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Comment by tmoertel | Hacker News Reader

> Please, no. Don't blog about things you don't understand yet.

Do you really mean this? Or do you mean "When you blog, be honest. Don't pretend to understand things you don't."?

Blogging about things you are learning about, especially if you invite feedback, is a great way to learn and to build a shared understanding within a larger community.

But I agree 100% on the fake-it-till-you-make-it posts on blogs and LinkedIn. That stuff is a blight on the web.

ADDED a concrete example: Consider this post: https://blog.moertel.com/posts/2026-07-23-on-the-nature-and-.... Do you think that posts like this are useful? Or net harmful?

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"Honesty is a skill most people don't appreciate." This phrase starts an excerpt from a Piter Ralston interview that was one of turning points for me. I was caught by the word "skill"; not "virtue", as honesty normally called, but "skill", something from an entirely different area, as I thought. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TvZlpKT2ag).

I agree as long as you are very upfront about it being a learning/stream of conciousness blogpost, then it should be fine to watch how someone's learning journey progresses.

The author does outline the steps they take to make it clear

> Third, I try to make it clear on my blog who I am and what my credentials actually are. Even if it’s not explicitly described in the post, I have my real name and resume available on my /about page, so I don’t think a careful reader could be easily fooled into thinking I’m an expert on 19th-century England or space physics or LLM economics or anything like that.

If however that part is hidden and it is some confidently incorrect or pseudo guru type of post that is polluting the web with misinformation, then that is a different story.

Maintaining a high signal-to-noise ratio is important to some people, and they may completely disregard the musings of people outside their field of expertise.

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