1/ Above some level of competence, the clarity that comes with good writing begins to expose the deficiencies of the author’s thinking.
It is possible to be a good thinker and a bad writer.
But it’s also possible to be a bad thinker and a good writer.
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2/ People seem to think that better writing ability naturally leads to better thinking ability. This hasn’t been my experience.
From experience, your writing ability improves, only to make it easier for everyone to see how bad you are at thinking.
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3/ To be a good writer AND thinker is to work on two somewhat unrelated skills. Each skill can, of course, make up for the other one (you can hide shoddy thinking with good writing, and novel thinking can make up for simple writing), but by and large the two are orthogonal.
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4/ Consequently, one of the biggest challenges in reading is to differentiate between the two:
To look past bad writing when the thinking is good.
And to ignore good writers who are lousy thinkers.
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