41–50 of 176 posts
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.
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.
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.
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."
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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. :(
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 thin…
Note, edited and redone is fine. Rehearsed is also fine. I just don't think all things should have to be. Which is why I say I wish it were more allowed.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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. :(
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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. :(
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…
* 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."