AI Won't Replace the Understanding Evoked by Writing
Writing isn't just about producing, it's about understanding.
“The answer to every question opens the door to another question as you dive further into the underlying assumptions behind your answers, and you can only peel back so many layers with your mind alone before you run out of computing power. If you want to go deeper, you have to sit down and write. So you start by writing down your answer. $1M. $10M. $100M. $0. A range. Something. Then you write down why you think that. You start researching your assumptions. You realize that your assumptions were wrong, so you adjust your answer. You dive further down the rabbit hole. You see that someone else has written about this very topic, and you skim their work. Maybe you quote them in your own essay, because their work resonates so much with your new thesis. And every single improvement and update is recorded. Then you go back and read the whole thing, and it sounds awful. "No one would want to read this," you tell yourself. "I'm rambling. Incoherent." So you revise it. You chop out the unnecessary fluff. You rearrange different sections so the narrative is cohesive. You sleep on it. You reread it in the morning. Then you realize two things: "Damn, this is unrecognizable from my original thoughts," & "Damn, this is pretty good." And you never would have reached this clarity of thought if you hadn't sat down to write.”
— Jack Raines, The Hidden Cost of Artificial Intelligence