source: Writing to Think
🗒️我的笔记
Writing forces you to slow down, focus your attention, and think deeply. In a world where attention is fragmented in seconds, thinking becomes more reactive than reasoned. Only when we have time to play with a problem can we hope to think about it substantially. Writing requires sticking with something a little longer and developing a deeper understanding.
写作迫使你放慢脚步，集中注意力，深入思考。在一个注意力在几秒钟内被分散的世界里，思考变得比理性更被动。只有当我们有时间去解决问题时，我们才有希望实质性地思考它。写作需要坚持更长的时间并发展更深入的理解。
Mortimer Adler once said, “The person who says he knows what he thinks but cannot express it usually does not know what he thinks.” We all know someone with this surface level of understanding. They read an article or two and have the confidence of an expert. It’s as if you are having a conversation with someone who tells you they are a hockey player, only to find out they’ve never skated.
莫蒂默-阿德勒（Mortimer Adler）曾经说过：“那些说自己知道自己在想什么却无法表达出来的人，通常并不知道自己在想什么。我们都认识这样的人。他们读一两篇文章，就有专家的自信。这就好比你和一个人聊天，他告诉你他是一个曲棍球运动员，却发现他从来没有滑过冰。
Writing is the process by which you realize that you do not understand what you are talking about. Of course, you can learn a lot about something without writing about it. However, writing about something complicated and hard to pin down acts as a test to see how well you understand it. When we approach our work as a stranger, we often discover how something that seems so simple in our heads is explained entirely wrong.
写作是一个过程，在这个过程中，你会发现自己并不了解自己在说什么。当然，你可以在不写作的情况下了解很多东西。然而，对复杂而难以确定的事物进行写作，则是对自己理解程度的一种测试。当我们以一个陌生人的身份对待我们的工作时，我们经常会发现，在我们头脑中看起来如此简单的事情，解释起来却完全是错误的。
Other than reading them yourself, one way to test your ideas is to let others read them. Strangers reading your writing can’t see all the thoughts in your head, only the ones you put into words and share. It’s easy to assume the people who disagree with you are wrong. Sharing your understanding with the world allows you to not only test your thinking but gain the perspective of others (as the comments here will no doubt do). Writing forces you to step on the ice and skate.
除了自己阅读它们之外，**测试您的想法的一种方法是让其他人阅读它们。**陌生人阅读你的文章，看不到你脑海中所有的想法，只能看到你用文字表达和分享的想法。人们很容易认为那些不同意你的人是错的。与世界分享你的理解，不仅可以让你测试你的想法，还可以获得他人的观点（正如这里的评论无疑会做的那样）。写作迫使你踩在冰上滑冰。
Anyone who’s ever revised a piece of writing and done it well knows the pain of having to kill their darlings. But deleting, in writing and life, is a valuable tool. When you write, you develop an attachment to the text you produced only because you produced it. Choosing to discard writing forces you to reconcile between what is true and what you wrote, which can lead to tremendous personal growth both in writing and in life. AI-generated text, on the other hand, is disposable by nature. It doesn’t force you to practice attachment and letting go. The most important key on the keyboard and in life is often the one that deletes.
任何曾经修改过一篇文章并把它做好的人都知道不得不杀死他们的宝贝的痛苦。但是，在写作和生活中，删除是一种有价值的工具。当你写作时，你对你产生的文本产生了一种依恋，只是因为你产生了它。选择放弃写作会迫使你在真实和你所写的东西之间取得和解，这可以导致写作和生活中巨大的个人成长。另一方面，人工智能生成的文本本质上是一次性的。它不会强迫你练习执着和放手。键盘上和生活中最重要的键往往是删除的键。 实际上，**写作迫使你把一个复杂且定义不清的问题压缩成更易于管理的问题。**这种“压缩”很有用。它不仅可以帮助您记住您的想法，还可以帮助您开发新的想法。保罗·格雷厄姆（Paul Graham）是这样说的：“一个好的作家不只是思考，然后把他的想法写下来，作为一种记录。一个好的作家几乎总是会在写作过程中发现新事物。
Perhaps the best reason to write is that it offers a vehicle for discovering deeper insights.
也许写作的最好理由是它提供了一个发现更深入见解的工具。
Practically speaking, writing forces you to take a complicated and ill-defined problem and compress it into something more manageable. This ‘compression’ is useful. Not only does it help you remember your ideas, but it helps you develop new ones. Paul Graham put it this way: “A good writer doesn’t just think, and then write down what he thought, as a sort of transcript. A good writer will almost always discover new things in the process of writing.”
实际上，**写作迫使你把一个复杂且定义不清的问题压缩成更易于管理的问题。**这种“压缩”很有用。它不仅可以帮助您记住您的想法，还可以帮助您开发新的想法。保罗·格雷厄姆（Paul Graham）是这样说的：“一个好的作家不只是思考，然后把他的想法写下来，作为一种记录。一个好的作家几乎总是会在写作过程中发现新事物。
The insights you discover are not limited to the subject you write about. You also learn about yourself. Writing doesn’t just convey your ideas, it conveys a part of you. Your personality and worldview become part of the work itself. While the reader remembers the story, the writer is forever changed.
你发现的见解不仅限于你所写的主题。你也会了解你自己。写作不仅传达了你的想法，还传达了你的一部分。你的个性和世界观成为作品本身的一部分。当读者记住这个故事时，作者永远改变了。
Many things can be done by tools that write for you, but they won’t help you learn to think, understand deeper, or solve hard problems.
许多事情可以通过为你写作的工具来完成，但它们不会帮助你学会思考、更深入地理解或解决难题。
When it comes to my kids, I told them, “one of the ways we learn to think for ourselves is to write out our thoughts.” When your invisible thoughts become visible, you are forced to wrestle with them in reality and not your imagination. “But Dad, they protested,” as they continued to write in their summer journals, “it is so much easier to outsource to AI.” They’re right. But they aren’t yet smart enough to see that in a world where intellectual labor is increasingly outsourced to tools, the human aptitude for clear thinking and unique insights will become all the more valuable.
当谈到我的孩子时，我告诉他们，“我们学会独立思考的方法之一就是写出我们的想法。当你看不见的想法变得可见时，你被迫在现实中而不是你的想象中与它们搏斗。“但是爸爸，他们抗议，”他们继续在夏季日记中写道，“外包给人工智能要容易得多。他们是对的。但他们还不够聪明，无法看到在一个脑力劳动越来越多地外包给工具的世界里，人类清晰思维和独特洞察力的能力将变得更加有价值。