My own observation has been that people are open to intellectual discussion (your discounting formula is off for x reasons) but not to more concrete practical criticism, or criticism that talks about specific individuals.
That was also Scott Alexander’s point if I understood it correctly.
Here are some differences I noticed between the experience of reading the more specific criminal justice criticism vs. the more paradigmatic structures-and-individualism criticism:
Before reading the specific criticism, I wouldn’t have been able to predict its conclusion. Was this program more effective than other programs? Less effective? But before reading the paradigmatic criticism, I could predict its conclusion pretty well. “We are all more interconnected than we think” is a typical piece of Profound Wisdom, and nobody ever says the opposite.
I can name several people who gain/lose status from the specific criticism, and I expect those people to be upset, push back, or otherwise have strong opinions. I can’t think of anyone like that for the paradigmatic criticism.
The specific criticism carries an obvious conclusion: cancel this one program! (in this case it had already been cancelled, so maybe the conclusion is more like reform various processes to make that happen sooner later on). The paradigmatic criticism is less actionable.
This isn’t to say that paradigmatic criticisms are always bad and useless, and specific criticism is always good.
But the specific claim at the end of Part I above—that the people in power prefer specific to paradigmatic criticism, because it’s less challenging—seems to me the exact opposite of the truth.
My own observation has been that people are open to intellectual discussion (your discounting formula is off for x reasons) but not to more concrete practical criticism, or criticism that talks about specific individuals.
That was also Scott Alexander’s point if I understood it correctly.