Writing is thinking

Relationship between Writing and Thinking

• Several commenters report that writing exposes gaps, contradictions, and unstated assumptions in their ideas; the revision process itself feels like the thinking.
• Others argue writing is often a symptom of prior synthesis: people think for days/weeks, then write once the structure is already in mind.
• A common compromise view: writing is a tool for thinking, not identical with it; other tools include discussion, brainstorming, and teaching.
• Some emphasize that how you write matters: iterative outlining, rearranging fragments, and visually laying things out can reveal structure and improve reasoning.

Alternative Modes of Thought

• Commenters note that many people in the past (e.g., classic authors, orators) reportedly developed complex works largely in their heads, sometimes dictating them quickly later.
• Abstract thinking is seen as especially aided by writing because external text acts like extra working memory or “cache,” making it easier to juggle many ideas.
• Similar claims are extended to speaking, coding, drawing, and teaching as forms of “thinking out loud.”

Reading vs. Writing

• Reading is variously described as “thinking someone else’s thoughts,” fine‑tuning one’s own “weights,” or even becoming a “stochastic parrot” if done passively.
• Active reading (annotating, rewriting in one’s own words, “smart notes”) is framed as closer to thinking than passive consumption.

LLMs as Threat or Tool

• One camp: letting LLMs write is letting them think for you, analogous to calculators weakening mental arithmetic or writing weakening memory.
• Concern centers on students and early learners offloading too much, risking weaker development of reasoning and expression.
• Another camp: LLMs, used judiciously, expand thinking—summarizing noisy sources, drafting, rephrasing to meet limits, improving grammar, or serving as a “rubber duck.”
• There’s debate on whether LLMs can meaningfully assist with scientific papers beyond copyediting and formatting; critics see them as glorified typists, proponents as helpful with structure and style.

Gatekeeping, Style, and the Future

• Good grammar and “native-like” style are seen as affecting peer review outcomes; LLM-based copyediting may reduce bias against non-native writers.
• Others find AI-polished prose increasingly “grating” or homogenized, and worry about polluted training data and collapsing quality.
• Several predict that, as with writing and calculators, thinking itself will adapt to ubiquitous LLMs; the key question is whether we use them as crutches or as thinking partners.