The Nonlinear Library EA - Focusing on bad criticism is dangerous to your epistemics by Lizka
Mar 16, 2024
11:08
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Focusing on bad criticism is dangerous to your epistemics, published by Lizka on March 16, 2024 on The Effective Altruism Forum.
TL;DR: Really low quality criticism[1] can grab my attention - it can be stressful, tempting to dunk on, outrageous, etc. But I think it's dangerous for my epistemics; spending a lot of time on bad criticism can make it harder to productively reflect on useful criticism.
This post briefly outlines why/how engaging with bad criticism can corrode epistemics and lists some (tentative) suggestions, as I expect I'm not alone. In particular, I suggest that we:
Avoid casually sharing low-quality criticism (including to dunk on it, express outrage/incredulity, etc.).
Limit our engagement with low-quality criticism.
Remind ourselves and others that it's ok to not respond to every criticism.
Actively seek out, share, and celebrate good criticism.
I wrote this a bit over a year ago. The post is somewhat outdated (and I'm less worried about the issues described than I was when I originally wrote it), but I'm publishing it (with light edits) for Draft Amnesty Week.
Notes on the post:
It's aimed at people who want to engage with criticism for the sake of improving their own work, not those who might need to respond to various kinds of criticism.
E.g. if you're trying to push forward a project or intervention and you're getting "bad criticism" in response, you might indeed need to engage with that a lot. (Although I think we often get sucked into responding/reacting to criticism even when it doesn't matter - but that might be a discussion for a different time.)
It's based mostly on my experience (especially last year), although some folks seemed to agree with what I suggested was happening when I shared the draft a year ago.
Some people seem to think that it's bad to dismiss any criticism. (I'm not sure I understand this viewpoint properly.[2]) I basically treat "some criticisms aren't useful" as a given/premise here.
As before, I use the word "criticism" here for a pretty vague/broad class of things that includes things like "negative feedback" and "people sharing that they think [I or something I care about is] wrong in some important way." And I'm talking about criticism of your work, of EA, of fields/projects you care about, etc.
See also what I mean by "bad criticism."
How focusing on bad criticism can corrode our epistemics (rough notes)
Specific ~belief/attitude/behavior changes
I'm worried that when I spend too much time on bad criticisms, the following things happen (each time nudging me very slightly in a worse direction):
My position on the issue starts to feel like the "virtuous" one, since the critics who've argued against the position were antagonistic or clearly wrong.
But reversed stupidity is not intelligence, and low-quality or bad-faith arguments can be used to back up true claims.
Relatedly, I become immunized to future similar criticism.
I.e. the next time I see an argument that sounds similar, I'm more likely to dismiss it outright.
See idea inoculation: "Basically, it's an effect in which a person who is exposed to a weak, badly-argued, or uncanny-valley version of an idea is afterwards inoculated against stronger, better versions of that idea.
The analogy to vaccines is extremely apt - your brain is attempting to conserve energy and distill patterns of inference, and once it gets the shape of an idea and attaches the flag "bullshit" to it, it's ever after going to lean toward attaching that same flag to any idea with a similar shape."
I lump a lot of different criticisms together into an amalgamated position "the other side" "holds"
I start to look down on criticisms/critics in general; my brain starts to expect new criticism to be useless (and/or draining).
Which makes it less likely that I will (seriously) engage with criticism o...
TL;DR: Really low quality criticism[1] can grab my attention - it can be stressful, tempting to dunk on, outrageous, etc. But I think it's dangerous for my epistemics; spending a lot of time on bad criticism can make it harder to productively reflect on useful criticism.
This post briefly outlines why/how engaging with bad criticism can corrode epistemics and lists some (tentative) suggestions, as I expect I'm not alone. In particular, I suggest that we:
Avoid casually sharing low-quality criticism (including to dunk on it, express outrage/incredulity, etc.).
Limit our engagement with low-quality criticism.
Remind ourselves and others that it's ok to not respond to every criticism.
Actively seek out, share, and celebrate good criticism.
I wrote this a bit over a year ago. The post is somewhat outdated (and I'm less worried about the issues described than I was when I originally wrote it), but I'm publishing it (with light edits) for Draft Amnesty Week.
Notes on the post:
It's aimed at people who want to engage with criticism for the sake of improving their own work, not those who might need to respond to various kinds of criticism.
E.g. if you're trying to push forward a project or intervention and you're getting "bad criticism" in response, you might indeed need to engage with that a lot. (Although I think we often get sucked into responding/reacting to criticism even when it doesn't matter - but that might be a discussion for a different time.)
It's based mostly on my experience (especially last year), although some folks seemed to agree with what I suggested was happening when I shared the draft a year ago.
Some people seem to think that it's bad to dismiss any criticism. (I'm not sure I understand this viewpoint properly.[2]) I basically treat "some criticisms aren't useful" as a given/premise here.
As before, I use the word "criticism" here for a pretty vague/broad class of things that includes things like "negative feedback" and "people sharing that they think [I or something I care about is] wrong in some important way." And I'm talking about criticism of your work, of EA, of fields/projects you care about, etc.
See also what I mean by "bad criticism."
How focusing on bad criticism can corrode our epistemics (rough notes)
Specific ~belief/attitude/behavior changes
I'm worried that when I spend too much time on bad criticisms, the following things happen (each time nudging me very slightly in a worse direction):
My position on the issue starts to feel like the "virtuous" one, since the critics who've argued against the position were antagonistic or clearly wrong.
But reversed stupidity is not intelligence, and low-quality or bad-faith arguments can be used to back up true claims.
Relatedly, I become immunized to future similar criticism.
I.e. the next time I see an argument that sounds similar, I'm more likely to dismiss it outright.
See idea inoculation: "Basically, it's an effect in which a person who is exposed to a weak, badly-argued, or uncanny-valley version of an idea is afterwards inoculated against stronger, better versions of that idea.
The analogy to vaccines is extremely apt - your brain is attempting to conserve energy and distill patterns of inference, and once it gets the shape of an idea and attaches the flag "bullshit" to it, it's ever after going to lean toward attaching that same flag to any idea with a similar shape."
I lump a lot of different criticisms together into an amalgamated position "the other side" "holds"
I start to look down on criticisms/critics in general; my brain starts to expect new criticism to be useless (and/or draining).
Which makes it less likely that I will (seriously) engage with criticism o...