the intellectual & writer life
The joy of making connections and seeing patterns
the intellectual & writer life
One does not care to dissent when T. S. Eliot observes that “intellectual ability without the more human attributes is admirable only in the same way as the brilliance of a child chess prodigy.”
Richard Hofstadter • Anti-Intellectualism in American Life
we must not fall into the trap of mistaking the outputs of writing (which are increasingly substitutable through technology) from the value of the cognitive process of writing (which hones mental development and cannot be substituted by a machine).
Brian Klaas • The Death of the Student Essay—and the Future of Cognition
real thinking involves organic associations, speculative leaps, and surprise inferences
https://www.nplusonemag.com/author/lisajborstgmail-com/ • Large Language Muddle
This humility in thought isn’t weakness but a profound form of strength: the capacity to stay present with what we cannot master or contain.
Adam Robbert • Attention is an Art Form
Elitism is the belief that some books are better than other books and that it is better to read those books. This is not necessarily an argument for only reading those books.
Elitism is good
The physicist Leonard Mlodinow sums it up this way: “Once our minds are set in a direction, they tend to continue in that direction unless acted upon by some outside force.”[2] This cognitive inertia is why changing our minds is hard.
Shane Parrish • Clear Thinking
When I write, I imagine reaching up to a higher plane to access my thoughts and assign words to them, yet the words I find are approximate and never capture the ideas as fully as they appear in my mind. This is why writing feels so hard to me: Its labor involves grasping for a perfect translation and always falling short. But ChatGPT reminds us... See more
Laura Hartenberger • What AI Teaches Us About Good Writing
but it’s not that brilliant, it’s just that I’m willing to employ rhetoric. I read old things, and their language is imaginative, vigorous, and exciting, and then I emulate them. It’s a trick, a trade, anybody can learn it. Well, not anybody , but it’s easier than it looks.