Writing Slowly

According to author Larry McEnerney, writing is an essential part of a sophisticated thinking process. He says:

💬 “So here’s what you’re doing, you are thinking about your world in very difficult ways. This is a terrifically good thing, and it’s the source of most of the value of your work. Now, you are also writing about that world, and this is where it starts, the problem starts arising. Unlike a journalist, almost surely you are using your writing process to help yourself think. In other words, the thinking that you’re doing is at such a level of complexity that you have to use writing to help yourself do your thinking.” - Larry McEnerney: The Craft of Writing Effectively | Youtube

In my own reading I’ve felt there’s a difference between published writing as useful information (e.g. ‘how to fix that annoying computer problem’) and published writing as the voice of a human grappling with complexity (‘how I fixed my annoying computer problem ‘).

In the first instance I don’t care if the ‘author’ is AI, so long as the suggested fix actually works. I don’t need evidence of a thought process; I just want to fix my computer. In the second instance, the central thing I’m looking for is evidence of human thought. And if the writing starts to smell of AI, I don’t bother even finishing it.

But even though the AI-written information articles always seem highly plausible, I’ve found the ‘information’ contained to be highly untrustworthy. Sometimes it’s correct and helpful, other times it’s wildly off beam. That’s not exactly ideal. I noticed that at least one version of Microsoft Copilot says it’s ‘for entertainment only’ - which makes it a bit worrying that they named it Copilot.

So whether I do need a human or don’t need a human, either way, AI prose isn’t really doing it for me.

Well, here are some articles that consider the vexed question of whether AI text counts as writing, or just glorified Lorem Ipsum filler – or worse:

• Alex Woods | Don’t let AI write for you.
• N. Cailie | I am definitely missing the pre-AI writing era.
• Elizabeth Spiers | The Anti-Intellectualism of Silicon Valley Elites.
• “We can decide that we want to be human” | The Guardian.
• Less Wrong | Folie à Machine: LLMs and Epistemic Capture.
• Manuel Morale’s two-step process for writing AI-free blog posts (an amusing response to an interesting discussion).

I’m the author of Shu Ha Ri: The Japanese Way of Learning, for artists and Fighters, which I wrote myself and I also took all the photos myself. If you’re interested in learning, teaching, art, fighting, or Japanese aesthetics and philosophy, you might just find this short book of relevance to you.