Writing to Think
写作思考
A few weeks ago, my 13-year-old son asked me why writing was so important. He wasn’t happy. One of his teachers had asked him to write an essay and he would rather use AI to generate it for him and be done with it.
几周前，我 13 岁的儿子问我为什么写作如此重要。他很不高兴。他的一位老师要求他写一篇作文，而他宁愿用人工智能为他生成作文，然后一了百了。
The question seemed as natural to him as using a dishwasher is to us. If there is a better, more convenient way to do this, why not use it?
对他来说，这个问题就像我们使用洗碗机一样自然。如果有更好、更方便的方法，为什么不用呢？
Today’s kids are growing up in a world where they can generate essays in seconds. Many employees are already using AI for a lot of simple tasks like email, catching up after vacation, summarizing meetings, and drafting PowerPoints. While some of these tasks might be accomplished more efficiently by ChatGPT than by human effort, I’d argue there are times when inefficiency is the point.
今天的孩子们在一个几秒钟就能生成作文的世界里成长。许多员工已经在使用人工智能来完成许多简单的任务，如收发电子邮件、假期后的补休、会议总结和起草 PowerPoint。虽然 ChatGPT 完成其中一些任务的效率可能会高于人力，但我认为有些时候效率低下才是重点。
The reason they teach writing to kids in school is not to generate endless essays on history or books but to create a space to practice reasoning. By delegating writing to AI, my son might be reducing his time spent doing homework. But he’s missing the chance to think more clearly about the topic at hand.
学校之所以教孩子们写作，不是为了让他们写出无穷无尽的历史或书籍文章，而是为了创造一个练习推理的空间。把写作交给人工智能，我儿子可能会减少做作业的时间。但他却失去了更清晰地思考手头话题的机会。
Writing forces you to slow down, focus your attention, and think deeply. In a world where attention is fragmented in seconds, thinking becomes more reactive than reasoned. Only when we have time to play with a problem can we hope to think about it substantially. Writing requires sticking with something a little longer and developing a deeper understanding.
写作迫使你放慢速度，集中注意力，深入思考。在一个注意力被瞬间分散的世界里，思考变得更多是被动的，而不是理性的。只有当我们有时间玩味一个问题时，我们才有希望对它进行实质性的思考。写作需要花更长的时间去坚持，并形成更深刻的理解。
Mortimer Adler once said, “The person who says he knows what he thinks but cannot express it usually does not know what he thinks.” We all know someone with this surface level of understanding. They read an article or two and have the confidence of an expert. It’s as if you are having a conversation with someone who tells you they are a hockey player, only to find out they’ve never skated.
莫蒂默-阿德勒（Mortimer Adler）曾经说过：」那些说自己知道自己在想什么却无法表达出来的人，通常并不知道自己在想什么。我们都认识这样的人。他们读一两篇文章，就有专家的自信。这就好比你和一个人聊天，他告诉你他是曲棍球运动员，但你却发现他从未滑过冰。
Writing is the process by which you realize that you do not understand what you are talking about. Of course, you can learn a lot about something without writing about it. However, writing about something complicated and hard to pin down acts as a test to see how well you understand it. When we approach our work as a stranger, we often discover how something that seems so simple in our heads is explained entirely wrong.
写作是一个过程，在这个过程中，你会发现自己并不了解自己在说什么。当然，你可以在不写作的情况下了解很多东西。然而，对复杂而难以确定的事物进行写作，则是对自己理解程度的一种测试。当我们以一个陌生人的身份对待我们的工作时，我们经常会发现，在我们头脑中看起来如此简单的事情，解释起来却完全是错误的。
Most organizations see PowerPoint and writing as interchangeable. They are not. PowerPoint masks poor thinking. Just because presentations are easy to create doesn’t mean the person creating them understands what they are talking about. If my experience is any indication, about 30-40% of people giving presentations lack more than a surface-level knowledge of what they are presenting. All the time spent making the presentation look good comes at the expense of wrestling with the problem and developing unique insights.
在大多数组织看来，PowerPoint 和写作是可以互换的。其实不然。PowerPoint 掩盖了拙劣的思维。制作演示文稿很容易，但这并不意味着制作演示文稿的人了解他们在讲什么。根据我的经验，大约有 30-40% 的人在做演示时对所演示的内容缺乏表面知识。花在制作演示文稿上的所有时间，都是以牺牲对问题的思考和形成独特见解为代价的。
Pretty graphics don’t only drug the presenter, they also intoxicate the audience. When dressed up, even poor thinking can come off as well thought out. Writing avoids this because it strips away the fancy graphics. Poor thinking has nowhere to hide.
漂亮的图形不仅能给主持人下药，还能让观众陶醉。经过装扮，即使是拙劣的思维也会显得深思熟虑。写作则可以避免这种情况，因为它摒弃了花哨的图表。拙劣的思维无处藏身。
Other than reading them yourself, one way to test your ideas is to let others read them. Strangers reading your writing can’t see all the thoughts in your head, only the ones you put into words and share. It’s easy to assume the people who disagree with you are wrong. Sharing your understanding with the world allows you to not only test your thinking but gain the perspective of others (as the comments here will no doubt do). Writing forces you to step on the ice and skate.
除了自己阅读之外，检验自己想法的一个方法就是让别人阅读。陌生人在阅读你的文章时，无法看到你脑中的所有想法，只能看到你用文字表达并分享的想法。你很容易认为那些不同意你观点的人是错的。与世界分享你的理解不仅能检验你的想法，还能获得他人的观点（毫无疑问，这里的评论也能做到这一点）。写作迫使你站在冰面上滑行。
Anyone who’s ever revised a piece of writing and done it well knows the pain of having to kill their darlings. But deleting, in writing and life, is a valuable tool. When you write, you develop an attachment to the text you produced only because you produced it. Choosing to discard writing forces you to reconcile between what is true and what you wrote, which can lead to tremendous personal growth both in writing and in life. AI-generated text, on the other hand, is disposable by nature. It doesn’t force you to practice attachment and letting go. The most important key on the keyboard and in life is often the one that deletes.
凡是修改过文章并且修改得很好的人，都知道不得不扼杀自己心爱之物的痛苦。但无论是在写作还是生活中，删除都是一种宝贵的工具。当你写作时，你会对你创作的文本产生一种依恋，这只是因为你创作了它。选择放弃写作迫使你在真实与你所写的之间进行调和，这可以在写作和生活中带来巨大的个人成长。另一方面，人工智能生成的文本从本质上来说是一次性的。它不会强迫你练习执着和放手。键盘上和生活中最重要的键往往是删除键。
Deciding what to pay attention to and, more importantly, what to overlook and remove, is one of the most critical skills. Breaking a problem down into its essential elements and reassembling it from the ground up helps you to discern fact from opinion. Wisdom is as much about knowing what to ignore as it is about what to pay attention to.
决定关注什么，更重要的是决定忽略和删除什么，是最关键的技能之一。将问题分解成基本要素，然后从头开始重新组合，有助于你辨别事实与观点。智慧既要知道忽略什么，也要知道关注什么。
Perhaps the best reason to write is that it offers a vehicle for discovering deeper insights.
写作的最佳理由或许是它提供了一个发现更深刻见解的载体。
Practically speaking, writing forces you to take a complicated and ill-defined problem and compress it into something more manageable. This ‘compression’ is useful. Not only does it help you remember your ideas, but it helps you develop new ones. Paul Graham put it this way: “A good writer doesn’t just think, and then write down what he thought, as a sort of transcript. A good writer will almost always discover new things in the process of writing.”
实际上，写作迫使你把一个复杂而不明确的问题压缩成更容易处理的东西。这种「压缩」是有用的。它不仅能帮助你记住自己的想法，还能帮助你发展新的想法。保罗-格雷厄姆是这样说的：「好的作家不只是思考，然后把他的想法写下来，作为一种记录。一个好的作家几乎总是在写作过程中发现新的东西。」
The insights you discover are not limited to the subject you write about. You also learn about yourself. Writing doesn’t just convey your ideas, it conveys a part of you. Your personality and worldview become part of the work itself. While the reader remembers the story, the writer is forever changed.
您所发现的见解并不局限于您所写的主题。你还能了解自己。写作不仅仅是传达你的想法，它还传达了你的一部分。你的个性和世界观成为作品本身的一部分。在读者记住故事的同时，作者也永远改变了自己。
Many things can be done by tools that write for you, but they won’t help you learn to think, understand deeper, or solve hard problems.
很多事情都可以通过代写工具来完成，但它们无法帮助你学会思考、深入理解或解决棘手的问题。
When it comes to my kids, I told them, “one of the ways we learn to think for ourselves is to write out our thoughts.” When your invisible thoughts become visible, you are forced to wrestle with them in reality and not your imagination. “But Dad, they protested,” as they continued to write in their summer journals, “it is so much easier to outsource to AI.” They’re right. But they aren’t yet smart enough to see that in a world where intellectual labor is increasingly outsourced to tools, the human aptitude for clear thinking and unique insights will become all the more valuable.
说到我的孩子，我告诉他们，我们学会自己思考的方法之一就是写出我们的想法。当你不可见的想法变得可见时，你就不得不在现实而不是想象中与它们搏斗。但是，爸爸，他们抗议说，他们继续在暑假日记中写道，」外包给人工智能要容易得多。他们说得没错。但他们还不够聪明，没有看到在一个智力劳动越来越多地被外包给工具的世界里，人类清晰的思维和独特的洞察力将变得更加宝贵。