| Sunday, 16 February 2025 |
A community-powered Sunday newsletter on mental models, self-reflection, learning, growth, photos, books, and more Subscribe here
Good morning [%first_name |Dear Reader%],
Good morning. You’re reading today’s edition of this newsletter because I (and my fellow writers Hari and Jonathan), well, wrote it.
D-uh.
But who did we write it for? You?
Chances are, we don’t know you personally. We don’t know your likes or your preferences or your favourite books or your style of communication. So, how could we be writing for you?
Maybe we’re writing for all of you?
But what would that even mean? How do you write for many hundreds of thousands of readers from not just all over India, but also the world. If we didn’t know anything about you personally, how could we possibly know something about you collectively?
Who, then, might we be writing for?
I won’t speak for Hari and Jonathan, but I will tell you who I write for: myself.
Each weekend, I write as a way to connect with my own thoughts and beliefs. I write in order to identify and connect strands in my own consciousness that otherwise I would have no time or reason to. I write in order to formulate and cogently argue concepts that may have stayed unarticulated. I write in order to think.
It seems backward-first, doesn’t it? Don’t we think in order to write?
It’s a weird conundrum, I agree. Who do we write for? Why do we write? That’s today’s edition, which includes:
1. Is writing, thinking?
2. “Tours of Duty”—Community Comments
3. Rediscovering verses 📚
4. Distant vistas 📸
1. Is writing, thinking?
I read this (obvious, to me) conclusion in a fairly detailed research study earlier this week.
“Higher confidence in GenAI’s ability to perform a task is related to less critical thinking effort. When using GenAI tools, the effort invested in critical thinking shifts from information gathering to information verification; from problem-solving to AI response integration; and from task execution to task stewardship. Knowledge workers face new challenges in critical thinking as they incorporate GenAI into their knowledge workflows.”
No, this isn’t from some curmudgeonly, anti-tech organisation. It’s from Microsoft Research (PDF: “The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking: Self-Reported Reductions in Cognitive Effort and Confidence Effects From a Survey of Knowledge Workers”).
Think about this: the more confident you are in a GenAI tool’s capabilities, the less you will feel the need to apply critical thinking yourself.
But how good are generative AI tools, really? A wonderful BBC News research study analysed four of the most popular ones—ChatGPT 4o, Microsoft Copilot, Google Gemini and Perplexity—on the thing that these tools are supposed to do best: summarising text.
I enjoy reading The Ken because it is informative, the articles are well researched, well written, without the spin and bias. I admire The Ken team for their dedication to getting closer to the true picture.
Hari Buggana
Chairman and MD, InvAscent
Transparent, Honest, Detailed. To me, The Ken has been this since the day I subscribed to them. The research that they put into each story and the way it is presented is thoroughly interesting. Personally, I’ve always had a great time interacting with the publication and reading the stories.
Harshil Mathur
CEO and Co-Founder, Razorpay
The Ken has proven naysayers wrong by successfully running a digital news publication on a pure-subscription business model in India. They have shown that discerning readers are willing to pay for well-researched, well-written, in-dept news articles.
Kiran Mazumdar Shaw
Executive Chairperson, Biocon Limited
As a designer, it’s easy to get lost in the craft of building products. As a business owner however, keeping up with a rapidly changing landscape is key to saying relevant. The Ken doesn’t just help me stay on top of what’s happening in India(and beyond), but makes it fun to do so.
Rahul Gonsalves
Co-founder and CEO, Obvious Ventures