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

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

#111

Post by burnished »

InCityDreams wrote: post #106
virissimo wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

>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.

Sure. I used to play a game with friends called "Rule number one is 'dont visualize', rule number two is 'dont visualize'" where we would make up awful shit and the only defense was to not think about it.

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

#112

Post by crackercrews »

rainsford wrote: post #80
tlb wrote: post #2

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.

Maybe I'm thinking about this wrong, but getting a lot of angry feedback from what you consider to be axiomatic truths seems like a useful benefit to thinking in public. Lots of topics might attract the occasional troll or disagreement from certain corners, but when your thinking regularly draws the kind of widespread condemnation I suspect you're talking about, a reasonable person might consider how "probably true"…

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

I recall that it was mostly about predisposition and preference, not ability. It was certainly spun in the way you describe, but I'm surprised to see that take here. The memo was thoroughly dissected on HN.

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

#113

Post by burnished »

ifyoubuildit wrote: post #110
rainsford wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm thinking about this wrong, but getting a lot of angry feedback from what you consider to be axiomatic truths seems like a useful benefit to thinking in public. Lots of topics might attract the occasional troll or disagreement from certain corners, but when your thinking regularly draws the kind of widespread condemnation I suspect you're talking about, a reasonable person might consider how "probably true"…

> 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.

I cant be arsed, here is a link to the text in an article, go for it https://gizmodo.com/exclusive-heres-the-full-10-page-anti-di...

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

#115

Post by Baeocystin »

mschoeffler wrote: post #83
Baeocystin wrote: post #18

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 fu…

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.

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.

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

#116

Post by kirso »

mmaunder wrote: post #93

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 w…

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?

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

#117

Post by kirso »

sysadm1n wrote: post #5

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 t…

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

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

#118

Post by noisy_boy »

InCityDreams wrote: post #106
virissimo wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

>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.

This is purely subjective, not sure if others share the feeling: there is a sense of "pre-thought", like hairs standing on your neck in the anticipation of something. I have stopped at that point and diverted my mind to something else to avoid the full formation/visualization of a thought that was on its way and I didn't want to fully experience it.

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

#119

Post by seba_dos1 »

sandkoan wrote: post #79
xwkd wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve found this to be profoundly true. I’m embarrassed by the number of times I’ve been taught by a dream what I fail to express in words.

There might be a reason for that: https://nautil.us/issue/47/consciousness/the-kekul-problem .

Fascinating article, but I'm surprised at how non-relatable it is to me in some places where it clearly was supposed to be. For example:

> We can see this in dreams. Those disturbing dreams which wake us from sleep are purely graphic. No one speaks.

Either I'm misunderstanding something, or that's not what I have (ever?) experienced. My dreams (and nightmares) are stories; people talk to me and I talk to people there. I "hear" my thoughts forming into words as usual. Sometimes I may see myself from a third person perspective, or there may be some unspecified narrator, or perspective may suddenly change from one to another... but there sure is language, there are sounds, there are thoughts and it's definitely not "purely graphic".

Other people often describe their dreams as similar "stories", so why does the article seem to assume that no one speaks there? I never heard someone describing their nightmare as just "falling" or "snakes eating their tails", but rather something like "we were at this event together and you were very mean to me and my parents that somehow appeared there as well were even worse and then I suddenly found myself driving a car and crashed".

Movies also seem to depict dreams in this way, and there are common tropes such as "this was all just a dream" or dreams where you dream of waking up and starting your day as usual, so what's up with this paragraph? Does the author only have non-verbal dreams?

Another example:

> A picture can be recalled in its entirety whereas an essay cannot.

Can anyone really recall a picture "in its entirety"? I can recall a ghastly thing that has some overall characteristics of the whole picture. No details whatsoever except some specific things that somehow caught my attention. This is absolutely not unlike an essay, which I'm also able to recall in general ideas and maybe some single phrases that caught my attention. I may learn to remember and recall a specific highly-detailed picture if I put a lot of conscious effort into it, but I can also learn to recall an essay the very same way. Why does the article assume that one is obviously not like another?

Anyone else had this kind of cognitive dissonance while reading this article? (there's a working link in a sibling comment) It seems to somewhat undermine several of the points it makes, so I'm not sure what to think about it.

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