Studying in Public
On writing while still learning, and why the half-finished draft is the honest one.
Everything on this site is written by someone who is still learning the thing he is writing about. I want to defend that, because the alternative — waiting until I am sure — means never publishing at all.
The finished draft is a kind of lie
A polished essay hides its own history. It presents a conclusion as if it arrived whole, when in fact it was dragged out of confusion over weeks. The half-finished draft is more honest: it shows the seams, the places where I am still deciding.1
Learning in public is not new, and it is not only humility. It is a bet that thinking out loud, and being corrected, is faster than thinking in private and being right.2
Why I keep the citations
If I am going to be wrong in public, I would at least like to be wrong traceably. That is what the footnotes on this site are for: every claim I lean on has a source you can check, and every place I am guessing, I try to say so.
The bud is not the flower. But it is not nothing, either.