- Noah Jacobs Blog
- Posts
- On Truth & Writing
2026.02.15
CXXXIX
[Truthing; Write & Write Nots; Why Do I Write?; Paper Trail; Navigating Disputes; The Truth Will Set You Free]
Thesis: Writing is the best way to think clearly, and is a weapon for the truth.
[Truthing]
This week, I'm writing about truth.
I have a lot to say about Truth. I really think it's strongly related to the scientific method and, likewise, scientific progress. I also believe it's strongly related to politics & that it's very important to have a government system that protects truth.
Those are lofty topics that I hope to write about thoroughly, but they’re also hard to write about meaningfully in a 1000 to 2000 word blog.
Rather, today, I'm just going to reflect on a small part of it: the relationship between truth and writing. Both from the angle of how writing makes you think more clearly and gets you closer to the truth, and how over all, it’s really a weapon for the truth.
Science is all about truth
[Writes and Write-Nots]
Paul Graham (PG) wrote a blog post in 2024 called the "Writes & Write-Nots”.
A cornerstone of the post is that when you write things, you're really thinking. And if you don't write your thoughts, you're not thinking as clearly as you believe you are.
I certainly agree that writing makes you think more clearly: I can’t tell you the amount of times I thought I had a great idea, and then wrote it down and realized it was nonsense. And I don’t mean just writing it down as one sentence either… I mean playing with it, reasoning about it, using written words to examine it and see if you can build it into your world view.
Given this, the scary argument in PG’s post is that since now, LLMs make it really easy to get away with not writing at all, a lot of people will use LLMs in the future instead of writing. In the future, they might just be able to write or verbalize prompts, and that’s it.
If writing really is such a powerful way to think and reason clearly, this is a massive issue in the long run that will create a massive divide between the “Writes” and the “Write-Nots.”
[Why Do I Write?]
A lot of people ask me why I write a blog every weekend.
I don't have to do this. I don't make money by doing this. I'm not paid to do this.
But, I've done it for 139 weeks in a row, so I must really care about it.
And that's correct, I do care about it. II agree with PG—I think it makes me a stronger, more clearer thinker. I think it makes me more attuned to the truth.
There is something about putting your ideas on paper that really forces you to stress test them. Seeing the words in front of you, all in one place, makes you question them.
You tend to be critical towards the ideas just like you would be critical towards someone else's writing, sometimes even more so!
That's really important. It's not the same as having someone constructively criticize your thoughts or ideas, but it does make it a lot easier for you to be critical of your own ideas. And, when you’re critical of your own ideas, you can chip away the weak and incorrect parts and get it down to a strong, sturdy core that is actually valid.
And then, of course, after you have it in writing, you enable other people to be critical of it, too.
[Paper Trail]
Having a conversation about ideas can be a way to think more critically than if you think about them alone without writing them. However, it is a lot less robust way to get to the truth than exchanging writing with someone else.
The fact is, when you have something in writing, other people can be critical of it. They can point to specific things and say, “hey, that’s wrong!” Or show contradictions between line 12 and 50.
There’s certainly a place for debate, but I don’t believe it’s as easy to get to truth that way as it is by exchanging writing.
On a related note, I also think this is why when someone is doing something wrong and they know it, they'll avoid having it in writing. They don’t want a paper trail of evidence pointing to their contradictions and wrong doing.
When you have a verbal conversation with someone, at least two things happen that are unfavorable for truth:
It's harder to pin down the counter party’s exact position, because the information is literally flowing through time without a concrete record. Even if you have an air tight memory, they can claim “I didn’t say it like that,” and it’s your word vs there’s.
Emotions and anxieties get involved. You’re more inclined to verbally say something that you don't actually agree with, because you haven't had a chance to write it down and think about it yet; the live emotions can make it harder to be clear.
I once had a belabored argument with someone I was on an extensive project with. My argument was that our organization had a split focus, and we did not have enough time to do two things right and well.
By the end of the conversation, I was made to think and feel that this was not the problem. Rather, I myself was making a specific technical mistake that was holding us back! The solution, of course, was nothing more than me having to work harder, when the problem I broached was that I was already firing on all cylinders and we weren’t moving.
When I reflected on the conversation in writing, I realized the counter party said nothing of substance in regards to my arguments, and was mainly using emotional appeals and arguments.
Again, this sort of conversation is less like writing and more like thinking. Emotional and physiological elements of a real time conversation, along with the absence of a written record, make it a lot harder to be critical of the ideas in the moment, just like if you’re ecstatic about some great killer idea in your brain.
NOTE: Now to be clear, I've only been in a couple of complex business disputes that involved lawyers, so I'm not a professional or even "good" by any means. I certainly have noticed, though, that there is definitely some relationship between written word and truth.
In a dispute, if you think that the accurate representation of all of the information vindicates your position, you might drive more towards written information. On the other hand, if your strategy is to obscure fact or avoid information materializing in a structured, meaningful way, you might lean much more on 1:1 conversations than on written word.
This is precisely for the reasons above: writing is a lot more easy to criticize and drive towards truth, where as verbal 1:1s are a lot more mercurial.
On the continuum of mediums conducive to truth, you also have undocumented group conversations and completely recorded conversations. In both situations, since this happens in real time, emotional control is very important. Still, you have more recourse to go back to statements and claims that were mentioned earlier.
I was once in a documented group conversation with myself, 2 hostiles, and 2 neutrals with a tilt towards friendly.
In the conversations, the hostiles spent the entire hour trying to get an emotional rise out of me with mischaracterizations and ad hominids. It was greatly challenging, but it helped that I was sitting outside near the ocean in Oregon and could keep looking up at the sun.
My strategy was just to stay calm, not accuse them of anything, and continue asking questions. The lack of willingness to answer the questions and aggressive tenor towards me when I asked them was all that was needed.
At the end of the call, one of the neutrals reached out to me and apologized I had to deal with that.
The truth can win, even when there is active resistance to it.
But how does this come back to writing?
The 2 hostiles never would've said those things to me on paper--it would've made how little of substance they had all the clearer. They made a mistake by doing it with two witnesses, but it could’ve worked in their favor if I would’ve lost my cool.
If you enjoyed this post and are a proponent of truth, please subscribe! Even if you don’t, I’ll still be here.
[The Truth Will Set You Free]
If you want to think clearly, write.
It will help a lot.
It will put you on the side of the truth, which is the greatest weapon against lies.
Live Deeply,
