Most amazing art isn't really a product of inspiration, but from severe editing (or severe practice, if it's live).

Good writing needs a lot of "post-production" to get the ideas hammered out. Most of it is removing content that isn't central to what the writer wants.

This LLM trend is part of a larger historical pattern that shifts editing away from us having to think things in our brain:

  A. At one time, the editing was mental load, since writing was tedious.

  B. The typewriter made writing easy, but modifying it required lots of handwritten scrawling, but the mental load was still within reviewing and rewriting the content.

  C. By the end of the 20th century, editing and rewriting was a total breeze, but the mental load was still within handwritten note-taking.

  D. Once we made a bazillion forms of productivity and note-taking software, the mental load was only in thinking the thought and getting it into a computer. Everything after that was massaging the idea.

  E. Now, the regurgitation machine can get you 3/4 of the way to the finish line of your draft without even trying.

But, I'm convinced we lost something on each of these transitions. There is more power in one well-placed sentence assembled over tremendous meditation than 85 paragraphs of slop.

Paul Graham's essay on good writing (https://paulgraham.com/goodwriting.html) defines "right" written ideas as "developing them well — drawing the conclusions that matter most, and exploring each one to the right level of detail".

My opinion is that the absurd complexities of the Over-Information Age make the "right" level of detail the following:

  1. Executive summary that children and dumb people can understand.

  2. Tightly-defined specifications for everyone who cares or needs to know.

  3. Footnotes and background information that you can throw everything and the kitchen sink onto. This includes attempts to persuade, artful descriptions, feelings you had, associations to other things, and that general elegant "waxing on" that everyone gets the fancy for doing sometimes.

And, in this attitude, LLMs are only good for #3.

Why meaningful days look like nothing while you are living them