An Auto-Completed Article

Paul Graham makes it clear in one of his essays that writing itself requires the ability to think clearly. From extensive experience with writing, we know that sometimes the problem is not that we can’t write, but that our thoughts have no structure in our minds at all. “Vomiting-style writing” is a good example: you dump everything out of your head at once, then reorganize it, and finally polish it into an article. But I’m not convinced that this process actually helps us improve our ability to think.

We are living through an exciting wave of technological change. AI tools are helping us do more and more things. But if you let AI write for you directly, that is effectively choosing to give up training your thinking. Especially in today’s world—endless short videos on TikTok, infinite posts on Xiaohongshu, and serialized dramas you can binge from midnight until morning. The moment you unlock your phone, some app is trying to persuade you to stop thinking and simply indulge.

If you want to use tools like ChatGPT to help with writing, what you should aim for is not having it generate content for you, but having it help you sort out your tangled thoughts. As long as you have time, you can keep discussing with it, even arguing with it. It won’t lose patience, and it won’t refuse you. At a certain point, you realize that all your ideas have been clarified and organized. Turning them into an article then feels almost automatic.

Many writers, when they write, are obsessed with carving and decorating their sentences, as if every line must display the splendor of human civilization across the ages. Even when writing nonfiction, they do the same. But in nonfiction, what matters is the process of thinking, the way we present our viewpoints, and the fact that we care about a question at all. These are what shape an author’s personal style—not the kind of arrogant ornamentation that results in a vomit-inducing reading experience.♦︎