The revolt of the reader | The Observation Deck

Reading is important to me. While I’m not a quick reader nor an especially voracious one, I have found that long-form reading has had a profound influence on me over my life. And because reading is important to me, writing is too: writing not only allows us to convey our ideas, but the very act forces us to test and distill them — at once making our ideas more robust while providing the vehicle by which to share them.

Writing is Thinking: Learning to Write with Confidence

Learning to write is learning to think, because writing is thinking. They are two peas in a powerful pod. This article goes over my writing process, focused on minimizing the activation energy to get started.

Writing Is Thinking

When you write about your work, it makes all of us smarter for the effort, including you. Done well, this kind of sharing means you’re contributing signal, instead of noise. But writers are made, n…

Avoiding generative models is the rational and responsible thing to do – follow-up to “Trusting your own judgement on ‘AI...’”

Writing at the end of the world, from Hveragerði, Iceland

A.I. Is Homogenizing Our Thoughts

Recent studies suggest that tools such as ChatGPT make our brains less active and our writing less original.

Journal investigating paper on cognitive impact of generative AI

A paper about the effects of generative AI use on confidence in work tasks is under investigation after critics raised questions about the study design, data analysis and ethics approval for the re…

Wherein I Find Myself Writing About Writing

Most everyone finds writing to be challenging (especially those who say they enjoy it). This is because writing is an intentional, thoughtful act. This is as it should be, but “AI” has recently exacerbated the misbelief that writing is simply an output. In fact, it's a creative process that has merit in and of itself.

Principles for Using Generative A․I․ in The Times’s Newsroom | The New York Times Company

As we embark on experiments that make use of generative A.I in the newsroom and Opinion, these principles will guide our work and clarify why and how we plan to use the technology…

Thinking is not only writing

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) raises valid concerns about the loss of cognitive work embedded in scholarly writing. However, universally dismissing AI-assisted drafting mistakenly conflates writing with thinking itself and reinforces existing inequities in who can transform their ideas into polished text. Academic authorship should depend more on the depth and creativity of human intellectual engagement than on the medium through which first drafts are produced.

Input goals and output goals

The other week someone introduced me to the idea of “input goals” and “output goals”, by Oz Chen. Oz writes about “personal development and content strategy”, so…

The Golden Rule for Becoming a Better Writer - T.R Napper

I’m obsessed with the craft of writing. I write every day, I read about the craft often, and in my...

CEO of AI company loses paper on cognitive impact of generative AI

A psychology journal has retracted a paper on how using generative AI can affect confidence in work tasks after its sole author refused to share data with the editors.  The April paper, publis…

Ultra-Processed Minds: The End of Deep Reading and What It Costs Us

A reflection on the reading life. What formed it, what threatens it, and what remains.

Creative Reading: Scaffolding Reading for Transformation

Reading augmentation systems increasingly help readers process text at scale. While these tools address real constraints of time and cognitive load, they often implicitly frame reading as...