alt Hacker News> Writing is thinking. Thinking and deciding. There have been many times when I start out writing something substantial - could be an email, a blog post, a software design document, anything - when my own views substantially changed during the writing process. Writing forces you to serialize your thoughts - and you can't always trust the gestalt.
I don't disagree, but I think it's often not appreciated how much there's other work to writing too.
The biggest one is that you have to communicate non-interactively to an unknown audience. Having to (literally) put it in someone else's assumed terms does help giving different perspectives into the matter, but doesn't necessarily help one's own thinking that much. Instead you have to do some of the reader's thinking for them.
You also have to spend time on textual matters like grammar and style and a lot of "unspoken rules", which aren't really about linearizing your thinking about the contents.
Not all writing is thinking and not all thinking is writing.
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All writing is thinking when done by a human, you’re literally distilling your thoughts into words. You can’t write without thought.
And not all thinking is writing is a clear truism, there’s no point to even stating that.
Writing helps us think about the world, it’s a pivotal intellectual technology.
> You also have to spend time on textual matters like grammar and style and a lot of "unspoken rules", which aren't really about linearizing your thinking about the contents.
Hard disagree. Constraint is the driver of creativity. Also rewording sentences to sound better or make sense can make you reconceptualize the whole concept you are expressing
> Not all writing is thinking
Would love an example where you’re able to write without transferring your thoughts. Besides the obvious: fjcjfjrnjfjfifjfnrnakosifnrbwkofgjrj
The number of times the friction of writing has saved me from prematurely communicating a poorly understood idea must be in the hundreds or maybe thousands. For me when something is difficult to write about, it's a very good signal that I don't understand it well enough. So I think all the things you label as aspects of writing that aren't necessarily "thinking" are nonetheless good for thinking because they provide some necessary friction.
Strange! I would quite specifically highlight “having to do the reader’s thinking for them”, as well as more generally developing the skill to “communicate non-interactively with an unknown audience”, as extremely valuable upgrades to my thinking.