Let Other People Be the Judge
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~ongoing to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- —
Quirke had a law degree, no history qualification, and an anonymous account with a picture of Plato. His answer to the credibility problem is to outsource the verdict. You cannot decide in advance whether you are entitled to write about something; only readers can, and if you are wrong they will tell you within minutes. He treats that brutal correction as a research tool rather than a threat — being publicly wrong forced him to go away, read properly and come back better, which private drafts never did. He also points out that credibility is unchanged by audience size: writing to a million people, a thousand, or nobody says nothing about whether you know your subject. The counterweight is a personal filter — publish only what you would stand by — after which praise and abuse both stop mattering.
Origin
Extracted from Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal
How to run it
- 1
Publish before you feel qualified
If something interests you, start writing about it publicly, however far from the truth you might be, because otherwise you never will. He notes the credibility question is identical whether the audience is a million, a thousand or nobody.
Pro tip Anonymity or a functional name can lower the stakes enough to start — his was simply a literal description of what he was offering.
- 2
Hand the credibility verdict to readers
Stop adjudicating your own authority. The ultimate test of credibility is how people respond to it; if they do not like it, they will tell you. That converts an unanswerable internal question into an external, observable one.
- 3
Treat public correction as free research
Early on he wrote things people told him were plainly wrong. He went away, researched properly, and got better. Writing an essay for yourself and leaving it for two weeks produces nothing comparable, because nobody raises the stakes.
Pro tip Log every correction you receive and read around it before your next post on that subject.
Watch out Being told you are wrong immediately and publicly is genuinely frightening; the tool only works if you stay in the loop rather than retreating to private drafts.
- 4
Write for yourself first
He asks aspiring writers who they are writing for and answers, for himself. He picks subjects he is personally curious about — the real life of Commodus, the Eiffel Tower — rather than trying to guess what an audience needs.
Pro tip Aim for work that is useful, interesting and beautiful, starting with whether it is those things to you.
- 5
Apply the stand-by-it filter, then ignore the reaction
Before publishing, ask only whether you can say you stand by it. Once that is true, both the pile-ons and the praise become irrelevant to the decision, and nothing online can knock you off course.
Pro tip 'Reasonable' is a workable bar — Ali cites Cal Newport telling himself a book only needs to be reasonable, the next one can be good.
Watch out Do not let the good feedback set the standard either; he treats compliments and abuse as the same category of noise.
In the wild
In the early days of the account he wrote things about art and history that readers told him were flatly wrong, sometimes bluntly. Rather than deleting or retreating, he went away, researched the subject properly and returned with better material. He describes the effect as a feedback loop: the internet raises the stakes, and the raised stakes force the improvement that private writing never demanded of him.
→ Improvement measured in weeks rather than years, with no formal qualification in the subject.
Someone quote-tweeted him saying this dude should be banned, and the quote tweet collected around 95,000 likes. Others have told him his writing changed their lives. He treats both as things to put out of his head, because the only question that governs whether he publishes is whether he can say he stands by the piece.
→ He kept the daily cadence through both extremes of reaction.
Common mistakes
Waiting for a credential before you start
He argues the credential question is unanswerable from the inside and identical at every audience size. People who have done well at school are especially prone to wanting the badge first and the work second.
Treating corrections as attacks
The immediate, unforgiving response of the internet is the mechanism that makes you improve fast. Reading it as hostility rather than data removes the only advantage of publishing in public.
Letting praise decide what you write next
He says you have to forget what anybody else is saying, good or bad. Chasing the applause is the same error as fearing the criticism, and both replace your own judgement.
From the transcript
“because the ultimate test of credibility is how people respond to it”
“if you say anything slightly wrong on the internet everyone will let you know immediately”
“if you're happy with it if you can put something online write something and say I stand by this then you'll be fine”
From the episode
How To Build A 1.5 Million Following As An Online Writer - The Cultural Tutor
The Cultural Tutor