[fleddr]

I'll specifically go into the pros of private thinking, as that's where you seem to be getting the least feedback.

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.

[rahoulb]

> Intent is preserved

I think this can work both ways.

I keep notes as I'm working (just plans for the day, typing up stuff that I'm doing for a vague timesheet, snippets of code so I can easily copy/paste them and thoughts I have as I'm working on stuff). And I've found that, often, when I revisit those ideas, in the intervening weeks and months they've morphed into something quite different from my original thoughts. Obviously my notes are private, but putting it out there in public means you have to acknowledge the divergence, rather than just sweeping it under the carpet.

[virissimo]

> 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.

[nicbou]

You can’t prevent yourself from speaking in your sleep. That’s how they get you.

[xwkd]

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.

[sandkoan]

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

[seba_dos1]

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.

[Tomte]

> Can anyone really recall a picture "in its entirety"?

It seems many (most?) people can. I cannot, either. Look up "aphantasia".

[100721]

Your link didn't work for me (Chrome on Android). This one does: https://nautil.us/the-kekul-problem-236574/

[fleddr]

I'm also quite paranoid about any chips planted in my brain.

[InCityDreams]

>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.

[Delk]

At the more extreme end there's thought suppression: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought_suppression

I there could be milder versions as well: catching oneself getting into thoughts that lead to something you don't want to think about and consciously divert from that. I think I recognize that.

[noisy_boy]

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.

[burnished]

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.

[fleddr]

It may go even further than that. Some philosophers claim that the idea of a "self" is an illusion. Your brain produces all kinds of thoughts inconsistent with your "stable self" and then "magically" adapts them into something that feels consistent. Leading you to believe that you have an identity. Some type of personality, belief system, what have you.

Your brain is feeding you lies or half-truths all the time. It's job isn't to find objective truth, it's to keep you alive.

[npteljes]

>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.

This one is not true. There are internal mechanisms that filter thoughts, for example, what Freud called the Superego. People limit their inner thoughts in a variety of ways, for example, by developing morality, by which they judge their own thoughts too. They can dissociate, repress or project thoughts, both of which lead to some kind of self-censorship.

[rTX5CMRXIfFG]

And this is why the commenter has bulletpoint number 1. I think that what he really meant here is that while a myriad of factors orient our thinking in certain ways, thinking in private allows you to digress from those patterns and explore edge cases without another person’s judgment.

I frequent HN more than I should, and honestly, pretty much all comment trees follow the same pattern of moving goalposts or making pedantic arguments about how a statistical generalization is not true in all circumstances (duh). It’s all just people missing each other’s contexts (though admittedly some parent comments are really poorly expressed), which is why it’s funny when I come across the occasional “HN is superior and more intelligent than FB/reddit/Twitter” because, really, it isn’t. It’s the same garbage.

[npteljes]

I wrote about this because it was a revelation to me, and to an extent it still is, as I shine light on things in myself that were previously blind spots. I think it's very useful to know the limits of our ability to reflect, because it enables a higher quality of life, explains a good bunch of things around us, and makes us more resilient to manipulation.

Edit: Regarding the quality of comments, I think what you find is that comments are written by people. Different entities, all working to their own goal. I personally value HN the most, Reddit for fun, and Facebook and such are just cesspools really, if you look at high traffic, public discussions.