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0 pointsthrowlaplace6y ago0 comments

Sure okay but you do expect someone somewhere to debate you on it. That the forum ends up being hackernews isn't really significant to me visavis your opinion that some published writing could be free from debate.

> It sucks having to be careful about what you because of what other people will do with it, and the weird debates you'll be forced into as a result.

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tptacek6y ago· 2 in thread

I have just the tiniest sliver of Paul Graham's innate valence with HN, but it's enough to make me pretty empathetic about this problem: there is a pretty strong chance that if I blog something relatively superficial (just because it's on my mind), someone will submit it here. A throwaway I wrote about Javascript Cryptography has been on the front page here something like 5 times, and I've felt like I had to apologize for it each time. It is not a great feeling, and I "blog" less than I'd like to as a result, and, again, I'm not Paul Graham, where literally the simplest thing I could possibly blog about politics ("there is a difference between both-sidesism and moderation") generates a huge front-page thread.

throwlaplaceOP6y ago

i'm not being obtuse but why don't you simply unpublish the post? whatever the reason is (whatever the tangible/intangible benefits conferred upon you for having it remain up) obligates you in direct proportion.

i write math notes for myself that i only publish to a public github repo. the repo is public because it lends me some credibility to have it on display that i study math. if there's an error in them and someone chances upon them and internalizes that error then i am (to a small extent) culpable.

tptacek6y ago

I don't own the post anymore and can't unpublish it. But even if I could: it's annoying that I can't just post my shitty first drafts of things to some random website and not have them get periodically featured on a huge, busy community. That's what blogs are for. I have a backlog of blog posts, about a dozen entries long, none of which are published because I don't feel prepared to defend them here. I guess you can say "good, you have a personal journal". I don't feel great about that.

(And, for the nth time, I have just a teeny tiny sample of the problem Paul Graham has! It's not like what I write is all that popular. Paul Graham has a rabid fan base here.)

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