'AI writing is a calculator' is wrong: blank-page friction is where original thought happens
lmoroney · x · 2026-10-18
A viral long post pushes back on writers' claim that "AI handles the typing so I can focus on strategy":
- The calculator analogy fails: with 47×83 the answer already exists; with a blank page it doesn't.
- Blank-page friction is the point: staring at the cursor, cutting weak sentences, fighting for the right verb — that's the moment your brain is about to have an original thought. Alt-tabbing to an LLM to "write a rough draft" skips exactly that moment.
Laurence Moroney amplified it with partial agreement — the blank page is where you work out what you believe — proposing a middle path: write the ugly draft yourself, then use the model as an editor.
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