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Comment by polishdude20 | Hacker News Reader

I often notice when I start writing on a particular topic, I learn more about my thoughts and opinions of it and realize my thoughts are wrong or not really novel. Halfway in I give up since I feel like, "oh, this actually isn't really adding anything new to the conversation". Then I leave with a new humbleness about my beliefs but also a sense of "when am I actually going to know enough to warrant writing about it?".

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That's awesome! If only most people would do that, I think the internet would be a much more entertaining and enlightening place.

Here's the thing: write that. Go meta, just a little, and write about your journey. "I thought this, but then I found out that, and now my questions have evolved thus..."

I think it was Orson Welles who, when somebody asked him if they could write his biography, said, "No, because it will be false. You may write the story of your attempt to discover the truth of my life."

Coming from the guy who made the best biopic movie of all time, I would expect nothing less.

It also seems likely that that idea is also not novel, so that the previous poster wouldn't want to blog publicly about it.

You've gone too meta. ;-)

You can add tremendious value just by publishing your research and linking to the sources, even if you have not added anything, those hours you spent searching - that your readers dont have to, and likely your readers dont have the same experience as you, so they wont be able to read the sorces critically. So by not adding anything, you can still save someone years of time.

There is also nothing wrong with serving good knowelage, even if you can find the information somewhere else. Maybe your source is 10 years old, what has happened since? Or maybe its hard to understand for laymen. Or maybe the other sources will fall off the web, great websites disappears in the thousands every day.

Maybe someone is looking for a tech, but there's little info out there, even if the i info is good, it can still be dismissed. Help spread the knowledge.

Then there's the noise to signal problem. Your blog will be a light beacon - for others to navigate around all the crap.

I struggle with this too, but then I think on how many of the blogs I read basically say the same thing over and over again, or just rephrase ideas from other places.

When you're familiar with an idea, it seems to you like it's obvious and it's mentioned everywhere, but there are also lots of people out there for whom it will be new. Maybe you aren't the first one to say it, but you're the first one they heard it from. You'll inevitably put your own spin on it, too. I've been working on convincing myself that it's not necessary to come up with some completely novel thought that nobody ever thought before in order to just post something. Practically nobody does that.

I am similar but I would suggest that you could reframe your post. "I started this post with the intention of... and then realised that... (The idea is not a new one/I was wrong/changed my mind because/the idea doesn't make sense etc)." You could even link back to more informative resources on the topic.

Not everything has to be new or novel. You may add to the discussion and enhance it by writing about what informed your change of heart.

thats a great mindset, but its also funny because a lot of blog posts that do well are about rehashing basic things like "why open offices suck", or "why i chose node instead of ruby"

Yeah and when I think about writing about rehashing basic things, I realize why those basic things are so prevalent and why they actually shouldn't be rehashed. It's like a call to enlightenment.

The end result of any good writing process is a writer who does no longer need to write it in the first place.

What about when I go through this process so fast that I don't even need to write about it to realize I know nothing?

I'm 26 and I see people writing about stuff that are much younger than me and I still think "I know nothing". Maybe I have a huge case of imposter syndrome?

I have this happen too. What this means at least for me, is that I have dozens of little ideas of things to write about, usually after I’ve seen that I’ve encountered it multiple times, I really think I have a position on it, and I want to really see where they would go (those who know me on the site may have some good guesses as to what I currently have stashed for this). And then I stick that idea in a little list I call “future blog posts” and slowly add ideas to them over months (note I have not actually written anything for the blog post yet!) until they are polished the key points I really want to include and a coherent story that I want to tell with them. Then I sit down and write them, and by that time I’m very confident of which way I’m going, the rebuttals and my responses to those just flow naturally, and I generally keep that position in the future.

That happens to me too. You really thing you have something interesting to tell, and then bam, just a silly thought... good that I realized that before publishing it.

This is me, but for writing and also for business ideas.

I'm curious what your silly thoughts are. How do you know that I will share your judgement of what a silly thought is? What is a silly thought to you after writing something down might be of interest to a random internet user. Is it not presumptive to assume that everyone else will share your judgement?

That's a good point. I sometimes get a feeling that only an idiot would think my thoughts were good and most people are not idiots so whatever I write about won't be useful.

I look at it as a writing exercise along the lines of "you remember 60% of what you hear and 90% of what you had to research and write". Yeah, your article probably isn't going to catch fire and open a bunch of eyes. But the exercise of writing it almost certainly improved your understanding of the problem space, so if it ends up being useful to someone or gets you some small amount of clout that's a bonus.

I'm the same way, I remember getting that feeling of sudden understanding right at the end of writing an essay in school. But I no longer had any time left to actually present my new found understanding.

On the other hand, writing things down or explaining them is a good way to find flaws in your understanding.

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