Putting Ideas into Words

February 2022 Writing about something, even something you know well, usually shows you that you didn't know it as well as you thought.

2022 年 2 月 写一些东西，即使是你很了解的东西，通常会表明你并不像你想象的那么了解它。

Putting ideas into words is a severe test.

将想法付诸实践是一项严峻的考验。

The first words you choose are usually wrong; you have to rewrite sentences over and over to get them exactly right.

你选择的第一个词通常是错误的；你必须一遍又一遍地重写句子才能使其完全正确。

And your ideas won't just be imprecise, but incomplete too.

你的想法不仅不精确，而且也不完整。

Half the ideas that end up in an essay will be ones

最终出现在论文中的想法有一半是

you thought of while you were writing it.

你在写的时候想到的。

Indeed, that's why I write them.

事实上，这就是我写它们的原因。

Once you publish something, the convention is that whatever you wrote was what you thought before you wrote it.

一旦你发表了一些东西，惯例是无论你写什么，都是你写之前的想法。

These were your ideas, and now you've expressed them.

这些是你的想法，现在你已经表达了它们。

But you know this isn't true.

但你知道这不是真的。

You know that putting your ideas into words changed them.

你知道，将你的想法付诸文字会改变它们。

And not just the ideas you published.

不仅仅是您发表的想法。

Presumably there were others that

想必还有其他人

turned out to be too broken to fix, and those you discarded instead.

事实证明，这些东西太破了，无法修复，而你却把它们扔掉了。

It's not just having to commit your ideas to specific words that makes writing so exacting.

写作之所以如此严格，不仅仅是要将你的想法写成具体的文字。

The real test is reading what you've written.

真正的测试是阅读你所写的内容。

You have to pretend to be a neutral reader who knows nothing of what's in your head, only what you wrote.

你必须假装自己是一个中立的读者，对你脑子里的想法一无所知，只知道你写的内容。

When he reads what you wrote, does it seem correct?

当他读到你写的东西时，你觉得它正确吗？

Does it seem complete?

看起来完整吗？

If you make an

如果你做了一个

effort, you can read your writing as if you were a complete stranger, and when you do the news is usually bad.

努力，你可以像一个完全陌生的人一样阅读你的作品，而当你这样做时，新闻通常是坏消息。

It takes me many cycles before I can get an essay past the stranger.

我花了很多周期才能让一篇文章通过陌生人。

But the stranger is rational, so you always can, if you ask him what he needs.

但陌生人是理性的，所以如果你问他需要什么，你总是可以的。

If he's not satisfied because you failed to mention x or didn't qualify some sentence sufficiently, then you mention x or add more qualifications.

如果他因为你没有提及 x 或没有充分限定某些句子而不满意，那么你就提及 x 或添加更多限定条件。

Happy now?

现在快乐吗？

It may cost you some nice sentences, but

这可能会让你花费一些漂亮的句子，但是

you have to resign yourself to that.

你必须接受这一点。

You just have to make them as good as you can and still satisfy the stranger.

你只需要把它们做得尽可能好，同时仍然让陌生人满意。

This much, I assume, won't be that controversial.

我想，就这么多，不会有那么大的争议。

I think it will accord with the experience of anyone who has tried to write about anything nontrivial.

我认为这符合任何试图写一些不平凡的事情的人的经验。

There may exist people whose thoughts are so perfectly formed that they just flow straight into words.

可能存在这样一些人，他们的思想是如此完美，以至于可以直接转化为语言。

But I've never known anyone who could do this, and if I met someone who said

但我从来不知道有谁能做到这一点，如果我遇到一个人说

they could, it would seem evidence of their limitations rather than their ability.

他们可以，但这似乎证明了他们的局限性，而不是他们的能力。

Indeed, this is a trope in movies: the guy who claims to have a plan for doing some difficult thing, and who when questioned further, taps his head and says "It's all up here." Everyone watching the movie knows what that means.

事实上，这是电影中的一个比喻：一个人声称有一个计划来做一些困难的事情，当被进一步询问时，他拍着他的头说“一切都在这里”。看过电影的人都知道这意味着什么。

At best the plan is vague and incomplete.

该计划充其量是模糊且不完整的。

Very likely there's some undiscovered flaw that invalidates

很可能存在一些未被发现的缺陷，导致失效

it completely.

它完全。

At best it's a plan for a plan.

充其量它只是一个计划的计划。

In precisely defined domains it's possible to form complete ideas in your head.

在精确定义的领域中，您可以在头脑中形成完整的想法。

People can play chess in their heads, for example.

例如，人们可以在头脑中下棋。

And mathematicians can do some amount of math in their heads, though they don't seem to feel sure of a proof over a certain length till they write it down.

数学家可以在头脑中做一些数学计算，尽管他们在把证明写下来之前似乎并不确定一定长度的证明。

But this only seems possible with ideas you can express in a formal language.

但这似乎只有在可以用正式语言表达的想法时才有可能。

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