Ask HN: Pros and cons of thinking in public vs. in private?

243 points by samh748 3 years ago | 168 comments

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?

fleddr 3 years ago |

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.

rahoulb 3 years ago | |

> Intent is preserved

I think this can work both ways.

I keep notes as I'm working (just plans for the day, typing up stuff that I'm doing for a vague timesheet, snippets of code so I can easily copy/paste them and thoughts I have as I'm working on stuff). And I've found that, often, when I revisit those ideas, in the intervening weeks and months they've morphed into something quite different from my original thoughts. Obviously my notes are private, but putting it out there in public means you have to acknowledge the divergence, rather than just sweeping it under the carpet.

virissimo 3 years ago | |

> No self-censorship.

This is a very common belief, but I don't think it's strictly true. Sometimes people inadvertently speak what they're thinking, so an even surer way to prevent being punished for your ideas is to prevent yourself from even thinking them in the first place. It's a kind of defense-in-depth against wrongthink punishment and one I think most people understand intuitively.

nicbou 3 years ago | | |

You can’t prevent yourself from speaking in your sleep. That’s how they get you.

InCityDreams 3 years ago | | |

>an even surer way to prevent being punished for your ideas is to prevent yourself from even thinking them in the first place.

Genuinely intrigued: could you expand on this? I'll start by asking: is it possible to not think of something once you start thinking about it? And that realy is the best i can phrase the question at the moment.

fleddr 3 years ago | | |

It may go even further than that. Some philosophers claim that the idea of a "self" is an illusion. Your brain produces all kinds of thoughts inconsistent with your "stable self" and then "magically" adapts them into something that feels consistent. Leading you to believe that you have an identity. Some type of personality, belief system, what have you.

Your brain is feeding you lies or half-truths all the time. It's job isn't to find objective truth, it's to keep you alive.

npteljes 3 years ago | |

>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.

This one is not true. There are internal mechanisms that filter thoughts, for example, what Freud called the Superego. People limit their inner thoughts in a variety of ways, for example, by developing morality, by which they judge their own thoughts too. They can dissociate, repress or project thoughts, both of which lead to some kind of self-censorship.

rTX5CMRXIfFG 3 years ago | | |

And this is why the commenter has bulletpoint number 1. I think that what he really meant here is that while a myriad of factors orient our thinking in certain ways, thinking in private allows you to digress from those patterns and explore edge cases without another person’s judgment.

I frequent HN more than I should, and honestly, pretty much all comment trees follow the same pattern of moving goalposts or making pedantic arguments about how a statistical generalization is not true in all circumstances (duh). It’s all just people missing each other’s contexts (though admittedly some parent comments are really poorly expressed), which is why it’s funny when I come across the occasional “HN is superior and more intelligent than FB/reddit/Twitter” because, really, it isn’t. It’s the same garbage.

toddm 3 years ago |

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 :)

sysadm1n 3 years ago |

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 3 years ago | |

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.

kirso 3 years ago | |

BenKuhn.net just wrote an encouraging post on starting to write. Here is the link: https://www.benkuhn.net/writing/

cf141q5325 3 years ago | |

>I used to blog, and to be honest, I am embarrassed of about 90% of my posts.

I think that is the beauty of thinking publicly. You actually realize that you are an idiot. If you only think privately you never get any feedback, chance to reflect and cognitive biases are kicking hard. That robs you of the chance to ever improve.

tlb 3 years ago |

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.

simonw 3 years ago |

I think in public a whole bunch - on my blog, on Mastodon (previously on Twitter) and mostly in thousands of issues and issue comments in my public GitHub repos.

No cons at all so far. No one cares enough to actually read and pay attention to all of that stuff, at least not enough to get angry or mean about it!

Every now and then someone will reply with a useful clue or hint, which is the biggest pro.

I'm in a privileged position: I'm not part of a group that gets discriminated against, and I don't tend to attract the attention of trolls or nazis.

I tend to live by the classic Howard Aiken quite: "Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats."

mmaunder 3 years ago |

I did a lot of public thinking as a budding entrepreneur, mostly on my blog, and I got a lot of traction thanks to this community. I found it helped test my assumptions, made me hold my thinking to a far higher standard, forced me to research my ideas and bring compelling accurate data to the expression of the thought, and gave me a strong and accurate indication on which of my ideas and how I express them resonate with others.

I stopped blogging years ago and have since built a successful business with 40 employees and 4 million customers. I continue to write here to get the same feedback I describe above. It helps keep the knife sharp and avoids me getting my head stuck too far up my ass.

Unless you have a co-founder or collaborators who are willing and able to call bullshit, if you’re developing ideas in private that are hard to test (you can test engineering designs, for example) then you risk spending a lot of time on something misguided, futile, irrational, or where you simply haven’t considered a problem because you don’t have critical information.

kirso 3 years ago | |

Curious, looking back did you see how your thinking change given you haven't written in a while and re-read your posts? Also is it available online?

edent 3 years ago |

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.

nkantar 3 years ago |

I do both.

Publicly, I write a blog[0] mostly about random technology things. I don’t think I’ve ever published anything too controversial, but I’m also very privileged and have a tiny audience comprised mostly by people I know. I do this primarily because I enjoy it. The main con I’ve experienced so far has been pressure to write things worth reading.

Privately, I journal as a form of self-reflection, something I’ve done on and off for a few years now, both independently and in conjunction with therapy. It’s been helpful having a space to ask myself embarrassing questions without any repercussions. The main con has been the guilt I feel when I neglect this habit.

[0]: https://nkantar.com/blog

chubot 3 years ago |

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

rglover 3 years ago |

Pros:

- Allows you to see your growth over time.

- Gives you a "proof of work" so others can validate claims you make.

- Creates higher likelihood for opportunities as people stumble upon something that resonates with them/their business.

- Allows you to really hone your craft as you can "compete with yourself" by reflecting on past work and seeing what feels off now.

Cons:

- You can get down on yourself if you look back on something you feel is "cringe" or a poor representation of who you are today.

- It's easier for people to take swings and discourage you. Backhanded compliments, outright dismissals, etc, while not common, do happen more (i.e., broader attack surface).

- It's easier for things to bite you later. Something you said years before either out of frustration or jest-that no longer represents your views but you don't want to delete for posterity sake-becomes someones whole perception of who you are.

- It's not uncommon for people to think they have you figured out based on your writing. This can be frustrating as you hear/read them parroting things you've written almost verbatim in an attempt to manipulate you. This one is a real edge case and rare in my experience but it's worth being aware of cluster B personality types using your writing as a weapon later.

How to manage:

- Be conscious of what you're writing, how it can be interpreted/misinterpreted.

- Slow down. Don't "think aloud" out of frustration or anger. I've found it helps to write stuff in a silo like a text doc first and then copy/paste it once I've read it a few times (avoids really nasty flame wars).

- Don't think you have to write everything down. If you build a habit around thinking in public, you can get into a trap where you feel burdened to explain everything you think/do.

- Depend on your goals: ask others for feedback. I've had mixed results with this, but YMMV.

heavyset_go 3 years ago |

Other people have hit the pros, but I'll reiterate a con about public content:

- If your content is good and is about something that hasn't been written about in public before, expect to be plagiarized.

I've been surprised at the people and publications who have no problem copy and pasting some of my content and passing it off as their own "research".

Sometimes authors will realize their mistake, apologize, give a proper citation or use their own content. I don't think people like that are out to plagiarize, I think it can be easy to be swamped with work/academics/literal research and confuse what you've read with your own "research" without giving it much thought.

However, it looks like there are actual businesses based on republishing articles other people have written, that will take others' content and copy and paste it into new related articles without citations. I've contacted two and heard nothing back from them, even tried to reach out to the authors of the articles that were published and nothing. All I wanted was a citation.

They're counting on original authors not knowing the plagiarized content exists, not knowing their rights and not filing DMCA takedown requests or having lawyer send them C&D notices.

So yeah, go into this knowing that you won't get paid and people will be paid to plagiarize what you've written.

kelnos 3 years ago |

The biggest con to thinking in public is that your words will be there for anyone to see. Some of the people who see it will have very little context about who you are and what you are talking about, and will inevitably misinterpret (possibly intentionally) what you say, and get upset with you for it.

You may not care about this. Certainly, worrying about what random strangers think about you is a waste of time. But unfortunately, things you say online can affect your real life in surprising, unexpected ways sometimes.

Something today that you think is completely innocuous might be a hot-button issue tomorrow.

I mostly stopped participating in social media years ago, but I still comment in a few places like HN. Sometimes I do worry that something I say will come back to haunt me later. This is never an issue if you think in private.

Now, because you asked for pros, a potentially big benefit of thinking in public is that you can get feedback from a wide variety of people, especially those who have different upbringings, experiences, and values, and their perspective can be valuable, depending on what you're thinking/talking about. Does that outweigh the con I mentioned? Up to each individual to decide for themselves.

FigurativeVoid 3 years ago |

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 3 years ago | |

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.

davnicwil 3 years ago |

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/

jesuscript 3 years ago | |

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.

blowski 3 years ago | |

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 3 years ago | | |

It means you are popular with the plebs while smart people disagree with you.

Xeoncross 3 years ago |

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.

baby 3 years ago |

Depends what your medium is, and if it’s close to your work. I post on my blog, youtube, twitter, have a podcast, etc. in my field and I’d say…

Pros:

- super helpful to get a job

- great to create an audience if, like me, you need it later to promote a project. my book (real world cryptography) wouldn’t have had so much success if I hadn’t started blogging and tweeting years before even starting writing

- great for “quick thoughts and planting seeds”. You have no idea how much of your thoughts and learnings can actually help people. All the small realizations and things you learn can easily be small blogposts or tweets or podcast eps

- meeting people. If people know you its easier to get to talk to some people, or get invited in working groups or conferences or …

- get accepted at conferences, or for teaching a course, or for writing a book, etc.

- people listen to you. It’s easy to have your voice be drowned in the noise, but when you have a platform people are listening to what you have to say and that’s a great feeling

- some jobs might like the fact that you can be an “influencer”

- it forces you to analyze how you’re expressing yourself and communicating. And this is the best way to improve at these things (and they are extremely valuable skills at work and outside of work)

- people can correct you. When you write wrong things people will often correct you and you’ll learn a lot more than if you had kept your learnings all to yourself

Cons:

- it’s easy to make enemies. The more you share the more you’ll offend. And in these days and age careful if you tweet while under the influence ;) you can get cancelled

- it can get depressing. The whole 24/7 tweeting scene.

- it’s not rewarding for years of work. A blog can only take off after blogging for many many years, and consistently

staktrace 3 years ago |

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 3 years ago | |

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.

throw458 3 years ago | | |

I heartily agree about preferring anonymous conversations.

Though for the first point, personally, I view being “attached” to a particular idea as more of an external problem than internal. An alias lets me consider other ideas or play devil’s advocate or perhaps more importantly, write with less revision than I might require of my public persona, which can be the difference between making a post or deleting another imperfect draft.

I can understand the appeal for a forum operator to lock functionality behind reputation-based systems which dissuade temporary aliases to reduce spam, but I think it is vitally important to have anonymous spaces for conversation.

nicbou 3 years ago |

In the last 12 months, I have met half a dozen people because of my public work. They just reached out by email and we had drinks. I still see most of them.

On the other hand, I don’t like the information asymmetry, especially with regards to hostile, anonymous people. If you’re on the business end of the internet hate machine, you don’t want to give them any ammo.

In meatspace, the possibility of getting punched in the face keeps everyone in check. The internet has no such moderation mechanism. It makes it hard to be open and genuine, because people can come at you with disproportionate hostility and face no consequences. Criticism is often harsh and pointlessly mean.

knaik94 3 years ago |

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.

spondyl 3 years ago |

A fairly interesting paper is "Transparency is Surveillance" which argues that transparency is not inherently good and that for expertise to flourish, it needs some level of privacy.

The author presented the same findings as a talk which you can watch at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcEJY61FKIc

It's a bit abstract in some places but hopefully it'll give you some stuff to think about

morsecodist 3 years ago |

I am not really an expert but I have been thinking about this lately as well. I have done some light blogging and posting online and I have been considering doing more.

A few things that are giving me pause doing public thinking (cons):

- Time: turning a stream of consciousness to something I am comfortable sharing takes way longer than I would expect. I even spend longer than I should making forum posts.

- The internet is forever: when you post something publicly it is there forever. You may change your mind and look inconsistent (I would argue that changing your mind is good but people do get criticism for this kind of thing). Circumstances could also change making you look foolish. This is more of an issue if you become well known or delve into controversial topics.

Some reasons I am considering it (pros):

- Fun: going back and forth on ideas with others can be way more satisfying than thinking alone.

- Holding your thoughts to a higher standard: all of that extra time does result in better thinking. I have even done the exercise of writing out potential blog posts I never share because it forces you to be rigorous and consistent. When you are reading back your own thoughts it is harder to trick yourself. Sharing publicly them gives you access to even more scrutiny. If you are wrong you will find out pretty quickly.

jimmySixDOF 3 years ago |

Ideate in private. Once that is done you can think in public and improve using input. Design by committee is a meme for a reason but ideas are like ships - the safest place may be docked in port, but that is not what ships are for.

zffr 3 years ago |

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.

kayodelycaon 3 years ago |

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.

reidjs 3 years ago |

Cons: coworkers, friends, romantic partners, family may find your half baked, low quality content and judge you accordingly.

pugets 3 years ago |

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.

langsoul-com 3 years ago |

Biggest con of public thinking is the time/opportunity cost. It takes time to write, even more to write something others, who don't have the same context as you, to understand.

Editing is also a pain.

Now that I said that, check out my blog at https://langsoul.com

vlunkr 3 years ago |

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.

atomicnature 3 years ago |

A hard truth is that truths that are difficult to arrive at will not be accepted and appreciated at popular online forums anyway. Worse, such conclusions will be criticized by people who have not put in the time and effort.

Moreover, the incentives for posting in most forums tends to have some sort of up voting mechanism. I find that many time it skews my thinking away from focusing on the boring obvious truth, and rather go on a "interestingness" journey and waste a lot of time.

However, the rare occasions when you find real fellow experts on the topic to discuss with, it is of great value and adds to one's existence and well being.

coverclock 3 years ago |

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.

Evenjos 3 years ago |

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.

blockwriter 3 years ago |

I write literary fiction and have kept a daily diary for the better part of my years spent writing. While the keeping of a diary was initially meant as a private practice, used only to begin my days in consideration of life before I began my fictional efforts, I eventually began to post excerpts from them regularly online and now do so on a twice monthly basis.

Every time I finish a notebook, I go back through it and write the subject of the passages on the cover. I also write the dates of passages I would like to revisit on an index card. When my schedule demands it, working over these passages for public consumption, sometimes days or weeks later, but often months or years later, I am often surprised to discover where the extrapolation of the initial idea leads me. In the moment, it would have been incredibly laborious to achieve the results that the benefit of hindsight, through the twin effects of memory and subconscious processes, makes easy.

I recommend it for all writers of literary works, but I think the process has merit in other domains as well.

drakonka 3 years ago |

I like to think in public about things I've already done, and think in private about things I'm intending to do.

I like blogging about things I've already done because it helps me process and solidify my learnings. Also, explaining something in writing is a great way for me to see what knowledge or other gaps I may have.

But I don't like blogging or even discussing with loved ones my intentions or goals until I have made some concrete progress toward it. I have a tendency to start things and not finish them as excitement wanes, and realized that talking about things while I am excited about them has a negative impact on my drive to actually do the thing. I did not really put two and two together until I saw this talk[0] many years ago and it clicked. So now no matter how excited or motivated I am about a goal or new idea, I try to keep it to myself until I've made some threshold of actual progress.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHopJHSlVo4

thdc 3 years ago |

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.

DoreenMichele 3 years ago |

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.

onion2k 3 years ago |

I used to think posting on my blog was "thinking in public" but no one read my posts so it was pretty private really.

mschoeffler 3 years ago |

The benefits of thinking out loud are massive. So are the costs.

The only way to sharpen your ideas is to find other humans to talk about them with. The subject barely matters - you may be dead wrong or 100% correct, but you can only know once you test it with intelligent people. Plus, you build deep friendships when you're open. I can't tell you how well this has worked for me - better friends, clearer thinking.

The problem is obvious. We live in a judgmental time when it's easy to rub people wrong and lose friends - or even your job. So how do you stay safe?

Protect people (even friends) behind aliases on controversial topics - until you build up mutual respect and trust.

I want to show you what I'm talking about. I'm running a private beta for https://hiweave.com/. If you sign up for an invite, mention Hacker News (I'll put you guys in a group together).

jhunter1016 3 years ago |

I talk about “thinking in public” from a leadership and knowledge sharing perspective within an organization, so this might not be the same angle the OP is considering or asking about. But in a heavily remote world, messaging apps hold the vast majority of our knowledge. It may not be the best model, but it is the dominant one. If the info is there, these apps become powerful knowledge databases for those who know how to use them. If the info is there, company direction and strategy can more easily be understood by a wider audience than just the upper level executives and managers.

I give some specific examples in this blog post I wrote late last year: https://www.polluterofminds.com/thinking-in-public/

smsm42 3 years ago |

Why not both? Think about something privately, then put it out, see how it stands, think a bit more about it, rinse, repeat.

The cons of public engagement is certain percent of people are assholes, and certain additional percent sometimes prefer to play ones online. Normally it's a low level threat, but if you happen to live in the US and tour thinking is particularly divergent from the mainstream with regard to certain set of subjects, it becomes an extremely high-risk activity, which may involve a possibility of financial ruin and/or physical harm. I hope one day we can grow out of this predicament somehow, but currently it is what it is.

The other con of course is that you may find out your thinking is not as good as you thought, and feel bad about it. I think it's better to know, but people may disagree on that.

jhoelzel 3 years ago |

I think one of the current intents of datamining is to blow the annonymity of nicknames away anyway.

The truth is that no matter how many nicknames you go by, there is a strong chance google knows anyway and therefore i treat the internet as such. By now there simply are to many markers to not be able to do this. (still guessing though)

In a not so distant world, i also see AI analysing comments and matching similar people to the point where they will be able to say "welp, these are the same people" too. Especially when i already can tell ChaptGPT to read like shakespear.

This, combined with the fact that i do use my real name with my accounts, just makes me very picky where i sign up. Places like reddit work wonderfully without accounts too.

mschoeffler 3 years ago |

Suppose you could engage in Damore-style public thinking (or anti-Damore style public thinking), without risking professional/social problems. Would your thinking improve from the feedback?

Let's find out. We have a private beta to answer this question. I'd love to see what happens for you guys (note "Hacker News" on the invite request to be placed in a group conversation).

https://hiweave.com/

klabb3 3 years ago |

I’m comfortable thinking in public but less comfortable in personal branding oriented contexts. Remember, there are other avenues than Twitter, with different formats, social contexts and ground rules. Twitter is like the debate club or student council, with the loudest voices, and a narrow Overton window. Combining Twitter’s focus on people and their public achievements with social instincts resulted in basically becoming a social posturing platform. Same with eg LinkedIn. It is possible to operate with different values in any context, but it’s good to be aware of skews, biases and gravitational pull of the medium itself.

In short, don’t be afraid of public thinking, but pick a platform that aligns with your values and goals.

Sophistifunk 3 years ago |

Unless you want feedback, attention, or are trying to build public credibility, there are no benefits and many risks, in a world of shifting goalposts, infinite recall, and constant attempts to hold people in the past accountable to the moral standards of today.

vehemenz 3 years ago |

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 naïveté. Either way, you will be distanced enough from the writing to criticize and strengthen your ideas with ease.

nestorD 3 years ago |

Sharing ideas led to other people playing with them and, sometimes, finding significant improvements you have not thought about. I have seen this being such a benefit that I now never keep an idea to myself.

However, there is value in keeping some ideas secret / private. My preferred approach is to have brainstorming groups and partners in the various domains I am interested in: whenever I have an idea that seems interesting I share it with them (usually one on one as it leads to the deepest dives) and they react to it. They do the same leading to a lot of cross pollinating.

Cardinal7167 3 years ago |

For me, thinking in public is the only way to get quality critical peer feedback.

kuhewa 3 years ago |

Cons of private thinking — I've spent multiple days on mocking up and deciding on the best version of one element of a project. Only to spend 45 seconds describing the issue out loud, dialectically in a tea room conversation, to realise there is a very obvious and simple decision and I had been overlooking the proverbial forest for the trees. It wasn't pointed out to me by my collocutor, just the act of organising the description of the problem and arguments for either version cogently enough to share revealed the solution.

contravariant 3 years ago | |

The real question there is whether you could still have hit upon the solution without thinking about it privately first.

joeamroo 3 years ago |

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)

Baeocystin 3 years ago |

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.

mschoeffler 3 years ago | |

It's possible to avoid the froth - and get the right who. Imagine what could happen if you didn't have to deal with screech.

Baeocystin 3 years ago | | |

I've been lucky enough, and greatly benefitted from, having wonderful whos in my life. Always from face to face, personal interaction, though. Maybe someday we will figure out how to better sort the wheat from the chaff of online discourse. It's an exceedingly difficult problem.

nigamanth 3 years ago |

Pros of thinking in public:

- You may get feedback on the idea you posted, this could from more experienced people than you and people who deal with your idea. - Valuable insights. - See if the idea or your thoughts have already been executed, you can learn a lot from public thinking.

Now of course, if your idea is very good someone who has more resources than you can implement it. So you can publicly think until you get enough knowledge to get a good idea and then privately think about that.

h0p3 3 years ago |

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.

keiferski 3 years ago |

Thinking in public is a paradoxical thing in that you should only do it if you genuinely don’t care what most people think and are okay with 95% of the feedback on your work being negative and useless criticism. That remaining 5%, though, will be very insightful.

In other words, if you can’t handle random anonymous tweets and comments being dismissive or hostile, don’t think in public. Because unfortunately that is the default behavior of most readers.

jpe90 3 years ago |

Blogging has positive in that it’s been very motivating for me to complete and share a couple projects that I otherwise wouldn't have bothered with.

But it’s also humbling, because if you’re not exceptional or writing about topics that most people find interesting, you’re not going to get much of a reception.

I nuked the reddit account I used for sharing posts and I'm planning to archive my blog after I write up a couple topics but it was a worthwhile experience overall.

spritefs 3 years ago |

What's the point of private thinking if it isn't going to find some kind of public manifestation? (whether that's in the form of words, action, or deliberately refraining from the two)

All private thinking really is is the digestion/preparation of the things in public. It's like the morning after a party when you're trying to remember all the stuff that happened, or writing a script before a speech

ngcc_hk 3 years ago |

There is no private language. Hence you can only think in the public. You may say degree of interaction is less say on social media. But that is degree. Ultimately your action and some interaction tell your story. But the key is not your story. As said the electricity is the message. The public is your thinking. You might contribute to it. That is all.

There is no escape to private sphere.

All the above is bull s.

dinkumthinkum 3 years ago | |

Can you explain what that means to regular people?

5tefan 3 years ago |

We are all humans. And talking in extremes here:

Introverts think in private. After that they may share. They need time to think through stuff.

Extroverts think while engaging with others. Sharing supports and facilitates the thought process.

You'll have a different set of pros and cons according to that and where you fall on the scale.

cloudhead 3 years ago |

I mostly think in private, though I code in public. The reason is simple: packaging my thoughts for the public takes a lot of extra time that I'd prefer to spend realizing my ideas. If I need feedback on ideas, I'll bounce it on the handful of people I know and whose opinion I respect.

aizyuval 3 years ago |

It varies. What are you sharing? Are you explaining complex concepts? Are you telling a story? Different people will find different benefits for public thinking.

Personally, small private notes here and there help me ponder without disrupting my stream of thoughts. Without having to… X.

I think both are useful.

motohagiography 3 years ago |

Stupid is fast, so I scale my mind by being wrong in public. The downside is it alienates people who trade on being conscientious, but once you can get them in the rhythm of catching you out, you can add minds to a problem non-linearly.

funnyfoobar 3 years ago |

If you get engagement and constructive criticism, i think "sharing your thoughts" on public forums like Twitter helps. But most of the times people just engage by liking the tweets, i would ideally want comments.

theusus 3 years ago |

Thinking in public will usually lead to evolution of your thought. While they are forgettable when done in private.

It will be better if you get ignorant of public insults.

rlt 3 years ago |

Unfortunately thinking in public can be risky, for example if your views change and/or public sentiment on the acceptability of those views changes.

wesapien 3 years ago |

Timur Kuran and Eric Weinstein talk about this on one of his youtube shows. Timur calls it preference falsification.

scyzoryk_xyz 3 years ago |

Hey, I never actually thought about what I’m doing here as “thinking in public”.

Makes it less of a waste of time somehow…

TechBro8615 3 years ago |

Thinking in private is faster. You don't need to write anything.

swyx 3 years ago |

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.

mmmpetrichor 3 years ago |

Is it a real question? I can't tell if GPT-3 wrote the prompt and only responses are also from GPT-3. Honestly seems like a really strange questions. The question barely even make sense..

RootKitBeerCat 3 years ago |

Question is flawed; thought occurs in the mind: the moment you share that thought you are portentously sharing ramblings of your mond you havent really thought through fully…

(TLDR: if you have a point; make it- thinking out loud sometimes is useful, but rarely in the online forum, unless you’re in DMs or something…)

poszlem 3 years ago |

Some downsides of thinking in public:

* Huge potential for audience capture (https://twitter.com/EricRWeinstein/status/134792427167943065...) if you have an audience

* Huge potential for self-censorship, unless you only "think" about "the correct things"

* Huge potential for getting a lot of negative, unconstructive feedback

* Huge potential for getting taken out of context (you wrote something for your audience, but a person unfamiliar with your writing style comes in and misunderstands you)

In general I would advise against thinking in public, and if you cannot avoid it do so under a pseudonym. If you write about anything important it's quite likely that there will be people trying to tarnish your reputation instead of responding to your thoughts in writing.

I often quote one of the best essays by PG: http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html "What you can't say"

"Suppose in the future there is a movement to ban the color yellow. Proposals to paint anything yellow are denounced as "yellowist", as is anyone suspected of liking the color. People who like orange are tolerated but viewed with suspicion. Suppose you realize there is nothing wrong with yellow. If you go around saying this, you'll be denounced as a yellowist too, and you'll find yourself having a lot of arguments with anti-yellowists. If your aim in life is to rehabilitate the color yellow, that may be what you want. But if you're mostly interested in other questions, being labelled as a yellowist will just be a distraction. Argue with idiots, and you become an idiot.

The most important thing is to be able to think what you want, not to say what you want. And if you feel you have to say everything you think, it may inhibit you from thinking improper thoughts. I think it's better to follow the opposite policy. Draw a sharp line between your thoughts and your speech. Inside your head, anything is allowed. Within my head I make a point of encouraging the most outrageous thoughts I can imagine. But, as in a secret society, nothing that happens within the building should be told to outsiders."

"The problem is, there are so many things you can't say. If you said them all you'd have no time left for your real work. You'd have to turn into Noam Chomsky."

and

"The trouble with keeping your thoughts secret, though, is that you lose the advantages of discussion. Talking about an idea leads to more ideas. So the optimal plan, if you can manage it, is to have a few trusted friends you can speak openly to. This is not just a way to develop ideas; it's also a good rule of thumb for choosing friends. The people you can say heretical things to without getting jumped on are also the most interesting to know."

_8j50 3 years ago |

If you're serious, you should blog and anonymously too if you can. Most of my thoughts are private for reasons you will see below, but then I get the most benefit of being educated and corrected by others when discussing publicly.

Thinking critically (as opposed to just stating what goes in your head) and openly means you will upset people. You will come off wrong in many contexts when participating in discussions as opposed to taking the time to fully state your views and explain your reasoning in a way a wide range of audiences can understand your meaning and intent.

I try to post longer comnents and really think about what I am saying but I have been accused of small things like being snarky or hostile and bigger things like being a communist, trumpist (am neither,far from it), whatever big bad box people think you fit in simply because You didn't forsee that a word or phrase might not translate well to every audience will cause issues.

A good example is when I was talking about neo-colonialism on HN, one guy accused me of being "in trump circles", I am not in any cricles (I don't even vote on purpose), I mean the first time I even heard of the term was when the pope was using it which lead me down a rabbit hole to learn about how many many western ideals and policies (including the censorship circumvention trope popular on HN and tech "circles") are viewed by the rest of the world, including speaking to actual people. But the thing is, my comment is already too long, I couldn't take the time and space on HN to go into all that depth. I mainly rely on replies asking or disagreeing so I can explain specific things.

This has also lead to my account now being restricted so even a post like this taking me at least 30min to write may get canned by auto-shadow-mod "you are posting to fast" . even comments with upvotes are considered by many including dang "low value" so I hope this message from internet jail reaches someone lol.

Anyway, my little complaining aside (sorry). You want to be understood well and upset people less and the best way to do that is in long form.

Back in the days of the forum, I use to spend hours even when I was a teen or in school debating with random strangers. Same on IRC. For a while Twitter and reddit were a good place for discourse. Even random news site comments used to have good discussions. It seems inevitably, people commenting and arguing in bad faith to either troll or just express some meanness or hatred ruin it for everyone.

Now HN and a few other places I won't name have been shielded from all that. But unfortunately, the hostility ,reductivess, intellectual laziness and polarization has infected every possible community or platform outside of a blog. When a blog is posted on HN or similar sites, lazy people who don't read the whole thing and come to conclusions without asking critical questions will downvote it but eventually they will comment and get corrected hopefully which somewhat balances things out, but still it isn't easy.

Outisde of HN as well, I could disagree with any popular view and it really is a shot in the dark whether I will be called a right wing trumpist or a woke liberal. Oh no, it could never be that my intent is not politically grounded but that I am critically examining the subject and forming opinions based on what I know. It is no longer possible to convince me, disagreeing means I am your enemy now. People are less and less interested in changing their mind or my mind, it's all seen as winning and fitting into a political box, even if you actively avoid politics.

Honestly, if you stick to a very technical topic, it isn't so bad. But you still have people that think failing to explicitly declare your political allegiance means you are on their enemy's side. On one hand you really have to address your polarized biases to form any sort of critical opinion but on the other hand if you pick one end of the political spectrum and only slightly state your left/right wing views it will avoid a lot of presumptions and unrelated controversies, it is easier to assume your intent based on the box you belong in than to leave that as an unknown.

My advice is to pick your topics and audience wisely and go for the boring long form blog.

andirk 3 years ago |

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.

dinkleberg 3 years ago | |

They are referring to a different type of public. Blogging and the like.

But now I’m curious. Do baristas get upset if people are spending a lot of time there? I’m not a coffee drinker, so I never partake in coffee shop work. But as someone who has worked in the service industry, I can honestly say I would not have had the slightest care if people are spending all day in the shop. As long as they aren’t causing a scene or holding back from closing down.

andirk 3 years ago | | |

The only issue is when all the space is taken so the next person who shows up can't sit down at all.

Blogging and the like is more publishing than "public" in my opinion.