I think funding good criticism is a really good idea.
As a meetup organizer, I’m becoming very aware that preserving a culture of criticism is in tension with building a strong social fabric, or making friends. Maintaining the culture is really hard. It would help a bit, to have this very clear signal that we materially value good criticism, and that we protect our critics, even though we’re normally so moderate and agreeable when we meet in person, do not be fooled, we know the value of disagreement too.
Another thing is, I think this prize would convince a lot of bad critics to work a little harder, and many of them would consequently turn right into good critics, and, I don’t think it harms our culture of criticism to admit that bad critics cause more harm than good. Bad critics misrepresent things, they make everyone who reads them less informed and more confused, they take up time to respond to. It creates noise and rifts that heal slower than they’re torn. I genuinely wouldn’t wish disingenuous critics on anyone, I wouldn’t even wish them on disingenuous critics (alas, by social adjacency). And, I think this would cure a lot of them. This proposition that you might be able to deliver a criticism so objectively good that the targets of your ire are committed to paying you for it, officially recognizing that you were right and they were wrong, actioning your advice, and changing. Imagine the level of satisfaction you’d get out of that. The world would be made right. A lot of people would be moved by that offer. I don’t know if you’d really need to do anything special to keep the criticism good. On some level, people know whether their criticism is going to be useful to the people they’re talking to, they act like it’s deeply ambiguous and it should not be for us (or anyone) to decide whether they’re criticizing in good faith or not, it really isn’t ambiguous. Bad criticism is trivial to identify: You can tell it’s bad because it does not move you and visibly wasn’t intended to. It will seem to be driven by ignorance or intentional misrepresentation. It’s oriented around lowering the target, rather than reforming them. Good criticism shows time and care and you if you’ve ever heard the litany of gendlin then you’ll have no difficulty taking it with relief. Good criticism liberates you from a mistake that you want to stop making. Bad criticism doesn’t. Even if there were some rigid, “fair” set of rules forcing you to smile and say thank you and pay for bad criticism, this would not make us any healthier, because bad criticism isn’t actionable, it wasn’t intended to be. It has no use.
Seeing that only genuinely good criticism can win these prizes, many would be convinced to put down the whip and pick up the scalpel, be more careful in checking their assumptions, citing sources, arguing for the sake of the target rather than some disinterested audience.
I think funding good criticism is a really good idea.
As a meetup organizer, I’m becoming very aware that preserving a culture of criticism is in tension with building a strong social fabric, or making friends. Maintaining the culture is really hard. It would help a bit, to have this very clear signal that we materially value good criticism, and that we protect our critics, even though we’re normally so moderate and agreeable when we meet in person, do not be fooled, we know the value of disagreement too.
Another thing is, I think this prize would convince a lot of bad critics to work a little harder, and many of them would consequently turn right into good critics, and, I don’t think it harms our culture of criticism to admit that bad critics cause more harm than good. Bad critics misrepresent things, they make everyone who reads them less informed and more confused, they take up time to respond to. It creates noise and rifts that heal slower than they’re torn. I genuinely wouldn’t wish disingenuous critics on anyone, I wouldn’t even wish them on disingenuous critics (alas, by social adjacency).
And, I think this would cure a lot of them. This proposition that you might be able to deliver a criticism so objectively good that the targets of your ire are committed to paying you for it, officially recognizing that you were right and they were wrong, actioning your advice, and changing. Imagine the level of satisfaction you’d get out of that. The world would be made right.
A lot of people would be moved by that offer.
I don’t know if you’d really need to do anything special to keep the criticism good. On some level, people know whether their criticism is going to be useful to the people they’re talking to, they act like it’s deeply ambiguous and it should not be for us (or anyone) to decide whether they’re criticizing in good faith or not, it really isn’t ambiguous. Bad criticism is trivial to identify: You can tell it’s bad because it does not move you and visibly wasn’t intended to. It will seem to be driven by ignorance or intentional misrepresentation. It’s oriented around lowering the target, rather than reforming them. Good criticism shows time and care and you if you’ve ever heard the litany of gendlin then you’ll have no difficulty taking it with relief. Good criticism liberates you from a mistake that you want to stop making. Bad criticism doesn’t.
Even if there were some rigid, “fair” set of rules forcing you to smile and say thank you and pay for bad criticism, this would not make us any healthier, because bad criticism isn’t actionable, it wasn’t intended to be. It has no use.
Seeing that only genuinely good criticism can win these prizes, many would be convinced to put down the whip and pick up the scalpel, be more careful in checking their assumptions, citing sources, arguing for the sake of the target rather than some disinterested audience.