The sources people diminish and dismiss - like campaign books written by candidates and speeches given by candidates - are much better than people give them credit for. […] Because one bias we have in the press - and I think people reading the press - is the idea that secret knowledge, insider knowledge - the thing somebody said on the hot mic - is more valuable than the thing they said in the highly vetted speech they gave in public. And my belief is exactly the opposite, and I’ve watched this be true over and over again.
It is what people say in public that matters. What they say in private matters a lot less. People shape themselves to their audience much more in private. Whereas the thing they say in public reflects coalitionally (sic) - in their sense of the public - what they think they can actually do. Because what they’re going to do is going to have to be coalitional.
(from the 15min mark in the podcast)
- Transparency breeds reliability: In both politics and software, openly shared information often proves more dependable than hidden knowledge.
- Public discourse shapes outcomes: Just as open-source contributions shape software, public political statements shape policy directions.
This is another reason to work in public.