First screen, captured 5 days ago. Open the video.

Writing as a thinking tool

What HN thinks

A thread of people thinking by writing about thinking by writing, with a detour into pen preferences.

Writing is where thinking happens
Many say drafting a paper, plan or design is where they discover what they actually think, and outsourcing it to AI skips that work. Several treat AI-written text as a sign of shallow thinking.
AI can help if used carefully
Others use LLMs for feedback, rubber-ducking, or explanations while insisting on understanding and verifying the output themselves.
Pen and paper beats screens
A big subthread praises handwritten notes, grid pads, diagrams and colour-coding as the best medium for early design thinking.

Consensus: Most agree that writing, coding and sketching by hand force clarity of thought, and that letting AI produce the first draft loses much of that value.

Recommended in the comments

Rhodia No. 16 ↗ (product): Praised as an ideal 5mm grid pad for thinking on paper.
uni-ball Jetstream SXN-210 (product): Recommended as a smooth, non-smearing, cheap pen.
Exploring Writing (book): Recommended for learning to structure texts during PhD writing.
Freewriter ↗ (service): Suggested for getting unstuck through freewriting.
Moleskine (product): Used as an always-carried notebook for capturing ideas.
Org mode (tool): Structural editing and folding help reorder thoughts while writing.

Summarised by Claude from the comment thread 5 days ago.

Points: 441
Comments: 108
Best rank: #3
Posted: 2026-11-08 by jruohonen
Category: Education

writing thinking research-advice llms academic-writing blogging

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