写作与思考2009petermichaud.com编辑精选
写作即思考
Writing is Thinking
导读
这篇文章主张「写作即思考」，认为动笔的过程本身就是把模糊想法变清晰、变具体的关键一步。对写作者而言，它提醒我们不要把写作只当成表达工具，而应把它当作整理思路、发现漏洞、形成原创观点的方法。
可以直接用的写作要点
- 01
把写作当成思考的过程，而不是想清楚了再写：先动笔，再在写的过程中把想法理清楚。
- 02
定期写作能像锻炼一样积累效果，帮助我们把二手知识转化为真正属于自己的理解。
- 03
警惕堆砌引文和被动语态的写作：这类文字看似学术，实则没有原创思考，也难以阅读。
- 04
想法只有被组织成可以传达给别人的形式，才算真正完成；从「点子」到「方案」的这一步最关键。
HN 评论精选
「写作即思考」显然把话说得过头了，但写作确实是一种纪律，能帮我们把一个问题想得更深。写作很像锻炼，长期坚持就有好处。生活多半由习惯构成；如果我们只是被动吸收自以为知道的东西，就会被大量二手知识淹没，误以为自己懂得比实际多。这样一来，我们「知道」某些事，却并不真正理解它们。写作，尤其是定期写作的习惯，会迫使我们思考；想得越深，越能把知识变成自己的，二手想法也就越来越多地被原创思考取代。这种思考未必对他人有用，取决于内容质量，但至少是你自己的思考，这绝非小事。前提是我们写作时追求原创表达。太多学术写作充满被动语态的「有人断言」「人们认为」，堆满引注，完全不可读，也没有用。我在法学院为法律评论写过一篇这样的学术文章，居然发表了，里面没有一个原创想法。但那次练习也不是全无用处——看清那种派生写作的局限之后……
grellas查看英文原文
While "writing is thinking" clearly overstates the case, there is no question that writing about a topic is a form of discipline that helps us to think more deeply about it. Writing is a lot like exercise. It has salutary benefits over time for anyone who consistently undertakes it. Much of life is habit. If we sit about passively absorbing all that we think we know, we will suffer from a surfeit of derivative knowledge that perhaps deludes us into thinking we know more than we really do. In a way, we then "know" things but we really don't understand them. Writing - and particularly the habit of writing regularly - forces us to think about things and, as we think more deeply about a thing, we tend to make it our own - and thus our second-hand thoughts are replaced more and more by original thinking of our own. This original thinking may or may not be useful to those about us. This depends on the quality of what we have to say. But it will be our thinking and that is no small thing. This assumes too that we strive for originality in expressing ourselves in writing. All too much of academic writing is passive-voice-ridden "it is asserted" and "it is believed" type of writing, stuffed with scholarly citations, and utterly unreadable and useless. In law school, I did a scholarly piece for law review that was like that. It actually got published. There was not an original thought in it. But even that was not a useless exercise. Once I saw the limitations of that sort of derivative writing, I was able to get beyond it and what a liberating feeling it is to just get to a point where you can express your own thoughts as you develop them instead of merely mimicking others. Writing well and often will help many people get to this point. I think this is the main point the author is making. In this sense, this piece is highly encouraging to writers and should be taken in that spirit. The author says, in effect, it is hard work but by all means write and write often - the benefits are great and it is all there for anyone to learn if he only applies himself. I commend this spirit and wish I had those about me in my day to encourage me in this fashion. That said, not everyone can be a good writer because there is an innate intelligence of some kind upon which good writing must be predicated and not all people have this. At the same time, as others have noted, all kinds of people can think who do not necessarily write, and it is a mistake to say or imply that the two are invariably correlated.
我怀疑作者是从一个例子推广到所有情况。作者可能不具备不靠写下来就能构思宏大想法的思维特质，但我相信有人具备。当然，把想法写下来对大多数人可能都是有用的技巧；如果你想让别人据此行动，它几乎是必需的。
dejb查看英文原文
I suspect the author of this piece is generalising from one example http://lesswrong.com/lw/dr/generalizing_from_one_example/ The author probably does not possess the mental traits required to formulate big ideas without the need to write them down but I'm sure there are those that do. Of course writing ideas down is probably a useful technique for everyone and it is almost a necessity if you want anybody else to act on those ideas.
这篇文章的核心观点与我的感受一致，也契合 HN 的核心价值。我们一直在思考，也自以为了不起的想法很多，但未被表达的想法就像一个商业点子：「嘿，我们来做隔夜快递吧！」价值在于把细节想清楚、把逻辑组织起来。写一份真正的商业计划书之所以难，主要是因为它迫使你想透问题、不再含糊带过。从「商业点子」到「商业计划」就是关键一跃。写作、演示文稿还是演讲？形式不重要，关键在于从想法变成能与他人分享的东西。当然可以说，公开演讲、写程序、作曲也有同样效果，绘画亦然。但核心是：把想法组织到可以传达给另一个人，这是一种量级完全不同的思考。
raganwald查看英文原文
The post's big idea resonates with me and with HN's core values. While we think all the time, and we think we have big thoughts. But a thought that is unexpressed is equivalent to a business idea. "Hey, let's deliver packages overnight!" The value is in working out the details, in logically organizing things. Writing an actual business plan is hard, in most part because it forces you to think things through, to stop hand-waving. That's the big leap, from "business idea" to "business plan." In writing? In presentation form? As a speech? Doesn't matter, the key is going from an idea to something that you share with someone else. Sure, we can argue that speaking aloud for an audience has the same effect, as does writing a program or composing music. I'd argue that painting does as well. But the core idea here is that organizing thoughts such that they can be communicated to another human being is thinking on an entirely different scale of magnitude.
数学家雅克·阿达马曾问阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦，词语在他的思考中起什么作用。爱因斯坦回信部分写道：「语言中的词语，无论书面或口头，似乎在我的思维机制中不起作用。作为思维元素的，是某些符号和比较清晰的图像，它们可以被『自愿地』再现和组合。」这段话出自阿达马的《数学领域发明心理学》。完整信件很有意思，包含爱因斯坦对自身思维方式的若干自述。可惜我一时没在网上找到，手头也没有原书。
michael_nielsen查看英文原文
Albert Einstein was asked by the mathematician Jacques Hadamard what role words played in his thinking. His reply said, in part: "The words of language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought. The psychical entities which seem to serve as elements in thought are certain signs and more or less clear images which can be `voluntarily' reproduced and combined." It's from Hadamard's book "The Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical Field". The full letter is extremely interesting, containing several remarks on Einstein's self-perception of how he thought. Unfortunately, I don't immediately see it online, and I don't have immediate access to my hard copy of the book.
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