[HN Gopher] Putting Ideas into Words ___________________________________________________________________ Putting Ideas into Words Author : prtkgpt Score : 145 points Date : 2022-02-12 15:21 UTC (7 hours ago) (HTM) web link (paulgraham.com) (TXT) w3m dump (paulgraham.com) | goldfeld wrote: | It seems like a quantum effect of our consciousness, 'putting the | ideas into words changed them'. It's a perpetual chase after | wording, and when you reach the post, it's already far-off again. | This thought sheds some insight not only only on semiology and | systems of symbols in human language, but into what I've been | learning writing poems, and why it's so much fun to do it, I | think, because the goal of the expression is changed, or | heightened, by the act of reaching or moving to it. So it's | sometimes, or very often for certain comparisons, more involved | than programming, in terms of working memory. | | On the topic of essay writing, the book Writing Under Pressure: | The Quick Writing Process is a 60's university professor gem and | fully informed me as to how I approach writing (and reading) | nonfiction, anything which has an argument, a thesis, points to | make. It turns the random churn of paragraphs into a pragmatic | scientific method. | [deleted] | [deleted] | rschneid wrote: | >And someone who never writes has no fully formed ideas about | anything nontrivial. | | I think this argument misses a potentially deeper point about the | true magical power of reading... | | I did resonate with the majority of the piece, however. | kwhitefoot wrote: | Firefox tells me: | | "Web sites prove their identity via certificates. Firefox does | not trust this site because it uses a certificate that is not | valid for paulgraham.com. The certificate is only valid for the | following names: _.store.yahoo.com,_.csell.store.yahoo.net, | _.store.yahoo.net,_.us-dc1-edit.store.yahoo.net, _.us- | dc1.csell.store.yahoo.net,_.us-dc2-edit.store.yahoo.net, _.us- | dc2.csell.store.yahoo.net, store.yahoo.com, | store.yahoo.net,_.stores.yahoo.net, stores.yahoo.net | | Error code: SSL_ERROR_BAD_CERT_DOMAIN" | | Does anyone else see this? | samwillis wrote: | A little trivia for those that don't know, PGs site is hosted | on Yahoo Store as that is what Viaweb (his first startup) | became when it was acquired by Yahoo in the mid 90s. | aliceryhl wrote: | You probably have a plugin that translates http links into | https. | zozbot234 wrote: | The certificate is untrusted for the domain, but Firefox should | let you click through the warning screen and view the page. Or | you can adjust the URL to use http: | TameAntelope wrote: | A pg essay is a work of modern art these days; I think he | distills so much that it ends up taking a real effort to | reconstruct meaning out of what's left. | | Let's see if I got the message: | | * writing is difficult. | | * writing about a topic forces you to test your knowledge of that | topic. | | * you often learn about the topic, and that often changes how you | view that topic. | | * the reader should write more with the explicit purpose of | learning about a topic. | | And the killer point: | | * if you haven't written about a topic, you can't know it well. | | I wonder if writing comments on websites counts. | systemvoltage wrote: | > if you haven't written about a topic, you can't know it well. | | Well, writing is encoding of ideas into a semi-precise format | of written language. The intention is to communicate as | precisely as you can to other humans. When you have ideas | brewing in the amygdala + prefrontal cortex, they're hazy. | Writing them down requires vetting of imprecise aspects of your | hazy ideas. | | Writing can be replaced by any other encoding format (talking | to a friend, giving a lecture, etc), but that's still, for me, | in the English language. May be just thinking more precisely | about it? We still often 'think' in our home language even if | no communication is involved, some interaction with the | auditory region of the brain. The human brain is complex. Some | people also find vizualization of ideas very powerful, probably | involves activation of some regions of the occipital lobes. | | Writing just forces you to be precise, it is not required to | know something well. That seems like a bold, unsubstantiated | claim. Very, ahem...modern artsy. | [deleted] | tpoacher wrote: | While your points are absolutely true as well, this is not what | I got from the essay. | | What I got from it, which is subtly different from what you | say, but resonates with my experience a lot more, is that the | brain has a habit of assuring itself it has the whole picture | about a topic, almost to the point of delusion; it's kind of | how the brain works; it generalises things into abstract | patterns, and fills in the gaps for you. It's not until you're | forced to externalise the information, and explicitly face the | knowledge gaps you didn't even realise your brain had filled-in | for you, that you realise how many of them there were in the | first place. | | Writing is a great way of a) spotting, b) attempting to fill / | reflect on the gaps, c) realising you never had the full | information in the first place, d) consciously deciding to fill | in these gaps properly. | | So yes, the process also helps you learn as a side-effect, but | the point is not learning per-se; after all there are other | ways to learn 'properly', where writing things down isn't | strictly necessary. For me the main point of the article is the | shock of how much implicit knowledge turns out to simply not be | there when you try to prod it explicitly, and why writing | things down is therefore such a good exercise/habit to | cultivate in the first place, since trying to verbalise things | explicitly on paper is an effective technique that forces you | to 'prod' areas you didn't know needed prodding. | nuancebydefault wrote: | What you wrote is my takeaway from the article as well. | There's an expression "if you can't do, teach!" which can be | interpreted in different ways, but I would say it means you | get much better at something when you are forced to write, | re-read/interpret and explain it. | TameAntelope wrote: | Is there a requirement for this effect to work that you | publish your writing, exposing it to external scrutiny? | | Neither you nor pg explicitly say this, but it feels | important. | goldfeld wrote: | When exposing makes you consider the audience thoughtfully, | yes, it's a whole other game then. It's so common for me | that I think some part or a piece of writing is fine. But | when I consider posting it, or submitting to a literary | contest, suddenly I see that piece, naked, before the | panelists, and it's a poor show. Not until I make that | decision does my brain stop furninishing mental decorators | to dress up the rags which I'd been subconsciously | overlooking, or was simply worried about other more | pressing issues elsewhere. | prtkgpt wrote: | You got this right. I also think of PG very highly for his | ability to communicate with words. His video interviews might | not be this deep & thoughtful but he definitely mastered the | art of writing. | gashmol wrote: | If you substitute writing with developing software (or | prototyping) and ideas with requirements then you get great | advice for making something users want. It even suggest the | practice of checking requirements to be precise and complete. | Intersting. | dybber wrote: | No HTTPS? | jwogrady wrote: | It's a yahoo cert. The padlock says "certificate is not valid" | while the cert details says "This certificate is valid". | | I guess that means... "Technically it's good cert, but the | Google Chrome dev team doesn't like Yahoo."* | | *not that I disagree..... but who is making these judgement | calls? | zozbot234 wrote: | It'a a valid certificate for a bunch of Yahoo domains, but | its use on paulgraham.com is not trusted. It should throw up | a warning screen and let you click through to the site, | either temporarily or permanently on a TOFU basis. | kashyapc wrote: | I find this much better than PG's previous essay, "write | simply"[1], even if I don't agree with all of it (e.g. see | _jasode_ 's comment[2]). | | Meanwhile, at work I've been trying to encourage the habit of | writing a 2-4 page "memo" when conveying critical decisions. It's | proving difficult to root out the impulsive habit of "let's put | together a shoddy slide deck with broken thoughts, and hurry | through it on a call". | | When we're all remote, whether you like it or not, people _will_ | judge you by your words. And when you 're not writing code, most | of what you do is writing: design documents, proposals for | budget, Git commit messages, feature requests, usage guides, | investigative reports, synthesizing complex discussion threads | into useful summaries, technical presentations, email, and | synchronous chat. Not least of all, robust writing skills allow | you to "defend" your arguments with nuance and concede with | grace. | | [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26427773 | | [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30314144 | robrenaud wrote: | > And someone who never writes has no fully formed ideas about | anything nontrivial. | | This is harsh. As someone who struggled with writing text a lot, | I seriously considered dropping out of state U and going to Devry | for an IT degree freshman year to avoid mandatory writing | classes. I still graduated with a 3.9 as I was able to focus on | CS/math and get passed the writing pre-reqs. I thoroughly enjoyed | the more advanced math and theoretical CS classes, where I was | spending good chunks of the weekend writing proofs. I can imagine | that one gets a similar kind of understanding and joy from | writing a good textual argument as writing a good proof. | persona wrote: | > Putting ideas into words doesn't have to mean writing, of | course. You can also do it the old way, by talking. But in my | experience, writing is the stricter test. | | As pg brings it up, writing is one of the many ways to shape | ideas and even change them. But I wouldn't go so far to say it's | the stricter test. | | Each way of expressing and sharing ideas will test it in | different ways. Writing may look for conciseness, flow and | completeness while talking about it can validate ideas for | collaborative building. | | Going a step forward, I'd suggest that putting Ideas into Action | IS the stricter test. | mikewarot wrote: | >In precisely defined domains it's possible to form complete | ideas in your head. People can play chess in their heads, for | example. And mathematicians can do some amount of math in their | heads, though they don't seem to feel sure of a proof over a | certain length till they write it down. But this only seems | possible with ideas you can express in a formal language. | | For me, at least, programming falls into this category of | writing. The difference, however, is that when you're | programming, you have _three audiences_ to satisfy. They are, the | _compiler_ (or interpreter), the _problem_ to solve, and other | _programmers_. Over time, the writing becomes part of a | conversation, as I 'll explain below. | | The compiler, the first audience, is the one that beginning | programs bang their heads against the most. It can have any | number of arcane and complex rules and interactions to learn | about, and practice, before you can reliably get the compiler to | accept your work as valid. | | The problem is the audience we're paid to satisfy. It requires | that you end up with a workable answer given workable inputs. | Satisfying it requires getting to know it a bit, then reaching | back into your toolkit of tricks to get just the right set of | algorithm and code. It's more of a conversation, that settles | down into an agreed upon text. As time goes on, the details | become nuanced, and the corner cases handled. | | The third audience is the humans who read the program, and those | in the future (including yourself!) who might want to join the | conversation. All of these people need to be able to read, and | adjust, the agreed upon text, or copy it to use for some other | problem. As you go, the more you keep this third audience in | mind, the easier it is for them to join or even rejoin the | conversation. | | Reviewing, there are aspects of these audiences to note: | | The compiler is fairly easy to satisfy, you can bang away at | possibilities and tweak the code until it agrees that your words | are valid. Then you can keep tweaking until you make it happy. | | Note however, that the compiler can be capricious, it can | radically change it's opinion of your work over time. Many a | story as been written here about the shock of finding that | certain words or phrases are newly irritating to the compiler, or | just plain unacceptable. Python is said to have gone through this | phase between v2 and v3. | | The problem can change as well. New requirements of a wide | variety can result in the need to revise the agreed upon text. | | The third audience can vary widely. It can be just yourself for a | very short time in response to a homework or programming contest | problem. It can be your coworkers, past present and future. It | can be the world, if the work is open source and widely useful. | It can be the users of a library, who will focus narrowly on the | interface you provide, while only some dare to peek at the | implementation. | | I find that the more I keep all three audience in mind, the | better the outcome. Thank you Paul for the writing prompt. 8) | akprasad wrote: | As someone who writes, I can relate to a lot of this, but there | are aspects that aren't true to my experience. | | > If you make an effort, you can read your writing as if you were | a complete stranger | | Somewhat. Through effort I can take on a more objective | perspective, but there is no platonic stranger I could pick out. | Everyone has his own context and his own needs. What I try to do | instead is visualize people I know who are not close friends. I | think "What would X think if she were reading this?" | | > If he's not satisfied because you failed to mention x or didn't | qualify some sentence sufficiently, then you mention x or add | more qualifications | | I think this game is endless. There will always be a nitpicker | (Hello!). I try to say enough to show that I know what I'm | talking about, but beyond that I find that it chokes the broader | point that I want to make. | | ~ | | For me, the real value is that writing makes language almost | physical. What would normally vanish in a moment in speech | becomes something you can touch, sculpt, and rearrange. And in | doing so you're forced to contend with the form of it and really | think through every word, and every train of thought ("Is this | really what I want to say? Is this really how I should say it?"). | I think this can be done in speech as well if you're in a true | debate with someone who cares about language, but it's much | harder. | | And depending on your temperament, there's a "those who can't do | teach" problem where writing about something makes you feel like | an expert on it. As always, the important thing is to act. | dbrueck wrote: | On a small scale, this is exactly why when I'm stuck on a | development problem (an elusive bug or trying to hammer out a | good design), a thorough email about it to a colleague often | provides the breakthrough. Because you're taking up a co-worker's | time & energy, it motivates you to lay out the problem with the | right amount of context, walk through some of the tradeoffs or | things you've considered, etc. | | And it's not unusual at all for the email to never get sent - | among my closest co-workers we'll often tell each other something | like, "I couldn't figure out how to fix XYZ so I wrote you a long | email about it, fixed the problem, and deleted the email". | | (the downside is that once you've experienced this a few times, | crummy problem reports from others kind of drive you crazy) | default-kramer wrote: | I agree with a lot of it, except for this: "And someone who never | writes has no fully formed ideas about anything nontrivial." I | guess it depends your definitions of "nontrivial" and "fully | formed idea". But consider all the experienced auto mechanics in | the world. Few of them have written anything about it, but I'm | sure I would judge most of them to have fully-formed ideas about | a nontrivial topic. To generalize, I'm claiming that experience | can give you fully-formed ideas whether you write or not | (although writing will probably help). | blcArmadillo wrote: | He touches on that in the paragraph | | > I'm not saying that writing is the best way to explore all | ideas. If you have ideas about architecture, presumably the | best way to explore them is to build actual buildings. What I'm | saying is that however much you learn from exploring ideas in | other ways, you'll still learn new things from writing about | them. | quesera wrote: | > I agree with a lot of it, except for this: "And someone who | never writes has no fully formed ideas about anything | nontrivial." | | This is just a rephrasing of the old adage that ~"to truly | understand something, you must be able to teach it to others". | wahnfrieden wrote: | The author is simply projecting their own interest in their | writing | cosheaf wrote: | As an author should. | jasode wrote: | _> You have to pretend to be a neutral reader who knows nothing | of what's in your head, only what you wrote. [...] If you make an | effort, you can read your writing as if you were a complete | stranger, and when you do the news is usually bad._ | | Disagree on that because of _The Curse of Knowledge_ : | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_knowledge | | The various attempts at explaining _" monads"_, _" web3"_, _" | Kubernetes"_, etc will still leave many smart readers exclaiming | _" I still don't get it."_ | | PG's own essays (e.g. wealth inequality) have been misinterpreted | in HN threads. | chunkyks wrote: | Every time I see some glorious "this explains git in a single | image", it's usually an interesting image for someone who | already understands git, yet is entirely, 100%, opaque to | someone who doesn't yet know git. | | [This comment brought to you by a thread [1] from earlier | today] | | [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30311713 | catillac wrote: | I saw this earlier, and while I've been using git for many | years, I think this graphic made me understand git less. | Maybe because most of my usage is committing and resetting | things and not doing the more wacky git commands? | asiachick wrote: | For me this is every youtube math video ... including 3 blue | 1 brown. They only really work if you already understand | KerrAvon wrote: | It would help if PG would learn to write clearly. His LISP | books are masterpieces. His personal essays are pretty opaque | unless you've read him consistently. This one reads from the | outside as pointless techbro navel gazing. | VoodooJuJu wrote: | >And someone who never writes has no fully formed ideas about | anything nontrivial | | _The unintelligible is not necessarily unintelligent_ | | -Nietzsche | | And in this particular piece, Mr. Graham's hyper-intelligibility | seems to manifest as pseudo-intelligence. | dang wrote: | Please don't call names or cross into personal attack | (regardless of who the person is). It's against the site | guidelines, and you can make your substantive points without | it. | | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html | smlckz wrote: | What else can be done about it instead of building things, | writing down or talking? | jacquesm wrote: | Destruction, listening, viewing, understanding, teaching etc. | ar_imani wrote: | In my experience, writing down doesn't help me develop new idea, | but exploring new ways to support it or explain process as | straightforward as it should be, which I can not do in my head or | real-time conversation. As the author says, it takes lots of time | and effort to put yourself in a stranger's mind. | diego wrote: | > And someone who never writes has no fully formed ideas about | anything nontrivial. | | This would imply that Socrates only had trivial ideas. Socrates | would disagree with this statement, and so would a large number | of people. This belief seems like a cognitive bias to me. If you | prefer written ideas, unwritten ideas may seem trivial to you. | gumby wrote: | Well, Socrates (to the extent he actually existed) did form | well reasoned arguments, but I'm sure that was truly laborious. | | The generalization of pg's argument is the classic "EDGE" | method ("Explain, Demonstrate, Guide, and Evaluate"). You don't | understand something until you can "fully" explain it to | others. | | And note that our understanding of Socrates is a product of | Plato. Thoughts that might have been half-baked in Socrates' | telling could be thought through and expanded by Plato through | the process described in this essay. Or have been formulated | _de novo_ by Plato and then ascribed to Socrates. | rrherr wrote: | Jesus is another example | redisman wrote: | Since those two didn't write anything down - how do we know | we're not just getting their followers ideas written down and | worked out. Maybe they were just catalysts that kicked off a | larger scale thinking and writing project of what PG | describes. | | In the end, whatever was written down is what their long term | effect on the world was. | hirundo wrote: | I think people who can compose complete well ordered arguments | in their head are like those who can play chess well while | blindfolded. It's an extraordinary talent. | diego wrote: | Agree with that. However, in 2022 writing is not the only way | to order your thoughts outside your head. I for example have | put together Youtube videos without writing anything down. | The process is like this: | | - Think of a point I'd want to make, perhaps in 20-60 | seconds. | | - Do a few video takes until I believe it's good enough. | Sometimes the first take works. | | - Keep doing it until I have enough material, then edit the | video. | | As someone who is in his 50s though, I can understand the | point of view of someone who grew up in an age in which | writing was the obvious way. Paul might think differently if | he tried to start a Youtube channel, but it doesn't seem to | be interesting to him. | network2592 wrote: | Paul does mention talking as an alternative to writing | though. It is not that talking is not interesting to him. | Writing is just a more efficient process. | | For example, when editing video, there is a lot of friction | due to the software you are using. Writing can have a lot | less friction. You can literally just take a pen and paper | avoiding a computer altogether. | | That being said, one point Paul makes, is that finding a | conversation partner that is willing to patiently listen to | you as you explain ideas may be challenging. Filming a | video and putting it out there can make it less | challenging. And you can get some constructive feedback | from many individuals. Although, I am not sure to what | extent Youtube is the right medium for this exercise. | [deleted] | lifeisstillgood wrote: | 'Writing is nature's way of telling us how lousy our thinking | is.' | | - Leslie Lamport | | I am finding more and more intelligent people have been able to | coalesce my thinking into smaller and smaller parts. I am | beginning to accept meritocracy is brutal. | hamiltonians wrote: | what if you are capable of conveying your ideas in words but no | one likes your content | cosheaf wrote: | Do you have an example? | xorencrypted wrote: | The juxtaposition of a comment next to code best illustrates the | real advantage natural language has. It's pretty good at moving | the mind of the reader into the state intended. To convey | information concisely. but isn't always right | lifeisstillgood wrote: | I often bang on about Software as a form of literacy. And I have | noticed recently that it is actually harder for me at work to | express my thoughts in English than just to damn well write some | code. | | I cannot work out if this is my English is declining or my coding | is improving. | simplegeek wrote: | > And someone who never writes has no fully formed ideas about | anything nontrivial. | | Harsh. Socrates didn't write his ideas, a counter example that | immediately popped up in my head. | kashyapc wrote: | (Reusing my comment[1] from a different thread the other day.) | | Many people think Socrates is "against writing" by all means. | In the dialogue _Phaedrus_ , he--well, Socrates as portrayed by | Plato--does sort of say that writing is okay, as long as you're | doing it in the right spirit (seeking truth) and are not | deceiving your audience. | | What Socrates rails against is the "speechmakers" who don't | truly know what they're talking about, but instead write based | on "what is likely" to persuade the audience. | | [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29603526 | jyriand wrote: | Plato did. Just wondering, maybe the things we read about | Socrates are not actually his ideas, but Plato's? ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-02-12 23:00 UTC)