November 2022In the science fiction books I read as a kid, reading had oftenbeen replaced by some more efficient way of acquiring knowledge.Mysterious "tapes" would load it into one's brain like a programbeing loaded into a computer.That sort of thing is unlikely to happen anytime soon. Not justbecause it would be hard to build a replacement for reading, butbecause even if one existed, it would be insufficient. Reading aboutx doesn't just teach you about x; it also teaches you how to write.[1]Would that matter? If we replaced reading, would anyone need to begood at writing?The reason it would matter is that writing is not just a way toconvey ideas, but also a way to have them.A good writer doesn't just think, and then write down what hethought, as a sort of transcript. A good writer will almost alwaysdiscover new things in the process of writing. And there is, as faras I know, no substitute for this kind of discovery. Talking aboutyour ideas with other people is a good way to develop them. Buteven after doing this, you'll find you still discover new thingswhen you sit down to write. There is a kind of thinking that canonly be done by writing.There are of course kinds of thinking that can be done withoutwriting. If you don't need to go too deeply into a problem, you cansolve it without writing. If you're thinking about how two piecesof machinery should fit together, writing about it probably won'thelp much. And when a problem can be described formally, you cansometimes solve it in your head. But if you need to solve acomplicated, ill-defined problem, it will almost always help towrite about it. Which in turn means that someone who's not good atwriting will almost always be at a disadvantage in solving suchproblems.You can't think well without writing well, and you can't write wellwithout reading well. And I mean that last "well" in both senses.You have to be good at reading, and read good things.[2]People who just want information may find other ways to get it.But people who want to have ideas can't afford to.Notes[1]Audiobooks can give you examples of good writing, but havingthem read to you doesn't teach you as much about writing as readingthem yourself.[2]By "good at reading" I don't mean good at the mechanics ofreading. You don't have to be good at extracting words from thepage so much as extracting meaning from the words.
