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Philosophical question: If getting something wrong, is it better to do so in public or in private?

I’ll explain the context later, but this question is raised by a newly-suggested change in the policy of part of the British public sector.

If an individal gets something wrong, then he is probably more likely to acknowledge his error and correct it in private. In public life, is not the opposite inevitable?

Does not matter whether it's a public or private, but the audience that hears and the response to the correction.

A stadium of people who don't know or a table of four that are experts... Both show both grand and small scales with quite different reactions to a wrong statement.

Better for whom? The party making the error or those who have the opportunity to observe it?

Better for the quality of public policy.

In private. The public, led by the media, are incapable of arriving at sound policy decisions as they allow emotion to get in the way of reasoning.

Putting it another way, given that whenever you read in the press about something of which you have some knowledge, it is wrong, would you ever be wholly truthful to questions in the public arena. Whatever answer you give will be twisted out of recognition. You will say whatever you think will produce the right outcome.

If questioned in private by your peers, or your conscience, can you, in all conscience, be less than truthful?

jdaw1 wrote:Philosophical question: If getting something wrong, is it better to do so in public or in private?

I’ll explain the context later, but this question is raised by a newly-suggested change in the policy of part of the British public sector.

Perhaps I'm being too literal, but when you say "getting something wrong" and then asking about the venue, it implies that you already know that you're "wrong". Please give me a little more context...

Literal Man
Rich

So a central bank. that is, the sole issuer of some currency, decides that its ‘policy interest rate’ is now 4.50%, as a randomly-chosen example. (Doubters will be astonished to learn that there is such a central bank.) It now needs to make that interest rate happen: it needs to borrow or lend or sell or buy to make that the market rate, howsoever defined. If that central bank is going to choose a scheme of implementation that is [expletive deleted], should it choose a scheme in which its incompetence is public, or private?

jdaw1,

Wow; that is indeed a nice little quandary!

On one hand, they could choose a scheme in which their incompetence is held private, but ultimately, due to the frictionless aspect of markets (I know I'm treading on thin ice there as there are probably countless examples where that's not true, but I'm thinking in terms of "westernized" economies (gawd, that smacks of hubris doesn't it?) and ultimately such dunderheadedness would come under scrutiny and be ushered center stage.

On the other hand, they could suck it up and admit to their error (most likely blaming it on a low-level bureaucrat or a "computer" glitch) and then set about fixing their error.

The beauty of your question is that each of our "philosophies" is most likely different than the perpetrators in your example. I'd say that my prediction as to what they would do is the keep it private option, which is opposite of what I'd recommend.

What's your philosophy drive you towards in terms of an approach?