I spent the last 11 weeks drawing the same still life. My marks trying to pin down what I saw. Each day for the first several weeks I’d come to it only to find my marks of the previous day not quite depicting what I saw in front of me. Only after frustratedly re-rendering the piece again and again did I realize my light source changed as the sun rose and fell. I could not hold a constant view on these objects.
So, then, the questions I posed to myself changed. How might I drawing something that changes? Everything changes. What about change is important to my drawing? How do changing conditions influence my ability to see? How might I become more attuned to changes as they influence the way I am seeing something? What about my reactions to changes as I view something is worth making into a mark? All these thoughts I found to parallel your musings about writing today.
In the end, I am trying to learn a nonverbal language to help me think about life. And, I’m just beginning…
I loved reading this, and it's such a beautiful way of making the abstract belief "writing helps you think more clearly!" into a sharper, clearer process. Making one's tentative, early, provisional ideas more concrete in writing ("unfolding" those ideas and beliefs) forces intellectual rigor—and it's a form of rigor that can't really exist as long as things are just sitting in the mind, unactualized and unarticulated.
I've just finished reading Michael Lewis' "The Undoing Project", about the work of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tverskey, and I thought of it while reading this wonderful essay, especially where you quote Lakatos:
"You are interested only in proofs which ‘prove’ what they have set out to prove. I am interested in proofs even if they do not accomplish their intended task. Columbus did not reach India but he discovered something interesting."
Lewis writes that, while Tversky enjoyed destroying bad arguments, Kahneman looked for places where a bad argument might actually be a good one. That is, the argument is flawed in this context, but it works in this other context; or (and this speaks to what you wrote about localised vs global problems) the argument has these specific flaws, but is there anything that stands up as true and therefore worth holding onto? This is how Lewis puts it:
"Danny would tell his students: 'When someone says something, don’t ask yourself if it is true. Ask what it might be true of.' That was his intellectual instinct, his natural first step to the mental hoop: to take whatever someone had just said to him and try not to tear it down but to make sense of it."
I like this quite a bit, but kept wanting your examples to go deeper, showing a longer time slice of the progression from vague mental idea to initial written version to discovery of flaws to further improvement. You touched on this with regard to schooling but I kept wanting more / longer examples to illustrate the points. Perhaps fodder for a subsequent post?
I felt the same. There is a note in my folder saying: perhaps a third part that is just one big case study? Not sure if I can make it condensed and interesting enough to warrant a post.
I had something of the same reaction as Steve, but resolved it differently: I think that you are ultimately working this out over the course of time. It is the body of your work that answers this question; it need not happen in any one essay. Now, I think this is what I tell myself about my own evolving thinking and writing: I write something, publish it, think about it for a month, then come back and continue in another way.
FWIW, as you made each of your points, I kept thinking "that makes sense but I don't quite see how it would work, I wish I had an example to follow". So I would be very interested in a case study.
but don't you find it almost impossible to do this since an insight is a perfect example of how the whole is greater than the sums of the parts, infact the constituent parts fuse so indistinguishably into each other after turning into an insight
Even without a concrete example, I was able to cenceptualize what you mean by a mathematically rigorous system for how to write (and how to think). Apologies if this is reductionist but reducing the advise actually helps me a lot. Start with a positive definite claim, attack it, revise it, do that a few more times until the writing aligns with the opinion, then structure all the claims and context into an essay. The most important part being the starting point.
I like that - I should probably work in a short summary like it.
Though I think you leave out what is perhaps more important than the starting point, which is the thing I call "unfolding." Maybe that is a bit vague here. Hopefully comes more alive in later parts (whenever they coalesce into a publishable form).
"Seeing your ideas crumble can be a frustrating experience, but it is the point if you are writing to think. You want it to break. It is in the cracks the light shines in.Seeing your ideas crumble can be a frustrating experience, but it is the point if you are writing to think. You want it to break. It is in the cracks the light shines in.'
I think that just helped me re-contextualize my entire approach to the story I'm writing. I've written multiple different drafts trying to get it 'right' and I'm always missing the mark but, with this in mind, without having written those I wouldn't have been able to push forward into the much better idea/story I'm now working with. I'd been thinking of those drafts as baggage, this is...honestly very thought changing for me.
Henrik, I just spent 2 hours reading your essay, absorbing every single comment, restacking this essay by allowing my thoughts to take form without going back and editing.
That, my new best friend is a feat!
I am sending love and light your way. I don't know who you are or where you live, except for not Sweden for the educational benefit of your very lucky children.
Someone I do not yet know restacked this by sharing the passage about cracks letting the light in.
Today, I am very lucky, too. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.
I think it can be more interesting and beneficial to explore the differences between thinking in writing, thinking aloud, thinking silently in one’s head, and thinking together with someone else.
Regarding thinking in writing, there are many fascinating topics to delve into. You’ve touched on the idea that it makes ideas more specific, which is a great start. It might be worth exploring further whether this is always the case and, if so, why. Some people simply dump their emotions on paper and stop there. Does writing inherently make you think, or do you need to be able to think first (regardless of the medium)?
You can also explore the relationship between limitations (e.g., the need to put ideas into correct sentences) and thinking. Why might these limitations be useful, and what are the potential drawbacks? Additionally, some limitations can be applied without writing. For instance, some people use various personality models to assess others and understand how to interact with them.
Another intriguing topic is that thinking in writing is not limited to just “writing.” You can draw diagrams, figure out relationships, and highlight key information. Tools like mind maps offer different levels of flexibility, each with its pros and cons. The medium can be interesting to elaborate on.
In terms of counterexamples, what is the difference between thinking in writing and thinking in one’s mind? It seems more related to “frameworks” for thinking rather than a specific feature of thinking in writing. What about logic with various types of syllogisms, or the analysis and synthesis of information? You’ve touched on analysis a bit without naming it. However, there are many other interesting thinking techniques to consider.
PS: I understand that this is part of one’s development. You have an interesting idea, and you want to understand it better, internalize it, and share it with others.
I like the idea that putting your thinking into writing forces to you make it rigid … you temper your thinking by forcing it to stand up to the application of thought over time, strengthening it as a result. And not just your thought, but the thought of your editor/reader. Putting it that way, I wonder if “rigid” is really the right word, or if “strong” might work better?
This is the 2nd time I’ve read this piece and I feel like it’s the first. So many new insights and connections formed in my mind. I’m starting to think that writing in this way is very similar to what happens in psychotherapy (in my experience), but that’s yet to be written about and unfolded, I could be wrong :D Is the next part in the works or has it been posted yet - I can’t seem to find it?
"If writing down your ideas always makes them more precise and more complete, then no one who hasn't written about a topic has fully formed ideas about it. And someone who never writes has no fully formed ideas about anything nontrivial."
Yes, but...
Does this mean that pre-literate civilisations have never produced fully-formed nontrivial ideas? This may be the case, but I'm not completely sure. (I may be reacting to the (perceived) absolutism of the quotation here.) Over a long enough timespan, discourse should have the same effect on idea refinement as writing, but with the added consequence of considering other people's perspectives.
You've previously mentioned Johanna's contributions as essential for clarifying your essays. Similarly, I think, scientific progress doesn't so much happen in labs but during semi-drunken conversations with other researchers in the bar at conferences: these provide the inspiration for goofball experiments that may ultimately disprove pet hypotheses, but which lead on to greater understanding.
I loved how this piece highlights the relationship between writing and thought. I have found that the comparison of these activities makes many people have an "aha" moment. They say "that's it!" But sometimes I find the way they describe the differences between thinking and writing unclear. I look forward to reading more Lakato. Your part about Conjecture is also very nice. Concise!
I'm curious hear your thoughts on the idea of Zettelkasten, a structured process for dissecting ideas into knowledge segments. When you challenge each element, you make part of your own specific web of understanding. I am intrigued by how this concept connects with "writing to think." It feels like an element of enlightenment in this age of submission to AI and media machines.
Really interesting, I sincerely enjoyed it. Especially the part about counterexamples. It is not often that I read numbers that are actually about how to improve the exposition of what is being said in such a timely manner. P.S. I have subscribed!
I'm so glad you're writing a series on this, Henrik. I've been long reckoning with the written word (especially through the vein of Leonard Shlain's Alphabet vs. the Goddess, Paul Kingsnorth's Savage Gods and David Abram's The Spell of the Sensuous -- the possibility that my writing complex is divorcing me from 'real life') but all the while I've been using this process, the one you're writing about here, without fully knowing it. "Unsystematically," as you say. It seems to me that through this process, one can actually deepen into the stuff of one's real, lived life.
I'm finding myself especially interested in the softer elements of this process. For example, eyes "fog[ing] over" when rereading a passage where "something" is off. And of course, through unfolding, you find *what* is off -- it isn't some nebulous thing, you can pin it down. But that subtle pre-ception is very interesting.
I'm also interested in the value systems that are at play below the surface of this process, and the way "warring" values might shift and settle into integrated parts of a whole as we pin things down and unfold them. Through this process, we might find the authentic pearl that is that value (e. g. our children's deep personal development) and orient towards it, rather than getting stuck on single images of that value (e. g. a school that uses self-directed learning methods).
While the written word might be static, the thought that is produced by reading those words might not be (and that's the key). Let those words be a starting point for better communication and connection.
I spent the last 11 weeks drawing the same still life. My marks trying to pin down what I saw. Each day for the first several weeks I’d come to it only to find my marks of the previous day not quite depicting what I saw in front of me. Only after frustratedly re-rendering the piece again and again did I realize my light source changed as the sun rose and fell. I could not hold a constant view on these objects.
So, then, the questions I posed to myself changed. How might I drawing something that changes? Everything changes. What about change is important to my drawing? How do changing conditions influence my ability to see? How might I become more attuned to changes as they influence the way I am seeing something? What about my reactions to changes as I view something is worth making into a mark? All these thoughts I found to parallel your musings about writing today.
In the end, I am trying to learn a nonverbal language to help me think about life. And, I’m just beginning…
I loved reading this, and it's such a beautiful way of making the abstract belief "writing helps you think more clearly!" into a sharper, clearer process. Making one's tentative, early, provisional ideas more concrete in writing ("unfolding" those ideas and beliefs) forces intellectual rigor—and it's a form of rigor that can't really exist as long as things are just sitting in the mind, unactualized and unarticulated.
I've just finished reading Michael Lewis' "The Undoing Project", about the work of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tverskey, and I thought of it while reading this wonderful essay, especially where you quote Lakatos:
"You are interested only in proofs which ‘prove’ what they have set out to prove. I am interested in proofs even if they do not accomplish their intended task. Columbus did not reach India but he discovered something interesting."
Lewis writes that, while Tversky enjoyed destroying bad arguments, Kahneman looked for places where a bad argument might actually be a good one. That is, the argument is flawed in this context, but it works in this other context; or (and this speaks to what you wrote about localised vs global problems) the argument has these specific flaws, but is there anything that stands up as true and therefore worth holding onto? This is how Lewis puts it:
"Danny would tell his students: 'When someone says something, don’t ask yourself if it is true. Ask what it might be true of.' That was his intellectual instinct, his natural first step to the mental hoop: to take whatever someone had just said to him and try not to tear it down but to make sense of it."
This is a really great point, enough to warrant an essay of its own imho.
I like this quite a bit, but kept wanting your examples to go deeper, showing a longer time slice of the progression from vague mental idea to initial written version to discovery of flaws to further improvement. You touched on this with regard to schooling but I kept wanting more / longer examples to illustrate the points. Perhaps fodder for a subsequent post?
I felt the same. There is a note in my folder saying: perhaps a third part that is just one big case study? Not sure if I can make it condensed and interesting enough to warrant a post.
I had something of the same reaction as Steve, but resolved it differently: I think that you are ultimately working this out over the course of time. It is the body of your work that answers this question; it need not happen in any one essay. Now, I think this is what I tell myself about my own evolving thinking and writing: I write something, publish it, think about it for a month, then come back and continue in another way.
FWIW, as you made each of your points, I kept thinking "that makes sense but I don't quite see how it would work, I wish I had an example to follow". So I would be very interested in a case study.
Could an LLM help generate some examples to start from?
but don't you find it almost impossible to do this since an insight is a perfect example of how the whole is greater than the sums of the parts, infact the constituent parts fuse so indistinguishably into each other after turning into an insight
One solution might actually be to create a video!
Even without a concrete example, I was able to cenceptualize what you mean by a mathematically rigorous system for how to write (and how to think). Apologies if this is reductionist but reducing the advise actually helps me a lot. Start with a positive definite claim, attack it, revise it, do that a few more times until the writing aligns with the opinion, then structure all the claims and context into an essay. The most important part being the starting point.
I like that - I should probably work in a short summary like it.
Though I think you leave out what is perhaps more important than the starting point, which is the thing I call "unfolding." Maybe that is a bit vague here. Hopefully comes more alive in later parts (whenever they coalesce into a publishable form).
"Seeing your ideas crumble can be a frustrating experience, but it is the point if you are writing to think. You want it to break. It is in the cracks the light shines in.Seeing your ideas crumble can be a frustrating experience, but it is the point if you are writing to think. You want it to break. It is in the cracks the light shines in.'
I think that just helped me re-contextualize my entire approach to the story I'm writing. I've written multiple different drafts trying to get it 'right' and I'm always missing the mark but, with this in mind, without having written those I wouldn't have been able to push forward into the much better idea/story I'm now working with. I'd been thinking of those drafts as baggage, this is...honestly very thought changing for me.
I really enjoyed this piece! I found the suggestions really clear and tactical. Can't wait to try them. Thank you and excited for Part 2 :)
Henrik, I just spent 2 hours reading your essay, absorbing every single comment, restacking this essay by allowing my thoughts to take form without going back and editing.
That, my new best friend is a feat!
I am sending love and light your way. I don't know who you are or where you live, except for not Sweden for the educational benefit of your very lucky children.
Someone I do not yet know restacked this by sharing the passage about cracks letting the light in.
Today, I am very lucky, too. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.
I think it can be more interesting and beneficial to explore the differences between thinking in writing, thinking aloud, thinking silently in one’s head, and thinking together with someone else.
Regarding thinking in writing, there are many fascinating topics to delve into. You’ve touched on the idea that it makes ideas more specific, which is a great start. It might be worth exploring further whether this is always the case and, if so, why. Some people simply dump their emotions on paper and stop there. Does writing inherently make you think, or do you need to be able to think first (regardless of the medium)?
You can also explore the relationship between limitations (e.g., the need to put ideas into correct sentences) and thinking. Why might these limitations be useful, and what are the potential drawbacks? Additionally, some limitations can be applied without writing. For instance, some people use various personality models to assess others and understand how to interact with them.
Another intriguing topic is that thinking in writing is not limited to just “writing.” You can draw diagrams, figure out relationships, and highlight key information. Tools like mind maps offer different levels of flexibility, each with its pros and cons. The medium can be interesting to elaborate on.
In terms of counterexamples, what is the difference between thinking in writing and thinking in one’s mind? It seems more related to “frameworks” for thinking rather than a specific feature of thinking in writing. What about logic with various types of syllogisms, or the analysis and synthesis of information? You’ve touched on analysis a bit without naming it. However, there are many other interesting thinking techniques to consider.
PS: I understand that this is part of one’s development. You have an interesting idea, and you want to understand it better, internalize it, and share it with others.
I like the idea that putting your thinking into writing forces to you make it rigid … you temper your thinking by forcing it to stand up to the application of thought over time, strengthening it as a result. And not just your thought, but the thought of your editor/reader. Putting it that way, I wonder if “rigid” is really the right word, or if “strong” might work better?
This is the 2nd time I’ve read this piece and I feel like it’s the first. So many new insights and connections formed in my mind. I’m starting to think that writing in this way is very similar to what happens in psychotherapy (in my experience), but that’s yet to be written about and unfolded, I could be wrong :D Is the next part in the works or has it been posted yet - I can’t seem to find it?
"If writing down your ideas always makes them more precise and more complete, then no one who hasn't written about a topic has fully formed ideas about it. And someone who never writes has no fully formed ideas about anything nontrivial."
Yes, but...
Does this mean that pre-literate civilisations have never produced fully-formed nontrivial ideas? This may be the case, but I'm not completely sure. (I may be reacting to the (perceived) absolutism of the quotation here.) Over a long enough timespan, discourse should have the same effect on idea refinement as writing, but with the added consequence of considering other people's perspectives.
You've previously mentioned Johanna's contributions as essential for clarifying your essays. Similarly, I think, scientific progress doesn't so much happen in labs but during semi-drunken conversations with other researchers in the bar at conferences: these provide the inspiration for goofball experiments that may ultimately disprove pet hypotheses, but which lead on to greater understanding.
Jordan Peterson talks a lot about writing and its importance, he has a Self Authoring Program that uses writing to help people.
The book How to Take Smart Notes also talks a lot about how important writing is to really understand something.
I loved how this piece highlights the relationship between writing and thought. I have found that the comparison of these activities makes many people have an "aha" moment. They say "that's it!" But sometimes I find the way they describe the differences between thinking and writing unclear. I look forward to reading more Lakato. Your part about Conjecture is also very nice. Concise!
I'm curious hear your thoughts on the idea of Zettelkasten, a structured process for dissecting ideas into knowledge segments. When you challenge each element, you make part of your own specific web of understanding. I am intrigued by how this concept connects with "writing to think." It feels like an element of enlightenment in this age of submission to AI and media machines.
Really interesting, I sincerely enjoyed it. Especially the part about counterexamples. It is not often that I read numbers that are actually about how to improve the exposition of what is being said in such a timely manner. P.S. I have subscribed!
thank you!
I'm so glad you're writing a series on this, Henrik. I've been long reckoning with the written word (especially through the vein of Leonard Shlain's Alphabet vs. the Goddess, Paul Kingsnorth's Savage Gods and David Abram's The Spell of the Sensuous -- the possibility that my writing complex is divorcing me from 'real life') but all the while I've been using this process, the one you're writing about here, without fully knowing it. "Unsystematically," as you say. It seems to me that through this process, one can actually deepen into the stuff of one's real, lived life.
I'm finding myself especially interested in the softer elements of this process. For example, eyes "fog[ing] over" when rereading a passage where "something" is off. And of course, through unfolding, you find *what* is off -- it isn't some nebulous thing, you can pin it down. But that subtle pre-ception is very interesting.
I'm also interested in the value systems that are at play below the surface of this process, and the way "warring" values might shift and settle into integrated parts of a whole as we pin things down and unfold them. Through this process, we might find the authentic pearl that is that value (e. g. our children's deep personal development) and orient towards it, rather than getting stuck on single images of that value (e. g. a school that uses self-directed learning methods).
While the written word might be static, the thought that is produced by reading those words might not be (and that's the key). Let those words be a starting point for better communication and connection.