One of the best bits of wisdom I’ve taken about writing is that you write the first draft to explain it to yourself and then a second to explain it to others. They skip all that and make sure no one understands anything.

In basically everything I’ve published, my ideas have changed in some substantive way during the writing. Sometimes the entire paper is different. This is also why I advise my students to write the introduction and abstract last: you need to introduce your final draft, not the first draft.

Great bit of wisdom.

To me writing forces you to make decisions in your thinking. AI ain’t going to help you with that.

There was an infamous writing workshop when I was in grad school. A senior prof showed up and said he didn’t believe in drafts b/c he just thinks, then writes, then submits pieces and they get accepted (because he was awarded a MacArthur a while back). Well, he didn’t say the last part out loud…

Accurate

none of this is about writing. it's about grinding up people's livelihoods and extracting the "surplus" value for shareholders. the rest is just salespitchy gaslighting.

And I only realised that two days ago😑

Wow, I thought the first drafts of my short stories were bad, but if this is what Altman thought was good...okay, my confidence is boosted a bit. Wait, does Altman think the only useful kinds of writing are business/financial things? Oh my God his ideology needs to be studied

True, true, but I've read a lot of business plans that would have been improved by AI. Which explains why the business world thinks AI is worth anything.

I understood my research so much better when I had to write it as a paper instead of just scribbled notes on a page. It really does transform knowledge into understanding.