[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Pros and cons of thinking in public vs. in p...
___________________________________________________________________
Ask HN: Pros and cons of thinking in public vs. in private?
Dear HNers who engage in any form of "thinking in public" (whether
that's blogging, posting notes online, or maybe even participating
in HN/Twitter/forum discussions): What are some of the pros and
cons of thinking in public vs thinking in private? Since it's
relatively easy to find the benefits of blogging and other ways of
thinking in public, I'm especially curious to hear about some of
the potential cons of thinking in public / the benefits of thinking
in private? And with that in mind, how does one effectively manage
both to make the best out of both approaches?
Author : samh748
Score : 61 points
Date : 2023-01-02 20:35 UTC (2 hours ago)
| zffr wrote:
| One of the pros (and cons) about thinking in public is being
| corrected about mistakes you make in your content. One on hand,
| it can be embarrassing to be wrong about something. On the other
| hand, being corrected is a great way to speed up your learning
| process. Strangers who comment on your content can teach you
| things you didn't even know you didn't know.
| Baeocystin wrote:
| I can't say it never happens, but I find it hard to imagine
| thinking in public to be a net benefit. _Who_ you accept feedback
| from _matters_ , and the reactionary frothers that are just there
| to screech outnumber everyone else in terms of posting volume.
|
| The Socratic method requires a good-faith, cooperative approach
| in the participants, and that just doesn't happen on modern fora
| without strong moderation, which is a full-time job in and of
| itself. Otherwise the hecklers win.
| knaik94 wrote:
| It's hard to change a public image once it's established. This
| makes it's harder to make dramatic shifts in perspective,
| regardless of new information that's presented. You're not just
| challenging yourself, but you are also challenging other people
| to change their idea of you.
|
| Humor and sarcasm are hard to convey in writing. The more you
| know about your audience, the easier it is to make jokes. But you
| don't really know how much your public thinking will spread so
| you can't make as many assumptions about your audience.
|
| Private thinking allows you to create a nuanced framework for
| yourself that's independent of public sentiment. If you start
| publicly, you have a lot more friction when trying to add nuance
| to your perspective. It's also easy to be influenced regarding
| what issues should be considered significant. In some cases that
| leads to a minority population/situation being overlooked.
|
| I feel encouraged to share publicly when I want to defend a
| perspective I feel confident about or when I feel someone can be
| positively impacted by my writing. Choosing public vs private
| thinking is not something I actively decided on.
|
| I think it's similar to the concept that the only stupid question
| is the one that remains unasked/unanswered. I think an
| unchallenged perspective is generally the weakest. And giving
| other people the benefit of the doubt, despite how poorly they
| may come off, is the best way to create healthy online
| discussions.
| staktrace wrote:
| I've found that one of the more subtle cons to thinking in public
| is that you become more attached to the opinion you have
| expressed. I'm not sure if that's because you are forced to
| defend it more vigorously or just because it's "written down".
| But I do find that I'm less likely to change my mind on a
| particular topic after blogging about it.
| throw456 wrote:
| This is why I comment only using throwaway accounts on all the
| forums I use.
|
| I feel like I'm much less likely to get attached to an opinion
| if it's wedded only to an ephemeral identity that I will
| probably forget about entirely within a short timeframe.
|
| I also much prefer the dynamic of having anonymous
| conversations with strangers.
| vlunkr wrote:
| With regards to forum conversations specifically, one con is that
| you have no idea what type of people are talking to.
|
| In real life you make all kinds of judgement calls before
| engaging in a conversation. For example: Do they actually have an
| informed opinion on the subject? Do you value their opinion on
| the subject? Can they remain level-headed in a conversation about
| sensitive topics?
|
| Additionally during the conversation, you're analyzing their
| responses. For example you may know them to be very sarcastic or
| pessimistic, and parse their responses accordingly.
|
| In an online context, everyone is going in blind, so
| conversations are not usually productive. You might have a well
| thought-out comment, but it will be rejected because you didn't
| know you were dealing with teenage edgelords, old racists, bots,
| or whatever.
| thdc wrote:
| If by "thinking" you mean strictly your own thoughts, I don't
| think public or private should have much, if any, effect.
|
| The difference between publicizing your thoughts or keeping them
| private is what discourse is attracted - the ability to gather
| _other_ people 's thoughts and views on the topic... hopefully
| constructive ones - which you may then think about.
|
| It's possible to come across these other thoughts without going
| public with varying degrees of difficulty, but anticipating that
| you are going public can influence how you present your own
| thoughts in various ways.
|
| The above sentences are my thoughts which I've shared publicly. I
| tend to weaken my claims when thinking publicly with words like
| think, believe, probably, etc. to invite alternate ideas if
| someone would disagree or reinforcement if one agrees. Does it
| work? I have no clue.
|
| In general, I only think publicly when I'm interested to know
| what _other_ people think of a topic (usually things more opinion
| based); otherwise I stay private. I also try to avoid anything
| that invites non-constructive discussions.
| edent wrote:
| The biggest con is that sometimes you'll be wrong. Embarrassingly
| so. It might be a prediction that was duff, a solution that was
| non-optimal, or an opinion that's so far out of mainstream it
| warns people off you.
|
| The best way to manage that is to show people in private before
| you publish. That can be as simple as having a friend or partner
| check your spelling. Or it can be as complex as getting several
| people to sense-check your ideas and give you robust feedback.
|
| The other big issue is that people can (deliberately?)
| misinterpret what you've written. Humans don't write in a formal,
| logical manner. So everything you write is open to a bad-faith
| actor trying to undermine you. So you have to make peace with the
| fact that you're not writing a thesis to be examined and that
| some people are just arseholes.
|
| Life's too short to spend it worrying about what _might_ go
| wrong. Take some sensible precautions and learn to live with the
| occasional public goof.
| taeric wrote:
| I do wish more folks were both fearless to be hilariously
| wrong, and that folks allowed it more.
|
| Instead, everything has to feel well rehearsed. It is
| exhausting to try and emulate. :(
| clnq wrote:
| Do you mean corporatese (corpspeak) and CEOspeak? You
| naturally learn to speak and write it publicly, not to upset
| cynical people. It comes without rehearsing with enough
| experience and is difficult to emulate.
|
| You need to know the conversational minefield very well.
| Swizec wrote:
| It looks well rehearsed because by the time you see it,
| usually it has been rehearsed.
|
| Comedians bomb in small clubs so they shine on the big stage.
| Writers like me publish blog posts and articles so the ideas
| that make it into books are battle tested. The podcast
| episode that goes viral is usually the 10th+ time that
| podcaster has said the same thing in slight variations.
|
| TV and radio hosts keep saying the same things and having
| similar conversations over and over daily for decades.
| pyth0 wrote:
| I believe that a lot people are quite comfortable in being
| hilariously wrong, look at any modern political discourse,
| but the problem in my mind is that people aren't equally
| prepared to self-reflect and admit fault or reconsider a
| position.
|
| At the same time though, I do find myself often times at work
| qualifying things with "I think" or similar phrasing, and I'm
| still not sure if I do it to avoid embarrassment or if it's
| to not come off as too arrogant. Maybe it's both.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| Thinking in public allows your ideas to be polished if:
|
| 1. You have a thick skin.
|
| 2. Expect "polishing" to involve friction and are okay with
| everyone rubbing you the wrong way.
|
| 3. Can take a critical eye to the difference between presentation
| and substance, among other things.
|
| Thinking in private is, no doubt, unique to each individual. One
| of the cons: We tend to do a poor job of finding our own blind
| spots and biases.
| tlb wrote:
| There are quite a few things that are probably true, but you
| can't say publicly without attracting a lot of unwanted angry
| attention. If your line of thinking approaches any of these
| topics, it makes it difficult to think through the issue in
| public.
| hgsgm wrote:
| Public can be anonymous (or anonymous enough if your thoughts
| are mild enough to not inspire a doxxing and get a harmful
| reaction if you are doxxed).
| bee_rider wrote:
| Pseudonymous is a fantastic word that describes lots of
| things nowadays, unfortunately eclipsed by its more assertive
| brother Anonymous.
| andirk wrote:
| This is where a lot of voices on Twitter feel they're being
| marginalized because their hate speech isn't accepted which is
| odd to them because in private, it is accepted. Similarly,
| saying "Joe Rogan" in certain holier-than-thou circles will get
| you banished. Point is that public discourse is often policed
| by the most offensive and the most sensitive, but still speak
| your mind, and always with respect to those in the forum.
| FigurativeVoid wrote:
| I am a huge proponent of journaling because it forces you to make
| your thoughts more solid and rigorous. All the benefits of
| journaling probably apply to 'thinking in public' as well. But
| the Hn discussions and blogs are very different genres with
| different conventions.
|
| These are all off the top of my head. I may add more later.
|
| PROS: improving communication and marketing skills, social
| interactions, receiving feedback, building an audience, finding
| like-minded peers, testing ideas outside of your own mind.
|
| CONS:
|
| You might have ideas that others deem incorrect or morally wrong.
| This could make your personal and professional life much more
| difficult.
|
| Getting caught in the self-promotion and metrics rat race.
| Writing for yourself is good, but you can get lost in trying to
| grow.
|
| Finding out that nobody wants to read what you have to say.
|
| Too much outside influence.
|
| Managing:
|
| As far as managing it goes, most people have different systems.
| The one thing I would add is that you need to generate AND curate
| your thoughts. Remove posts you no longer believe. Remove content
| that is bad. Refresh older content. You can be transparent or
| not. Don't just pump out new stuff alone.
| booleandilemma wrote:
| _it forces you to make your thoughts more solid and rigorous_
|
| Does it? I've gone back and reviewed some of the things I've
| written in my journal and found them to sound like crazy talk
| or what was obviously an emotion-fueled rant at the time.
| Evenjos wrote:
| The cons of thinking in public: - Everyone judges you. - Everyone
| can snap to a potentially wrong assumption about you or your
| motives. - The conversation can shift to a meta discussion about
| you as a person, or some other factor, instead of the argument or
| proposal you were originally concerned enough to publicly post
| about.
|
| Thinking in private allows greater freedom in some ways, although
| you do exchange power for that freedom. There is a lot of power
| in public opinion.
|
| I explore this theme very in-depth in my web serial, which I just
| recently launched on RoyalRoad! Torth by AbbyBabble.
| Xeoncross wrote:
| You have a perfect shared context with yourself.
|
| You often have a lot of shared context with those close to you.
|
| Thinking in public you have lost a tremendous amount of context.
|
| You have to add a mountain of backstory, caveats, and exceptions
| to everything you say so the user can understand the actual
| meaning you are trying to convey instead of the lens of their own
| context they hear your comments through.
| joeamroo wrote:
| Think of this: can you possibly learn all aspects of a subject
| strictly using A priori knowledge? How about knowledge that comes
| through serendipity? The Manhattan project had to gather the
| knowledge of multitudes of thinkers in order to workout (risking
| the eventual leak). I see no reason to think in private unless
| you're thinking of strictly personal ideas (which might benefit
| from other people's critiques) or if you're a philosopher trying
| to prove that you can gain extensive knowledge strictly a priori
| (Hegel comes to mind)
| swyx wrote:
| Ah, my topic of specialty. I've been doing this for a decade, but
| only figured it out over the past ~5 years.
|
| Pros:
|
| - Inbound Marketing: You not only are able to bring part of your
| work with you between jobs, but your thinking and learning in
| public demonstrates your interest, expertise, and growth over
| time such that it tends to attract jobs and other opportunities
| _to_ you (including opps that are not formally open to everyone
| yet)
|
| - Bloom's Taxonomy: Retain more of what you learn by writing it
| down in your own words rather than simply holding it in your head
|
| - The 1% Rule: 99% of people lurk, less than 1% make content, you
| stand out in your field simply by saying something
|
| - Cunningham's Law: "The best way to get the right answer on the
| Internet is not to ask a question; it's to post the wrong
| answer." Being publicly wrong attracts teachers, as long as you
| don't do it in such high quantity that people give up on you
| altogether. Conversely, once you've gotten something wrong in
| public, you never forget it.
|
| - Positive Reinforcement: Building in a social feedback mechanism
| to your learning encourages more learning. As you build a track
| record and embark on more ambitious projects with implicit future
| promise, your public activity becomes a Commitment Device.
|
| - Productizing Yourself: well, Naval said it best so I'll just
| drop a link https://nav.al/productize-yourself
|
| Cons:
|
| - It takes extra effort to write down something you're already
| thinking. E.g. it can feel like pure overhead to write down notes
| on a conversation you just had or talk you just saw. However if
| you agree that you shouldnt be optimizing for quantity of content
| consumed, rather the quantity and quality of what you *retain*,
| then the optimal write-read ratio is higher than 0 (I think
| 10-20% is a good range).
|
| - You may get things wrong, sometimes embarrassingly so. Separate
| your (past) thinking and writing from your identity.
| http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html
|
| - You may hurt people's feelings by omitting their contributions,
| saying something you didn't mean, or saying something you regret.
| A bad enough case can lose you friendships and opportunities
| forever. So you'll have to learn how to filter what you say
| through the lens of other people's egos and your own fog of
| ignorance. Especially be careful about thinking in public about
| confidential work stuff or other private secrets, and err on the
| side of caution when it involves other people.
|
| - Some people might see your mistakes and judge you harshly since
| they know better. This can be mitigated by demonstrating both
| intent and ability to learn quickly over time and respond well to
| criticism.
|
| Source: I've written a popular essay (https://www.swyx.io/learn-
| in-public/), book (https://learninpublic.org/v1-principles-learn-
| in-public.pdf), and done some talks and podcasts
| (https://www.swyx.io/ideas?filter=learn%20in%20public) about
| this. You can check my post history for how I do it.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| There are a few reasons I'm just another dog on the internet.
| Things can get awkward with coworkers or it could made finding
| employment difficult.
|
| _1. Mental health_
|
| My last job creatively fired me because HR got pissed at the
| increasing number of accommodations I needed due to new policies.
|
| I really don't want to be thinking about it or discussing it at
| work anyway.
|
| _2. Fiction Writing_
|
| You know... some people don't really think about who writes the
| stories they read. It's always that amorphous someone, until they
| find out their coworker's favorite poison is strychnine.
|
| As my friends say, you're not a writer until your search history
| has more red flags than a Chinese New Year. :)
|
| _3. What I think about my job_
|
| I've talked about places I've worked many times. Since all of it
| is from my perspective, I'm likely wrong about details or
| people's motivations. My memory isn't perfect. There's more than
| a fair amount of bitching. I do try to be accurate, but my
| opinions and perspectives change as I get older and look back.
| toddm wrote:
| I post on LinkedIn, Stack Exchange, and this site using my real
| name.
|
| The benefit of doing so is that I have to keep myself in check
| and really think before I write - yes, there are edits and
| deletions - and overall the effect has been very positive for me.
|
| Being active on the chemistry SE site has actually proven to be
| of value in getting jobs related to chemistry - at least 3
| employers have said it was useful to see some of my answers - so
| that is also good.
|
| On the negative side? As far as I know, there is only one other
| person on the planet who shares my first and last name
| combination (different middle initial, and turns out to be a
| distant relative) so there might come a day when I have to do
| some reputation control should someone impersonate me: but that's
| not something with a lot of upside :)
| [deleted]
| pugets wrote:
| When I journal (for my eyes only), I'm able to express my
| knowledge with personal experiences that are too boring,
| contextless, or controversial to post online. These thoughts
| still matter to me, so I keep them to myself.
|
| Yesterday, I wrote about how if I hadn't discovered
| weightlifting, I might not have gone to university. I reflected
| on myself at age 16 when I was mentally immature but interested
| in bodybuilding. Then I wrote about age 18, when the hard work
| started paying off, and my self-determination skyrocketed.
| Finally I wrote about age 20, when I made up my mind to study
| computer science, specifically because it was supposed to be
| challenging.
|
| If I post these thoughts on social media, there's a chance I'll
| spark Socratic debates that I don't particularly care about
| leading. When I do post the thoughts online, it's usually because
| I hope my words land on the right person at the right time.
| vehemenz wrote:
| There are two strategies in which you can have it both ways, to
| some degree.
|
| 1. Internal dialectic: Defend your position against objections
| raised by an imaginary interlocutor. I usually base my
| interlocutor on a real person who I disagree with but respect
| enough to raise proper objections. It will take a lot of back-
| and-forth, but you will eventually develop a strong position.
|
| 2. Time: Good ideas tend to hold up over time. Read anything you
| wrote a year ago and you will surprise yourself by its quality or
| cringe by its naivete. Either way, you will be distanced enough
| from the writing to criticize and strengthen your ideas with
| ease.
| scyzoryk_xyz wrote:
| Hey, I never actually thought about what I'm doing here as
| "thinking in public".
|
| Makes it less of a waste of time somehow...
| Cardinal7167 wrote:
| For me, thinking in public is the only way to get quality
| critical peer feedback.
| reidjs wrote:
| Cons: coworkers, friends, romantic partners, family may find your
| half baked, low quality content and judge you accordingly.
| sysadm1n wrote:
| I used to blog, and to be honest, I am embarrassed of about 90%
| of my posts. I trimmed 90% of the posts that annoyed me a year
| later, and the 'cream' or the golden crop remain, the ones I am
| proud of, and had the most impact on people.
|
| My blog is in archive mode now. (BTW: Not linking to it here for
| privacy reasons).
|
| I am thinking of blogging again, only this time I might use a
| pseudonym so my ideas are not forever tied to my legal name.
|
| I will also be very careful about what I publish. I am thinking
| of having a delay of 6 months before I publish so I can edit
| parts that will inevitably annoy me.
|
| For some reason, after hitting 'Publish' that's when I see the
| mistakes, even after previewing the draft several times and
| deemed it 'perfect'.
|
| Things will go wrong.
| clnq wrote:
| I can empathize with this.
|
| I also partially rewrite my old blog articles where I made a
| mistake, the status quo has evolved, or I want more SEO keyword
| hits. More authors probably do it, but it is not publicly
| spoken about - perhaps it is a little taboo. Some of my
| articles go viral after a rewrite. It saves time and allows me
| to refine the content over time.
|
| Recently I've started putting notes about article edits at the
| end as news sites do. I firmly believe that news media used to
| do it in the past, but it was too taboo to admit to editing old
| articles. Things are changing now.
| andirk wrote:
| I enjoy thinking/working/reading/writing in public. But please,
| if you bring your laptop to a coffee shop, tip the baristas $5-10
| if you're there for a while! Even make a point like " _hold $5
| bill_ because I 'm gonna be here a while thanks". It's nothing to
| you but will add up to something substantial for them watching
| you type away all day.
| davnicwil wrote:
| One con certainly is being unprepared for and therefore
| discouraged by an unfortunate rule of the internet comment box:
| it tends to heavily skew toward disagreements and nitpicks with
| whatever you put out there.
|
| If you don't account for this you'll come away with the
| impression that nobody gets value from the thoughts you've put
| out, when the reality may be the opposite.
|
| Sites like HN with upvotes help a bit with balancing this signal,
| but it's still a bit disheartening at times. You have to
| consciously think about it and convince yourself it's the case,
| probably before even publishing, certainly before reading the
| comments!
|
| If you're interested I wrote a blog post [0] covering aspects of
| this that you may enjoy (which went to the HN front page, so you
| can see the comments Vs upvotes on that post itself -- yep this
| is getting meta rather quickly :-)
|
| [0] https://davnicwil.com/tips-for-making-writing-more-fun/
| [deleted]
| blowski wrote:
| Some of my HN comments will simultaneously have only very
| critical replies and lots of upvotes. It's hard to interpret
| that.
| hugs_vs_toph wrote:
| It means you are popular with the plebs while smart people
| disagree with you.
| jesuscript wrote:
| The best way to test this theory of skewed negativity is to
| find a product you are pleased with, go on Amazon, and pull up
| all the low star reviews.
|
| You would have never guessed just how wrong and loud comments
| can be.
| chubot wrote:
| I write on https://www.oilshell.org/ for many of these same
| reasons:
|
| _Why I Keep a Research Blog_
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22033792
|
| (a great post from 2 years ago that I remembered)
|
| - to make sure I really know something, rather than just being
| able to name it
|
| - to calibrate myself -- there are always people more
| experienced, and it's useful to get feedback on whether you're
| making a mistake. Also to keep a sense of reality on a long
| project :)
|
| Another great side effect is that a few skilled people have been
| reading my blog for YEARS and now want to help me finish the
| project! If it was just a random project with no
| writing/explanation, then that wouldn't have happened
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34221617
|
| - I also do "documentation-driven development", where I write how
| something should work, and then implement it. If I can't "explain
| it with a straight face", then it's not the right design. Most of
| bash you CANNOT explain with a straight face :)
|
| Personally I like writing on content-centric sites rather than
| person-centric sites (e.g. social media), because with social
| media your ego can get in the way. For example, some people
| mentioned here that there can be a tendency to "dig in" to
| positions attached to your identity, but I find that writing in
| public is a good way to do just the opposite -- adjust your
| positions based on the feedback of others
| fleddr wrote:
| I'll specifically go into the pros of private thinking, as that's
| where you seem to be getting the least feedback.
|
| 1. Intent is preserved. When you write something publicly, your
| output are words that you constructed from your ideas and your
| intent. As others read it, they will have wildly different
| interpretations of the text, even if you write well. Thus, your
| original intent does not translate perfectly. You don't have this
| problem with private thinking, because you own the additional
| context and intent.
|
| 2. No self-censorship. You don't have to cater to anybody's
| liking of whatever your thoughts are. You don't need to win
| anybody's approval, and this allows for the brewing of fresh and
| pure thoughts.
|
| 3. Exclusivity. Maybe one of your ideas is of high value. Could
| simply be a rare skill you mastered, a trick unknown to the
| world, a little software asset you produced. The norm in our
| industry is to share wide and far. Write that blog post, open
| that Github project, etc. Alternatively, you can also keep it to
| yourself and leverage its value. Quite literally as leverage.
|
| I imagine this last point to be somewhat controversial. By
| sharing far and wide, you'll be doing free labor for an industry
| that doesn't give a fuck about its volunteers. People will simply
| take your free shit and run with it, and often still complain
| about it. In light of such hostile and unrewarding environment, I
| have absolutely no moral problem with refusing to do free labor
| and keeping some things private and exclusive.
| coverclock wrote:
| Being able to get feedback can be both a pro and a con, depending
| on the nature of the feedback.
|
| Sometimes you can use information asymmetry to your advantage;
| thinking in public may work against that.
|
| For sure thinking in public can be a form of marketing,
| especially if you are self-employed, like I am.
|
| Having said all that, I've been writing a public blog since 2006,
| and have 39 repositories in GitHub, most of which are public, and
| that is a form of thinking in public as well. So I guess I cast
| my vote on the issue a while ago. I try to be authentic, honest,
| true to my values, open to change, and be the best person I can
| be, when I share my opinions.
| h0p3 wrote:
| Beyond [[pseudonymity|Anonymity]], [[privacy]] comes in degrees.
| Depending on your topics, interlocutors, and threat model, you
| may find it worthy to be able to scale your privacy up or down in
| various circumstances (which doesn't make all methods foolproof,
| but in practice it seems to go a long way). For example, being
| able to turn off parts of your web presence while still leaving
| up other parts of or gateways to your public net presence may be
| useful.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-01-02 23:00 UTC)