essays/Essay 01DoctrineAn experiment
Why harald.bot exists
Publishing a life like a code repository sounds vain. I think it is the cheapest way to be wrong less often. Here is the test.
Question: Why publish a life like a code repository?
AHistoryv1.04 SepPublished. repository keeps every version of a thing, each with a date and a reason. Most of us keep our opinions the other way: one copy, overwritten in place, no history. You cannot see what you used to think, so you cannot see how often you were wrong.
Hypothesis
If I keep my work where anyone can read it, dated and versioned, I will be wrong less often within a year, and I will notice sooner when I am.
Postulate
Being wrong in private costs nothing. Nobody sees the old version, including me. A public version with a date on it costs a little to be wrong about, and what costs something gets attention.
Effect
If that holds, it should show in the changelog: fewer reversals of the same kind, a shorter gap between a mistake and its patch, fewer claims I never come back to check.
Experiment
The site is the protocol. Every essay shows its version and its history. An opinion that changes gets a patch, and the old version stays readable. Every Monday the changelog says what moved. Every claim worth a number gets one, like the one at the foot of this page.
What it is
Not a diary, and not a portfolio. A diary has no reader to keep it honest; a portfolio keeps only the wins. This is closer to a lab notebook11In a lab notebook every page is dated and nothing is torn out. A correction goes beside the mistake, never over it. Same rule here. left open on the bench by the door.
1In a lab notebook every page is dated and nothing is torn out. A correction goes beside the mistake, never over it. Same rule here.
Evidence
None yet, and that is the honest state of version 1.0. The first evidence will be the changelog itself: how many patches, how many reversals, how long from the wrong number to the right one. I will publish the count whether it flatters me or not.
Conclusion
Provisional, as it should be. I publish because a version I can see is a version I can be wrong about, and being wrong in public is the fastest correction I know. If in a year the changelog shows that nothing moved, the experiment failed, and this page will say so.
Harald