I don’t want this norm to be adopted. Sometimes someone has personal information that someone did something, but doesn’t have sufficient evidence to convince others of this. This is very likely when sexual assault happens, for example. It’s also common in cases of e.g. abuse by employers toward employees. Also, some judgments of “this thing is bad” are based on intuitive senses (e.g. aesthetics) that, while often truth-tracking, are difficult to explain to those who don’t have the same intuitive sense.
In cases like this, it’s important for people to be able to state “I have information that leads me to believe X, and my saying this (and giving the details I can) might or might not be sufficient to convince you”. Perhaps others will, upon hearing this, have more relevant information to add, eventually creating common knowledge; and they will also likely have more correct beliefs (and be able to make better decisions) in the meantime, before common knowledge is created.
Ben Hoffman has written on problems with holding criticism to a higher standard than praise:
The problem comes when this standard is applied to critics but not to supporters of EA organizations. This is effectively a tax on internal criticism of EA. If you ask that we impose a higher burden on criticism than on praise for you or your organization, you are proposing that we forgo the benefits of an adversarial system, in order to avoid potentially damaging criticism. If we forgo the benefits of an adversarial system, we can only expect to come to the right answers if the parties that are presenting us with information exhibit an exceptionally honest intent to inform.
If you ask people to hold criticism of you to a higher standard than praise, you are either asserting a right to misinform, or implicitly promising to be honest enough that a balanced adversarial system is not necessary. You are promising to be a reliable, objective source of information, not just a clever arguer.
If you’re asserting a right to misinform, then it is clear enough why people might not want to trust you.
So, the norm as stated seems more likely to serve the interest of “create a positive impression of what’s going on, regardless of what’s actually going on” (i.e. wirehead everyone; this is as scary as it sounds!), than the interest of “share information about what is going on in a way that can at some point lead to common knowledge being created, and the problems being solved”.
This norm could be workable if you can distinguish sharing the information “I believe this person did this bad thing” from “I accuse this person of doing this bad thing” (with the first being a denotative statement, and the second being a speech act).
I think there should be a “tax on criticism”, especially if it is such a cheap one as this—having to explain yourself if questioned is in a sense really just politeness! Default behavior rewards criticism too much, especially in a contrarian community like this one.
Note also that I have this norm in mind for public discourse, which I think some of the more extreme cases you brought up may not be.
So, this depends on what is meant by “explain yourself if questioned”. If I’m allowed to say “my research aesthetics say this project is useless, and I can point to a couple details, but not enough to convince that many others”, or, “I had some negative experiences in relation to this organization that lead me to believe that it’s causing harm, and I can share a few details, but others are confidential” then, fine. But, such justification norms could (and probably should) naturally apply to praise as well.
I think both of those are basically fine. The thing that I’m more worried about is stuff like:
Alice: “This organization is unethical, you shouldn’t support it”
Bob: “Why?”
Alice: *no response*
It’s very understandable that one might not be able to share all their evidence or fully explicate everything, but I think that providing at least some information is important.
I don’t want this norm to be adopted. Sometimes someone has personal information that someone did something, but doesn’t have sufficient evidence to convince others of this. This is very likely when sexual assault happens, for example. It’s also common in cases of e.g. abuse by employers toward employees. Also, some judgments of “this thing is bad” are based on intuitive senses (e.g. aesthetics) that, while often truth-tracking, are difficult to explain to those who don’t have the same intuitive sense.
In cases like this, it’s important for people to be able to state “I have information that leads me to believe X, and my saying this (and giving the details I can) might or might not be sufficient to convince you”. Perhaps others will, upon hearing this, have more relevant information to add, eventually creating common knowledge; and they will also likely have more correct beliefs (and be able to make better decisions) in the meantime, before common knowledge is created.
Ben Hoffman has written on problems with holding criticism to a higher standard than praise:
So, the norm as stated seems more likely to serve the interest of “create a positive impression of what’s going on, regardless of what’s actually going on” (i.e. wirehead everyone; this is as scary as it sounds!), than the interest of “share information about what is going on in a way that can at some point lead to common knowledge being created, and the problems being solved”.
This norm could be workable if you can distinguish sharing the information “I believe this person did this bad thing” from “I accuse this person of doing this bad thing” (with the first being a denotative statement, and the second being a speech act).
I think there should be a “tax on criticism”, especially if it is such a cheap one as this—having to explain yourself if questioned is in a sense really just politeness! Default behavior rewards criticism too much, especially in a contrarian community like this one.
Note also that I have this norm in mind for public discourse, which I think some of the more extreme cases you brought up may not be.
So, this depends on what is meant by “explain yourself if questioned”. If I’m allowed to say “my research aesthetics say this project is useless, and I can point to a couple details, but not enough to convince that many others”, or, “I had some negative experiences in relation to this organization that lead me to believe that it’s causing harm, and I can share a few details, but others are confidential” then, fine. But, such justification norms could (and probably should) naturally apply to praise as well.
I think both of those are basically fine. The thing that I’m more worried about is stuff like:
It’s very understandable that one might not be able to share all their evidence or fully explicate everything, but I think that providing at least some information is important.
Sure, this seems reasonable. I am also worried about content-free praise, but, independent of that, content-free criticism seems good to discourage.