matter if I instructed an LLM to solve my trigonometry problem or if I wrote the the solution myself; either way I'm learning trig".

> E.g. I iterate and see the architecture or the system work out, or I get other ideas because of something I don't like, etc.

What exactly are you needed for in this scenario, other than saying "make me $PRODUCT"? The LLm is going to be a lot better at architecture than you are. Your role is limited to A/B testing the result for human use.

[balder1991]

You’re not wrong, but there’s a nuance here. More often than not our thoughts fool us into thinking we have something clear when we have only a vague idea of what you want to do.

I kinda [wrote about this before](https://dielsonsales.github.io/2023/05/11/starting-a-new-blo...) but the takeaway is that writing forces you to structure your thoughts, giving them a final shape and enables you to notice flaws or gaps in your own thinking process. It’s impossible to do this without writing.

[mewpmewp2]

It would be good to have specific situations here I guess, otherwise it's quite abstract, and I'm not sure what to make of it.

As to your post, I think rather than writing it's the act of pressuring yourself to figure the thing out that is making you more knowledgeable about the thing.

You are putting it out publicly out there so you really want to be certain that you are correct, and therefore you do a lot of research.

If you wanted to be accurate and prove a point, the motivation mechanism could vary, but also the eventual communication mechanism could vary. It doesn't necessarily have to be in writing, it could be a live debate or simply something else you built. The writing or the product are end product, but the process of wanting to produce something is what made you research and to understand.

You could be writing to yourself into a Google Docs, and not care and you would not go deep to research since there's no incentive to be accurate.

E.g. I could be doing a home project whether hardware, software or DIY, that in order to produce this output I have to learn and think. Similar to as good set of words to communicate some idea. But also I could build some slop without thinking and I could produce slop writing without thinking, and about nothing special.