Writing

If you think without writing, then you only think you are thinking.
— Leslie Lamport¹

Writing creates a log of your thoughts and words, which can be evaluated later on, either by others or by yourself, without which one may go on blabbering illogical things with impunity, in the absence of any accountability. There is a reason why news channels gab more nonsense and lies than newspapers do, and any Tom, Dick, or Harry may have their own podcast, talking about how bottle gourd juice cures cancer; talk is cheap, writing is not.

Because when you write, you create a logical relationship between your disparate thoughts. Relationships of deduction, induction, analogies, etc. It demands more effort from your System 2 thinking². It causes you to slow down and think more clearly. And often, only when you slow down, are you able to scrutinize the flaws in your thinking.

Another reason writing holds importance is that it persists. Often we see people holding celebrities accountable for what they wrote on twitter years ago. When you write, you make yourself vulnerable to other people's judgments in a way that other modes of communication don't.

Why writing is essential now, more than ever, is because of the rapid adoption of generative AI tools. Even those who used to write are not writing anymore (think students, employees) at least not to the extent that they used to. And as writing is thinking, it would be an alarming state if we had a sea of people with an abundance of digital content and gigabytes of information, but lacking capability to think and discern.

I believe that, in order to have a well formed view, you need to go through many iterations of a dialectical thinking cycle (akin to a Bayesian thinking³) across a lot of opinions on the topic of the view you wish to hold. The theoretical dialectical cycle of:

• Thesis — Post a thesis
• Antithesis — Counter with an antithesis
• Synthesis — Resolve into a synthesis

Writing helps you formally accomplish this.

These were just a few words on motivating myself to start writing regularly in this online blog that I am starting today. Stay tuned.