必须阅读 - 保罗·格雷厄姆 (The Need to Read - Paul Graham)
(试着翻译一下 Paul Graham 的最新文章）
小时候读的科幻小说里，阅读常会被其它更有效率的获取知识的方法所替代。神秘“磁带”就可以把知识输入到人的大脑，就像计算机加载个程序一样。
这类事情在短期内还不太可能发生。这不只是因为很难建立一个替代阅读的方式，还因为即使有这样的方法存在，也还不够。阅读某事不仅仅是教你此事，它也会教你如何写作。
这有什么关系啊？如果我们替代了阅读，还需要有人写得好吗？
有关系的原因是：写作不只是表达想法的方法，还是获得想法的方式。
一个好的作者不只是想想，再把想法写下来就行，如同一个誊本。一个好的作者在写作的过程中几乎常常发现新的东西。因此，如我所知，这种发现是没法用别的方法替代的。与别人讨论你的想法是深化想法的好方法。但即使在讨论之后，你坐下来开写，还是会发现新的东西。那种你只有写下来才会有的想法。
当然还有很多想法不用写下来就能有。如果不需要太深入一个问题，你可以不写下就可以解决。如果你在考虑两块机械是如何连接在一起，写下来也没太大帮助。当问题可以清楚的描述出来，你有时在脑子里就可以把它解决。但面对一个复杂、含糊不清的问题时，把它写下来大体总是有所帮助。也就是说，不太擅长写作的人在解决类似问题时，会处于劣势。
你不可能写都写不清楚，就能想得明白；也不可能在读都读不好的阶段，就能写得好。在最后一个读得“好”里面，我有两层含义：你即要读书好，又要读好书。
对是只想看信息的人，可能有别的方法可以得到。但对于想获取观点的人来说，阅读无可替代。
注：
1). 有声书可能给你良好写作的范例，但不会让你获得自己去读那么多的收获。
2). 当我说“读好书”时，不是指机械的阅读。读出字面的意思就可以啦，你不必在每一页的每个字都抠字眼。
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The Need to Read (paulgraham.com)
- November 2022
In the science fiction books I read as a kid, reading had often been replaced by some more efficient way of acquiring knowledge. Mysterious "tapes" would load it into one's brain like a program being loaded into a computer.
That sort of thing is unlikely to happen anytime soon. Not just because it would be hard to build a replacement for reading, but because even if one existed, it would be insufficient. Reading about x doesn't just teach you about x; it also teaches you how to write. [1]
Would that matter? If we replaced reading, would anyone need to be good at writing?
The reason it would matter is that writing is not just a way to convey ideas, but also a way to have them.
A good writer doesn't just think, and then write down what he thought, as a sort of transcript. A good writer will almost always discover new things in the process of writing. And there is, as far as I know, no substitute for this kind of discovery. Talking about your ideas with other people is a good way to develop them. But even after doing this, you'll find you still discover new things when you sit down to write. There is a kind of thinking that can only be done by writing.
There are of course kinds of thinking that can be done without writing. If you don't need to go too deeply into a problem, you can solve it without writing. If you're thinking about how two pieces of machinery should fit together, writing about it probably won't help much. And when a problem can be described formally, you can sometimes solve it in your head. But if you need to solve a complicated, ill-defined problem, it will almost always help to write about it. Which in turn means that someone who's not good at writing will almost always be at a disadvantage in solving such problems.
You can't think well without writing well, and you can't write well without reading well. And I mean that last "well" in both senses. You have to be good at reading, and read good things. [2]
People who just want information may find other ways to get it. But people who want to have ideas can't afford to.
Notes
[1] Audiobooks can give you examples of good writing, but having them read to you doesn't teach you as much about writing as reading them yourself.
[2] By "good at reading" I don't mean good at the mechanics of reading. You don't have to be good at extracting words from the page so much as extracting meaning from the words.