Tag: bad writing

Writing Is Not Thinking

Posted on by Kyle Munkittrick

by Kyle Munkittrick

What is this emoji doing? Is it writing?

There is an anti-AI meme going around claiming that “Writing is Thinking.”

Counterpoint: No, it’s not.

Before you accuse me of straw-manning, I want to be clear: “Writing is thinking” is not my phrasing. It is the headline for several articles and posts and is reinforced by those who repost it.

Paul Graham says Leslie Lamport stated it best:

“If you’re thinking without writing, you only think you’re thinking.”

This is the one of two conclusions that follow from taking the statement “Writing is thinking” as metaphysically true. The other is the opposite. Thus:

  1. If you’re not writing, then you’re not thinking
  2. If you are writing, then you are thinking

Both of these seem obviously false. It’s possible to think without writing, otherwise Socrates was incapable of thought. It’s possible to write without thinking, as we have all witnessed far too often. Some of you may think that second scenario is being demonstrated by me right now.

Or are you not able to think that until you’ve written it?

There are all sorts of other weird conclusions this leads to. For example, it means no one is thinking when listening to a debate or during a seminar discussion or listening to a podcast. Strangely, it means you’re not thinking when you’re reading. Does anyone believe that? Does Paul Graham actually think that his Conversation With Tyler episode didn’t involve the act of thinking on his part, Tyler’s, or the audience?

Don’t be absurd, you say. Of course he doesn’t think that. Read more »

Monday, December 19, 2011

How Not To Write: Maniza Naqvi’s Piece on Hitchens

Posted on by Tauriq Moosa

by Tauriq Moosa

ScreenHunter_05 Dec. 20 13.12I had chosen not to write extensively about the late Christopher Hitchens, since his contributions to my life’s betterment is of no real interest to anyone save my future biographers. And in looking at Maniza Naqvi’s piece on Hitchens I am, in fact, still not focused on Hitchens but on a point much broader: using colourful language in place of arguments is unhelpful to, I think, everyone. To be clear and upfront, I adored Hitchens’ work but that is, in fact, irrelevant to why Naqvi’s piece is a thin piece of tripe that stays afloat on nothing but its own hot air and strained eloquence. This is the type of thing Hitchens attacked: obscurity dressed in eloquence, masking hollow ‘arguments’. Indeed, try and read the first sentence of her piece and see if it makes sense. Come back to me if you know what she's trying to say.

To summarise the entire piece: Ms Naqvi did not like Hitchens. The end.

It is one of many ‘critical’ pieces following his recent death. However, I find it doubtful you will acquire better critical pieces now that the great man is dead than were written while he was alive. No insight can, I think, be gained on his arguments now that his corpse is cold, except that critics can be certain that they will receive no brilliant and biting counter-attacks.

Naqvi’s piece contains things like:

This type of thinking is hitched to a fine pitch for the American audience, in the packaging and selling, in my opinion, of a slimy toad: the blow hard, alcoholic—poser, social climber, wannabe—the unoriginal mediocre cheerleader of war and mass murder who made a career of being draped in mounds of other peoples’ books and supposedly having been himself well read and writing well, all the while being a fraud—and an Iago to America’s Othello.

Oh, I see what she did there! Using colourful language and phrasing, Ms Naqvi managed to write an entire piece without saying anything. Even when dissected, this cumbersome paragraph tells us something extraordinary: Someone didn't like someone else. The world just became dimmer.

Read more »