Thoughts on cheap criticism

It's OK for criticism to be imperfect. But the worst sort of criticism has all five of these flaws:

1. Prickly: A tone that signals a lack of appreciation for the effort that's gone in to presenting the original idea, or shaming the presenter for bringing it up.
2. Opaque: Making assertions or predictions without any attempt at specifying a contradictory gears-level model, evidence basis, even on the level of anecdote or fiction.
3. Nitpicky: Attacking the one part of the argument that seems flawed, without arguing for how the full original argument should be reinterpreted in light of the local disagreement.
4. Disengaged: Not signaling any commitment to continue the debate to mutual satisfaction, or even to listen to/read and respond to a reply.
5. Shallow: An obvious lack of engagement with the details of the argument or evidence originally offered.

I am absolutely guilty of having delivered Category 5 criticism, the worst sort of cheap shots.

There is an important tradeoff here. If standards are too high for critical commentary, it can chill debate and leave an impression that either nobody cares, everybody's on board, or the argument's simply correct. Sometimes, an idea can be wrong for non-obvious reasons, and it's important for people to be able to say "this seems wrong for reasons I'm not clear about yet" without feeling like they've done wrong.

On the other hand, cheap criticism is so common because it's cheap. It punishes all discourse equally, which means that the most damage is done to those who've put in the most effort to present their ideas. That is not what we want.

It usually takes more work to punish more heavily. Executing someone for a crime takes more work than jailing them, which takes more work than giving them a ticket. Addressing a grievance with murder is more dangerous than starting a brawl, which is more dangerous than starting an argument, which is more dangerous than giving someone the cold shoulder.

But in debate, cheap criticism has this perverse quality where it does the most to diminish a discussion, while being the easiest thing to contribute.

I think this is a reason to,  on the whole, create norms against cheap criticism. If discussion is already at a certain volume, that can partially be accomplished by ignoring cheap criticism entirely.

But for many ideas, cheap criticism is almost all it gets, early on in the discussion. Just one or two cheap criticisms can kill an idea prematurely. So being able to address cheap criticisms effectively, without creating unreasonably high standards for critical commentary, seems important.