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

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.

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.

>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.

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.

> posting that he thought women were genetically inferior as software engineers.

Is that what he posted? Do you have some quotes?

Edit: if this is not in fact an accurate representation of what happened, it makes a good example of one of the cons of thinking in public: you may be misinterpreted and/or misrepresented forever after if you reach a large enough audience.