Paul Graham's most recent essay is called "Write and Write Nots", he argues that the quality of writing will be a key differentiator among people, more so in the future than ever before. With AI commoditising everything, the difference between good writers and bad writers will be very evident. The bad writers will use AI by default, which means they're not going to be able to write on their own at all.
Everybody who writes well, argue that writing is essentially the key to thinking well and clearly. I don't know if the illuminati is lobbying for writing, maybe there's an evil secret chamber that is powered by people writing but I've realised that I need to get so much better at it. When someone asks me to write something, it takes me a while to start, it takes a good amount of struggling to even dump all the thoughts I have.
I blame schools for the miserable writing as well, who on earth writes a letter to their friend in that language? There are some very common situations that the curriculum forces you to write, some of them include:
- Write a letter to your friend who lives in a hostel
- Write a letter to your friend who's relative has died (the friend probably killed the relative)
- Write a letter to the editor of the newspaper (had to be the worst, you had to start off with "Dear Editor")
I've been searching for the key to good writing, I've been asking every good writer I know "How did you get good at writing?" or "Any key insights?" and the answer is always disappointingly simple "Just keep writing.". Accepting that there's no complex answers and that the simplest answer is the most correct one is hard. That lack of acceptance is also why we have God or the concept of a higher being, because its easier to deny that there is nothing.
So that's what we do I suppose, we keep writing.