I’m very interested to see how this goes. I guess the main challenge with this kind of competition is finding a way to encourage high-quality criticism without encouraging low-quality bad faith criticism.
This is harder than it sounds. The stronger you disagree with someone’s position, the more likely it is to appear as bad faith criticism. Indeed, most of the time you can point out legitimate flaws as everything has flaws if you look at it with a close enough microscope. The difference is that when you think the author is writing something of vital importance any flaws seem triffling, whilst when you think the author is arguing for something morally repugnant or that would have disasterous consequences the flaws scream out at you.
On the other hand, it’s possible to write a piece that satisfies any objective criteria that have been set, yet still engages in bad faith.
Thanks, great points. I agree that we should only be interested in good faith arguments — we should be clear about that in the judging criteria, and clear about what counts as a bad faith criticism. I think the Forum guidelines are really good on this.
Of course, it is possible to strongly disagree with a claim without resorting to bad faith arguments, and I’m hopeful that the best entrants can lead by example.
“Clear about what counts as a bad faith criticism”
I guess one of my points was that there’s a limit to how “clear” you can be about what counts as “bad faith”, because someone can always find a loophole in any rules you set.
I’m very interested to see how this goes. I guess the main challenge with this kind of competition is finding a way to encourage high-quality criticism without encouraging low-quality bad faith criticism.
This is harder than it sounds. The stronger you disagree with someone’s position, the more likely it is to appear as bad faith criticism. Indeed, most of the time you can point out legitimate flaws as everything has flaws if you look at it with a close enough microscope. The difference is that when you think the author is writing something of vital importance any flaws seem triffling, whilst when you think the author is arguing for something morally repugnant or that would have disasterous consequences the flaws scream out at you.
On the other hand, it’s possible to write a piece that satisfies any objective criteria that have been set, yet still engages in bad faith.
Thanks, great points. I agree that we should only be interested in good faith arguments — we should be clear about that in the judging criteria, and clear about what counts as a bad faith criticism. I think the Forum guidelines are really good on this.
Of course, it is possible to strongly disagree with a claim without resorting to bad faith arguments, and I’m hopeful that the best entrants can lead by example.
“Clear about what counts as a bad faith criticism”
I guess one of my points was that there’s a limit to how “clear” you can be about what counts as “bad faith”, because someone can always find a loophole in any rules you set.