The Right to Err Transiently
Dan of Squashed writes:
There are fewer and fewer spaces where it is safe to say idiotic things.Which is a good point. This was written in one context, but I think it applies equally well in other contexts. If one is to learn, one must be able to articulate opinions and say stupid things, so that one may be corrected. In a reasoned debate, the participants will change opinions constantly as they gain new information or assess arguments they hadn’t thought of.
This contrasts with criticisms leveled at, say, politicians who change opinion about something. “Flip-flopper, unprincipled liar!” Well, one thing is saying you’re committed to fighting corruption while taking large sums of money from corporations or individuals in return for promoting their interests, but quite another is holding one opinion, seeing that another opinion is more rational, and switching. Top politicians have a hard time doing that because they will be heavily scrutinized. When the internet archives everything you say over the years and makes searching it easy, that becomes a real problem for you and me.
That’s one of the reasons why I almost never use my full name online. I want the super-power that’s becoming increasingly rare: the ability to shift and change opinion as evidence and arguments are presented to me, without being confronted with my past as if it somehow invalidates my present. Many complain that anonymity online is weak, cowardly, that it just leads to trolling, but really, I want people to judge my present work and not my past opinions, and while I may occasionally be an ass, most of the time, my pseudomity is spent being decent. I think. (By the way, my full name isn’t secret; it’s attached to private emails, for example — if you want it it’s yours, although I can’t think of any reason you’d want it. It’s just not right there in public, on the page.)
Pondering this, I feel lucky having grown up during Internet/digital consumer tech’s emergence, rather than its near-omnipresence. Some of my many ergegious missteps may have been caught in the Web 1.0 wave, but in lo-def and prior to Time Capsules and Facebook mini-feeds. I hope I’m attuned enough now to keep most of my many future egregious missteps similarly obscure. [See also: flip-flopping.]