Being Wrong in Public

We can all make mistakes, but not all mistakes have the same weight. Each person has different responsibilities, different tasks, roles. Therefore, the impact of a mistake can't be untangled from the person. If we go one step further, and start learning in public , such as what I am doing now, we open the door to anybody in the entire world to call out on our mistakes.

If I make a mistake in private, and no one realizes but me, does it actually count as a mistake? How self-aware and self-correcting can be actually be when that mistake is abstract? Sometimes it is not about a specific, undeniable fact, but about moral concerns that we can only understand when discussing. The more we open ourselves, the quicker we can improve, but also the path becomes riskier.

This is especially true in these internet times, in which we have no right to be forgotten. Whatever I write here will probably be stored forever. The algorithms will take care of parsing my words and making a profile of me. Probably they already know the mistake I will make, not just the ones I did already and I'm not aware of. Not only being wrong, but just being public has a big cost ¹ .

And besides the algorithms, real-people can still find what I thought, what I did, and be merciless about it. Some specific, joyful, things that happened when I was younger and got some media attention, still surface in un-expected situations.