rate-limiting thinking

It is curious to note that, when I am speaking or writing something down, even as my implicit mental processes tend to proceed fasterand with greater parallelism than my rate of explicit output, my conscious thoughtwhich, by the way, is more subject to semantic stability and to logical simulation—two major concepts I’d like to explore in future entries proceeds at the exact same rate as my expression of that thought.

I would dwell on the implications of this more elsewhere. For now, I’d just like to note that one practical, albeit minor, consequence of this is that I can slightly improve the quality of my thinking by slowing it down via deliberately limiting my rate of outputwhich, in the case of writing on a device, is also my rate of input, in words per minute.

In the particular case of blog-writing, I would like to start using the smartphoneas opposed to the laptop when drafting pieces, especially exploratory ones where my thoughts on a topic are not yet well-formed, as the rate-limitation of touchscreen input also constrains the rate of expression, thereby slowing down my thinking and improving the quality of the first attempt, on which future revisions are based.

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