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Most of the human-written text is indeed shit, because most human thought is half-formed nonsense. The process of getting your thoughts out of your head (writing, speaking, or otherwise) is the first step of actually forming the multi-dimensional incoherent impressions and feelings into something coherent. I know that's how it is for me, and I have witnessed enough college students struggling (when pressed) to get a coherent thought out to suspect that the experience is close to universal. There are the blessed few who can erudite off the cuff, and even fewer of those say anything of substance.
And yes, the process is painstaking. One gets better at the skill of forming and communicating a coherent idea, but that skill requires one to keep putting the thoughts that feel so wholesome and brilliant in one's mind down on paper and recognizing their inanity and pettiness, over and over. Painstaking, and humbling. But valuable. When I take the time to set my half-baked ideas down, I can see where they lead, from outside myself. And as often as not, I end up disagreeing with what I myself have put down, and changing my mind, or adjusting the ideas to something far more nuanced. It makes me more open to further changing my mind on the matter. Hegel's dialectic in action.
So I recognize the value of forming my own ideas in my own halting way. By extension, I support this effort in others.
Well put. Writing changes our ideas and forces us to bring thought, intuition and word into alignment. All three can change in the process. If you don't go through that usually painful process I am sceptical you are getting an ai to accurately express your thoughts. I think it's much more likely you are allowing the ai to determine what you think. Unwritten thoughts are just too inchoate for us to accurately say of an ai response "oh yes, that's exactly how I would have put it".
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