I wasnt born with perfect knowledge. In fact, as I learn more about things, I often change my opinion about those things.
What is the inflection point where you figure out your opinion changed? You could be talking, and that does happen; but generally speaking it happens when you're writing.
>I suppose this is an ontological question of... does it matter?
What also matters greatly is that your writing has to be allowed to be wrong. The consequence of imperfect knowledge is that you're going to be wrong.
A key problem in social media is that they are designed to censor people. By censoring, all sides lose the opportunity to improve and understand. It's very important to get away from any censorship.
> The consequence of imperfect knowledge is that you're going to be wrong.
How would you even know? Does breaking your thoughts and experiences into discrete signals help you, as an author, understand your own biases and why they are valid or not?
I suppose a tangential question then is, why publish? Is there value in putting ideas into the world beyond entertaining/entraining an audience or having your ego stroked? Is publishing a self-sacrificing act of, here is where I am at, perhaps it will provide some value to you (the audience) or, perhaps you will tell me (the author) what I'm not seeing?
Here's the absolute beauty of this. Lets generate an example.
I go on r/python and ask, "How do I access json data from requests library?" then give an example. Perhaps the greynoise community api? simple data = json.loads(response.text) sort of situation. You're going to get 2 comments. 1 comment calling you an idiot, and the other trying to help you deal with json as a dict.
Flipside, you go on r/python and say, "python cant handle json data, loading up as dict is inefficient" You're going to have 200 comments from experts trying to prove you wrong. You will have many elegant and efficient answers that you can choose from. About 150 of them will be people calling you an idiot.
>I suppose a tangential question then is, why publish? Is there value in putting ideas into the world beyond entertaining/entraining an audience or having your ego stroked?
Very frequently you dont publish. Being wrong on the internet is fantastic. Do not expect an audience or to have your ego stroked. Expect flamethrowers aimed at you.
>perhaps you will tell me (the author) what I'm not seeing?
He who asks a question is a fool for a minute; he who does not ask is a fool for life.
dimitrisnl•8mo ago
squircle•8mo ago