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[!summary]Writing is hard, and that difficulty is necessary to clarify your thinking. Grothendieck wrote obsessively because writing was the process by which he made ideas real. Books are an excruciating form that forces rigor, reshapes your worldview, and resists easy shortcuts.
Highlights
id984966161
Grothendieck viewed writing, and specifically writing within the constraints of mathematical formalism and logical consistency, as an apparatus for “gathering intangible mists from out an apparent void” and solidifying them into stable mental images. Writing isn’t optional — it is central to the process. In Grothendieck’s own words:
The role of writing is not to record the results of research, but is the process itself of research. or, circling back to his 1956 letter: it’s the only way I have of understanding, through sheer persistence, how things work.
La escritura como un forma de desplegar y estructurar procesos de pensamiento.
id984966452
Mathematical formalism is monstrously difficult to manipulate, to the point where it feels like torture. Yet its rigidity is unavoidable, as mathematical intuition can only develop through is confrontation with cold and hard logic. In fact, forcing yourself to write things down rigorously, especially when you’re still confused, is an insanely effective life-hack routinely practiced by top mathematicians.
Resistencia a las intenciones es condición sine qua non para el desarrollo de capacidades.
id984967391
Outside of math, there is no pre-existing standard for quality writing. But you can create a makeshift standard by raising the stakes around your own production: • Will it make sense to people who know nothing about you? • Can it survive translation? Can it be read in Japan and in Turkey, in Texas and in India, in Kenya and in Bulgaria? • Can gen Z offer it to their boomer grandparents, and vice-versa? I don’t claim to have a clean methodology to answer these questions, and I am far from certain that my next book will pass the cut (at this point, I’ve identified several issues that still need to be fixed). But in the process of asking myself these questions, I did notice that they acted a bit like mathematical formalism: they were external constraints forcing me to be clearer and more articulate and, in the end, this reshaped my worldview.
Utilidad de limitaciones externas como criterios de éxito que orientan nuestros esfuerzos.