Jeremy Kahn
The point of writing is not to generate a written document
It's to communicate an idea. In business writing it's usually to communicate a _persuasive_ idea
The people @baldur referred to here,who dislike reading and writing and would rather a machine generated that writing for them — they don't get this bit.
Paul Cantrell
@trochee @baldur
Yes. Persuasive, or helpful, or correct….
My retired English professor mother always says “Good writing is good thinking.” It’s the thinking that’s the important part — thinking for yourself, thinking •with• the reader.
Paul Cantrell
@trochee @baldur
> “until recently — one could not do writing without thinking”
Heh, I bet my mom would have a wry comment about that from her years teaching hundred-person composition classes!
Snark aside, your point very much stands: writing done by a human is both impetus for and record of the human’s thought process. And end runs around that — uncomprehending imitation, plagiarism, bullshitting — are the •only• things an LLM can do.
Jeremy Kahn
Critically, it's an A implies B but not necessarily vice versa situation
One can easily have thinking without writing; many of the trades barely require literacy to apply ingenuity and creativity.
But — until recently — one could not do writing without thinking. it was usually easier to actually do the thinking first, than to fake it and still do the writing.
Good writing was a low-error-rate* sign that "thinking has been done"
*Some exceptions apply, of course
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