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Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Learning By Writing, published by Holden Karnofsky on February 22, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Cross-posted from Cold Takes I have very detailed opinions on lots of topics. I sometimes get asked how I do this, which might just be people making fun of me, but I choose to interpret it as a real question, and I’m going to sketch an answer here. You can think of this as a sort of sequel to Minimal-Trust Investigations. That piece talked about how investigating things in depth can be valuable; this piece will try to give a sense of how to get an in-depth investigation off the ground, going from “I’ve never heard of this topic before” to “Let me tell you all my thoughts on that.” The rough basic idea is that I organize my learning around writing rather than reading. This doesn’t mean I don’t read - just that the reading is always in service of the writing. Here’s an outline: Step 1 Pick a topic Step 2 Read and/or discuss with others (a bit) Step 3 Explain and defend my current, incredibly premature hypothesis, in writing (or conversation) Step 4 Find and list weaknesses in my case Step 5 Pick a subquestion and do more reading/discussing Step 6 Revise my claim / switch sides Step 7 Repeat steps 3-6 a bunch Step 8 Get feedback on a draft from others, and use this to keep repeating steps 3-6 The “traditionally” hard parts of this process are steps 4 and 6: spotting weaknesses in arguments, trying to resist the temptation to “stick to my guns” when my original hypothesis isn’t looking so good, etc. But step 3 is a different kind of challenge: trying to “always have a hypothesis” and re-articulating it whenever it changes. By doing this, I try to continually focus my reading on the goal of forming a bottom-line view, rather than just “gathering information.” I think this makes my investigations more focused and directed, and the results easier to retain. I consider this approach to be probably the single biggest difference-maker between "reading a ton about lots of things, but retaining little" and "efficiently developing a set of views on key topics and retaining the reasoning behind them." Below I'll give more detail on each step, then some brief notes (to be expanded on later) on why this process is challenging. My process for learning by writing Step 1: pick a topic. First, I decide what I want to form an opinion about. My basic approach here is: “Find claims that are important if true, and might be true.” This doesn’t take creativity. We live in an ocean of takes, pundits, advocates, etc. I usually cheat by paying special attention to claims by people who seem particularly smart, interesting, unconventionally minded (not repeating the same stuff I hear everywhere), and interested in the things I’m interested in (such as the long-run future of humanity). But I also tend to be at least curious about any claim that is both “important if true” and “not obviously wrong according to some concrete reason I can voice,” even if it’s coming from a very random source (Youtube commenter, whatever). For a concrete example throughout this piece, I’ll use this hypothesis, which I examined pretty recently: “Human history is a story of life getting gradually, consistently better.” (Other, more complicated examples are the Collapsing Civilizational Competence Hypothesis; the Most Important Century hypothesis; and my attempt to summarize history in one table.) Step 2: read and/or discuss (a bit). I usually start by trying to read the most prominent 1-3 pieces that (a) defend the claim or (b) attack the claim or (c) set out to comprehensively review the evidence on both sides. I try to understand the major reasons they’re giving for the side they come down on. I also chat about the topic with people who know more about it than I do, and who aren’t too high-stakes to chat with. In th...