Thank you, this is a really good point. By ‘critical’ I definitely intended to convey something more like “beginning with a critical mindset” (per JackM’s comment) and less like “definitely ending with a negative conclusion in cases where you’re critically assessing a claim you’re initially unsure about”.
This might not always be relevant. For instance, you might set out to find the strongest case against some claim, whether or not you end up endorsing it. As long as that’s explicit, it seems fine.
But in cases where someone is embarking on something like a minimal-trust investigation — approaching an uncertain claim from first principles — we should be incentivising the process, not the conclusion!
We’ll try to make sure to be clear about that in the proper announcement.
Thank you, this is a really good point. By ‘critical’ I definitely intended to convey something more like “beginning with a critical mindset” (per JackM’s comment) and less like “definitely ending with a negative conclusion in cases where you’re critically assessing a claim you’re initially unsure about”.
This might not always be relevant. For instance, you might set out to find the strongest case against some claim, whether or not you end up endorsing it. As long as that’s explicit, it seems fine.
But in cases where someone is embarking on something like a minimal-trust investigation — approaching an uncertain claim from first principles — we should be incentivising the process, not the conclusion!
We’ll try to make sure to be clear about that in the proper announcement.