Reading, Writing, and Talking — Robert Cunningham
Reading, writing, and talking all implement the same interface: they act as a valve through which information can enter and exit your brain. But they’re not the same. They’re great at very different things. Writing is great because you get time and space to think carefully about how to present an idea in into its best clothes. Also, once you pay this cost, lots of people can get value from it. Reading is great because you get the product of thousands of hours of research and thought distilled down to 6 or 8 hours. You don’t spend time meandering down dead ends. Talking is great for getting to know people, and letting other people get to know you. [0] It took me a long time to even realize that this was a thing you could explicitly do in conversation. Before, I thought you just talked about ideas and heard the other person’s ideas, and after several years you slowly got to know each other naturally. This helped me understand why I dislike abstract philosophical conversations: they feel