Creation is iterated refinement in an infinite option space

(an excerpt from a text conversation)

I was talking earlier today about how you can view a creation process not as additive (starting with a sentence, and then adding another and another) but as iterated refinement and filtering through an infinite option space (there are an infinite continuations of your first sentence. How do you choose the right continuation?) Because LLMs can explicitly compute all possible continuations, this is an interesting way to look at writing with an AI, and AI-augmented creation in general.

In the case of writing, an interesting UI for this could be like, each paragraph you write becomes a "card", and the AI can place cards underneath a card as suggestions for alternative wordings, newly discovered images, links, etc. Cards kind of "peeking out" from under a paragraph might be a neat way to signal "theres something new here you should look at" without intruding on the writer's space when they haven't explicitly summoned help. It also makes possible this other interface that I've thought about, where you click on any paragraph's "stack of cards" and it unfurls to show you 3-4 possible variations to explore other stylistic variations or clearer wordings.