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

You need to know the conversational minefield very well.

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.

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.

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.