I note that most critics of cousin_it’s recent proof (to pick a recent example) were themselves wrong. I think we can expect the typical critic to be wrong, for these reasons:
People tend to be biased towards believing ideas that, if widely accepted, would elevate their own social status.
People are often not smart enough to see the inherent logic in the thing that they’re criticizing. This may be a proof, or a social institution (such as the markets that Marxists criticize) that has has been designed or evolved to serve vital functions.
People overestimate their own abilities. When they fail to see an inherent logic in something, they often erroneously infer that such logic doesn’t exist.
So I would qualify your conclusion a bit: let’s not encourage all criticism blindly, let’s encourage only correct criticism.
Perhaps several of the paragraphs in the post should have “employing heuristics to identify the correct contrarian cluster” tacked on to the end of them.
I note that most critics of cousin_it’s recent proof (to pick a recent example) were themselves wrong. I think we can expect the typical critic to be wrong, for these reasons:
People tend to be biased towards believing ideas that, if widely accepted, would elevate their own social status.
People are often not smart enough to see the inherent logic in the thing that they’re criticizing. This may be a proof, or a social institution (such as the markets that Marxists criticize) that has has been designed or evolved to serve vital functions.
People overestimate their own abilities. When they fail to see an inherent logic in something, they often erroneously infer that such logic doesn’t exist.
So I would qualify your conclusion a bit: let’s not encourage all criticism blindly, let’s encourage only correct criticism.
Perhaps several of the paragraphs in the post should have “employing heuristics to identify the correct contrarian cluster” tacked on to the end of them.