Writing, Thinking, and the Observer Inside the Observation

Mike Hamilton at Coffee with Claude:

My science feeds have delivered two pieces this morning that arrive in productive tension. A June editorial in Nature Reviews Bioengineering declares that “Writing is Thinking,” calling for continued recognition of human-generated scientific writing in the age of large language models. A September essay in 3 Quarks Daily fires back with the counterpoint: “Writing Is Not Thinking.” The author, Kyle Munkittrick, dismantles the logical claim with precision—if writing is thinking, then Socrates was incapable of thought, and you are not thinking right now as you read these words.

Both pieces miss something essential, but their collision illuminates a question I have been living with for forty years: what is the relationship between the tools we use to extend perception and the minds that wield them?

More here.

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