How writing helps thinking

Back on August 21st of this year, the inimitable Carl Bergstrom visited SODAS to talk about his course on AI. It’s called Modern-Day Oracles or Bullshit Machines?. During his lecture Bergstrom reflected on the nature of writing – how writing helps us think.

Bergstrom’s discussion of the course led me to reflect on writing with AI. Specifically, I was trying to understand what I thought about editing AI text: asking for a draft, then editing that draft carefully. And comparing editing AI text to a) writing from scratch and b) just getting finished text from the AI.

Here is a version of my handwritten journal notes from the day:

Reflection

• What is it that is missing when you edit vs. when you write?
• I love editing. I like starting from student drafts
• What do you gain in the process of writing?
• I can easily give an AI an outline
• So it can be sharper
• AHA. These notes reveal what I gain!!
• By writing things out you learn what is missing from the outline
• Presumably the AI will “paper over” those realizations

Reflecting on my reflection above, here’s another thought: In a way that brilliant AHA “insight” in my notes doesn’t actually quite work (sigh).

In this case I got what I needed from a list that I could have fed to an AI to write out my thoughts in more coherent prose. I actually did realize one of the key benefits of outlining, just from outlining. I didn’t have to write out everything.

But that said, the notes still capture what I think is the most important lesson. And it’s related to an essay by Ted Chiang that Bergstrom also mentioned on the day. It’s called Why A.I. Isn’t Going to Make Art and the central argument is simple.

If I prompt an AI to create an image for me, I make very few choices. I just write something simple like “make me an image of a sunflower”. Contrast that with a painter. To paint a sunflower you need to make thousands of choices. Where to put each individual brush stroke. It’s those thousands of decisions that make it art.

And as Chiang points out, writing is similar. The more you work with the text, the more you have to decide what to say. Choosing every single word. The right meaning, the right connotations, the right rhythm. So the list gives you structure. But making all those choices trains your brain. Connects you to the argument.

Those are the things you lose, even with the outline.

So my summary is that editing AI writing gives you something. And if you start from a careful handwritten outline you get a lot of the important benefits of writing itself … a sense of how your story hangs together, how each part connects to the next, the logic of the piece. But pure writing. From the bottom up, that’s what makes it yours (and not just a generic echo of the underlying distribution of relevant text). And I’m not sure a few edits will make it as idiosyncratic as something you could have written yourself.

P.S. I still love editing, and I still need to figure out what the h%ll that’s all about.

P.P.S. I think I figured it out. I simply love editing because it’s easier than writing. The Resistance is much greater when you write from scratch. All those decisions you face on a blank page are exactly the painful part, and they are the reason it’s so hard to get started. Editing lets you skip them. Editing is better than blindly accepting what you’re handed, sure. But it’s not the full workout. It’s delightful for the same reason skipping the hard workout is nice. But to “stay in shape” writing-wise, it’s probably good to face the blank page.