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Posted by dwwoelfel 12 hours ago

Writing by hand is good for your brain(nealstephenson.substack.com)
966 points | 476 commentspage 8
philipallstar 7 hours ago|
I really like this talk[0] by Big Suze from Peep Show on how children learn better with physical writing than with typing.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7V6nucKFK88

FranklinMaillot 7 hours ago||
I literally can't think without a pen in my hand. Especially when I'm stuck, writing anything, or even better, drawing, activates my brain cells.

Typing forces you to think linearly, it feels constrained. That's not how the brain works.

oldsklgdfth 8 hours ago||
I agree with the content of the post.

It does feel like a post stating things that are obvious, were someone not blinded by technology.

Curious if others have noticed a trend of going back to "old school" methods, once there is research etc around it. Seems like you can have just not used the new flashy thing.

achrono 8 hours ago||
Well, sorry but look at the methodology on this. The study the post leans on did not study learning. 36 adults went around copying familiar words, and their "typing" is key presses using one index finger (!).

I'm afraid this one's close to going down the replication crisis whirlpool. According to Sol:

"Direct replications found no reliable learning advantage, while a 2024 meta-analysis found only a *small* handwriting benefit but a far larger typing advantage in information captured."

Typed Versus Handwritten Lecture Notes and College Student Achievement: A Meta-Analysis” by Abraham E. Flanigan and colleagues, published in Educational Psychology Review on July 12, 2024

satvikpendem 10 hours ago||
Somewhat related, I've seen more and more colleges now banning devices in class and reverting to handwritten notes and exams only, presumably due to AI. When I went to college this was actually already done, where many professors, even for CS, made you write code by hand. And it's true, it actually helps you reason better when writing it down over typing it.
taude 9 hours ago|
When i was in college, we wrote a lot of C code in those blue notebooks. And this is a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, which is probably why I don't totally didn't hate whiteboard coding tests. And when I'm trying to work with a new programming language or tool, I'm usually writing things out by hand (helps with the memory, like the article referenced).
lilerjee 8 hours ago||
"Writing by hand is good for your brain", but it does not say the habit or behavior can help you achieve some success, many achievements, especially the more significant ones need a complicated system and long-term hard work (remember 10000 hours theory?)
Gecko4072 10 hours ago||
I know this is true and all but I think a lot of people never really write anything anyways. Texting, random notes, emails. Strange to say but it feels kind of hipster and performative with the technology we have, which kind of makes it hard to enjoy. What I mean is I understand the theory but never have a chance to implement it or even want to.
erickhill 11 hours ago||
This is why I use a reMarkable tablet for my notes. I noticed a few years ago that when I wrote down my notes I actually remembered them more easily. Something about the hand/brain connection helped etch my thoughts more deeply.

I still use Apple Notes, but more as a place to store copy/paste info I want to save or checklists. But for meeting or game design notes? Writing those down 100%.

criddell 10 hours ago||
The Remarkable tablet is so close to what I want. I just wish it was 13".

My iPad is 13" and having a a display about the same size as a sheet of A4/letter paper is nice. It's so nice to have a full size display for marking up pdfs.

Now that I've gotten used to the iPad with Goodnotes, I'm not sure I'd get a 13" Remarkable. I'd probably buy one, but I suspect their notes app would be enough of a downgrade that I would probably return it.

computerdork 10 hours ago||
How is the remarkable at converting handwritten notes into text? Especially so that you can search over it? Yeah, I used to handwrite my notes on paper back in the day, and still do for a couple of important topics, but switched over to putting things in Evernote several years ago. The reason is actually do need to do searches over them quite often, and it’s obviously very difficult to do with handwritten documents.
erickhill 7 hours ago|||
It does a pretty good job. But to be honest I don't use that feature often. I also have the keyboard for it but don't use that often, either. I really mainly use it as a notebook.
computerdork 5 hours ago||
Ah, okay. Will probably just have to try it out.
brian-dewey 9 hours ago|||
I don't know about reMarkable but LLMs are good at recognizing handwriting from photos. I wrote an iOS app to do this for my handwritten diaries, but it works for any handwritten paper: https://inksightful.app/
computerdork 5 hours ago||
Interesting, will take a look!
t1234s 6 hours ago||
Is there an online support group for people who have been on the keyboard so long that their penmanship looks more like klingon than english? Is there a way to correct this?
msum 5 hours ago|
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ShipVoicedev 5 hours ago|
I completely agree with this, but where do I start if I have terrible handwriting and never really learned cursive properly?
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