20 Hacker News comments link this video. Each one links back to its thread.
modrianoMar 2026Strongly recommends
This reminds me of a talk I attended many years ago given by the director of UChicago's writing program (and found a recording of the talk [0]), and his thesis was that writing IS the process of thinking. That talk changed the way I write and made writing a primary tool I reach for when I want to learn something new. Words / language are the great technology we've made for representing ideas, and representing those ideas in the written word enables us to evaluate, edit, and compose those smaller ideas into bigger ideas. Kind of like how teachers would ask for an explanation in my own words, writing down my understanding of something I'd heard or read forced me to really evaluate the idea, focus on the parts I cared about, and record that understanding. Without the writing step, ideas would easily just float through my mind like a phantasm, shapeless and out of focus and useless when I had a tangible need for the idea. I am glad I learned to write (both code and text) long before Claude came online. It would have been very hard to struggle through translating ideas from my head into words and words (back) into ideas in my head if I knew there was an "Easy button" I could hit to get something cogent-sounding. I hope a large enough proportion of kids today will still put in the work and won't just end up with a stunted ability to write/think. [0] ▶ this video
in “Don't Let AI Write for You” · View on HN
learningerrdayMar 2024Strongly recommends
Larry Mcenerney's lectures on how to write effectively are gold for getting better at writing. There's a lot packed in his lectures, but a big core idea is that you should use writing to help you do your thinking. With complex subject matter, writing is thinking. The thing that we've been taught is writing is more akin to publishing (i.e. the editing you do to share your thoughts with other people after you've finished writing and thinking for yourself). Link to snippets of his talk if you're short on time: [link] If you've got more time, you should watch the whole thing, it's a masterclass in understanding what writing actually is, and what it does for you: ▶ this video
in “To write a great essay, think and care deeply (2015)” · View on HN
miguelrochefortMar 2020Strongly recommends
This is something I'm just starting to understand after being an idealist/perfectionist for most of my life. YAGNI seemed like a shortsighted dogma. My colleague's design decisions looked like ugly hacks. I preferred something to be well-done than to be useful. According to my MBTI type, I was a perfectionist of idea, not a perfectionist of action/result. I was trying to build a cathedral, not a bazaar. I can attribute my ongoing transformation to a single video about effective writing: ▶ this video The main takeaway is that text is meant to be read, not written. Providing value to the reader is the only thing that matters. How well you write, how smart you sound, how much knowledge you deliver, doesn't matter as long as the reader gets value from the text. It sounds obvious, but it truly changed my perspective. I recommend this video to everyone.
in “Not delivering end-user value” · View on HN
Show 14 more comments
brudgersDec 2024Recommends
Mostly I write HN comments. In part because HN comments are a place to get feedback on my writing craft. Mostly because I frequently feel compelled to write. Anyway maybe you will find this perspective helpful: ▶ this video Good luck.
in “Ask HN: How do you improve your writing?” · View on HN
andrenotgiantAug 2023Recommends
Write for an audience, read the other work that audience reads, that will help you get a sense of whether something is going to be surprising to them. Here is a longer lecture on a similar idea from U Chicago Writing Program ▶ this video
in “Cut out everything that's not surprising” · View on HN
bradbeamAug 2022Recommends
First time I heard of using writing to think was in this talk, "The craft of writing effectively"[1]. It's definitely been a motivation to try to write more. [1] ▶ this video
in “Don’t think to write, write to think” · View on HN
gnuvinceJun 2022Recommends
A post about writing means that I need to plug a couple talks by Larry McEnerney. [1,2] The tool described in this blog post is all about text-based rules: what the _text_ ought to look like. To improve your own writing (a) learn who your readers are, (b) know what they value, and (c) write so that as readers, they find your work valuable to them. [1] ▶ this video [2] [link]
in “Writing like a pro with Vale and Neovim” · View on HN
teddyhAug 2021Recommends
I have found this video very helpful: ▶ this video LEADERSHIP LAB: The Craft of Writing Effectively Do you worry about the effectiveness of your writing style? As emerging scholars, perfecting the craft of writing is an essential component of developing as graduate students, and yet resources for honing these skills are largely under utilized. Larry McEnerney, Director of the University of Chicago's Writing Program, led this session in an effort to communicate helpful rules, skills, and resources that are available to graduate students interested in further developing their writing style.
in “On academic writing: a personal note (2016)” · View on HN
alextheparrotJul 2020Recommends
This aligns well with a lecture from the University of Chicago I watched recently[0], which explores how many academics use writing as a tool for thinking (What the article describes) and don’t think about the reader. Writing is an incredibly powerful tool to form thoughts. However, as the lecturer in the video details, don’t expect the writing done for thinking to be useful to readers! When we think, there is usually a certain incrementalism, whereas when we read we’re trying to resolve dissonances in a current mental model. That’s a key distinction, it means you need to make people care or understand why their mental model is broken when writing to informs reader. When we write for our own thinking, we usually understand the general problem already and are just traversing the problem space to better understand different components. [0] ▶ this video
in “It's Time to Start Writing (2019)” · View on HN
lerxst00Sep 2019Recommends
A good video on writing that talks about similar ideas is ▶ this video This video is geared more towards academic writing, but, I've found it helpful even outside of that space.
in “BLUF: A military standard to make writing more powerful” · View on HN
7373737373Jul 2019Recommends
I agree with this. The beginning of the post describes how rereading a previous post has been insightful for the author, then it delves into details, without explaining why, or how this could be useful for the reader . Too much rambling/offtopic content and breaking through the fourth wall. I, as a reader need to know why this could be useful for me first, then I would decide to read it. Recommended: ▶ this video
in “The Good Employee, a story about how you can explain companies with graph theory” · View on HN
luggJan 2019Recommends
Not AP, But I'm curious, can you Tldr the tax for typescript? I skimmed half the article but I couldnt actually find what the tax was? In similar vein to the above above poster, you might find this lecture useful: ▶ this video Your writing has a very nice cadence to it I'm just not sure you grasp the reason I might want to read it!
in “The TypeScript Tax” · View on HN
kavasmlikonJan 2025Cites it
excellent article. IMHO it tackles the gist of what personal knowledge management should be about. true learning/understanding (and intellectual depth for that matter) seems like something that (due to neurocognitive reasons) cannot possibly be achieved only through the process of reading, but is rather a function of the reader's quality of elaboration on what has been read. this inherently requires the reader's wilĺingness to invest work in the form of structured thought and cognitive effort as part of the reading process, which in turn - again due to neurocognitive reasons - for somewhat non-trivial thought and intellectual endeavors requires systematic note-taking and writing ( ▶ this video ). as a result, pure reading vs the reader's quality of elaboration on what they have read makes the difference between "feeling smarter" and actually "becoming smarter" as Sönke Ahrens ( [link] ) puts it. I fully agree with the "Zettelgarden Philosophy" on note-taking as described in this article - it recognises the real purpose and value of personal knowledge management which is based on notes that embody personal comments, thoughts, insights and connections to other concepts/ideas rather than mere facts and summaries pulled out from articles. Though, my "tooling philosophy" differs in that I prefer to have my digital zettelkasten stored in simple text-files so that I can leverage the freedom and flexibility of text as a universal interface (grep for search/filter, git for version-control,
in “Building a Knowledge System That Enhances Rather Than Replaces Thought” · View on HN
TomteAug 2022Cites it
George Gopen hails from the same school of writing as Joseph Williams[1] and Larry McInerny[2]. He has also written a book that dives deeper into things[3]. [1] [link] [2] ▶ this video [3] [link] Unfortunately, [3] is a bit tedious, IMO, go for [1], which is the best book about writing, bar none. Second best in principle is Thomas' & Turner's "Clear and simple as the truth", but it is hardly applicable to scientific (or technical) writing. If you're thinking about writing essays, get T&T.
in “The Science of Scientific Writing (1990)” · View on HN
ckdarbyAug 2022Cites it
I don't read many academic papers, but are the summaries normally 3 pages alone? It reminded me of this YouTube video: ▶ this video The instructor in the video covers why academics struggle getting published because they're used to writing for individuals who are paid(E.g TAs & Profs) to read what they wrote.
in “Ideological Bias in the Psychology of Sex and Gender [pdf]” · View on HN
clubdorotheNov 2020Cites it
By watching the UChicago class[1] on " Writing Effectively ", this is exactly what happens to some HN readers: 1- You slow down - and read again 2- You don't understand 3- you get angry 4- You're done 5 - (optional) You write about it on HN because 3 and 4 [1] ▶ this video
in “Writing well” · View on HN
adamfaliqNov 2020Cites it
[1] is actually the reference material for this [2] lecture, which another commenter has already mentioned. [2] ▶ this video
in “Writing well” · View on HN