Michael Samoilov

> But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation, even among people who should and do know better. The debased language that I have been discussing is in some ways very convenient. Phrases like a not unjustifiable assumption, leaves much to be desired, would serve no good purpose, a consideration which we should do well to bear in mind, are a continuous temptation, a packet of aspirins always at one’s elbow. * George Orwell, Politics and the English Language (1946) Before ChatGPTisms, sloppy writing was signposted by Orwellisms. There’s a political kind (to euphemize “firebombing a village” vaguely as “neutralize unreliable elements”), but I’m interested in the mundane kind: lazy phrases you default to when you can’t articulate exactly what you mean. For years, I visualized this as: your idea is shaped like a nuanced path, but without finding the exact words to express it, you settle for tracing the worn groove of a common phrase that is roughly, but not exactly, the same shape you intended. One time doesn’t hurt, but enough worn grooves stacked end-to-end and you will land nowhere near where your original thoughts may have taken you. I still don’t have an elegant rendition of this idea, but now I must also resist ChatGPT’s beckoning finger: “please write an aphoristic version of this concept: your idea shaped like a nuanced path…” But you have to resist. I don’t let AI compose ANY original writing for me. Orwell’s essay was published just after World War II, but applies equally to AI writing on the World Wide Web. Lazy writing in his time was vague cliches, and in ours is outsourcing work to a robot. But in both, it leads to lazy thinking, because writing is thinking: > Paper and pencil and “expressing ideas” is merely what writing looks like. But words on a page are just the visible artifacts of an invisible process. Writing words and choosing good ones is a process we found that prop