THE VALUE OF CRITICISM – AND LAUNDRY. 🙂 One of the ways you can test whether yo

THE VALUE OF CRITICISM – AND LAUNDRY. 🙂

One of the ways you can test whether you are seeking justification for preferences or truth, independent of your preferences, is the degree of criticism you seek. If you’re searching for truth, finding good criticism is like finding a new source of good data. It’s something to be celebrated with excitement. Unfortunately, like good data, good criticism is rare. But in my little world, I see criticism as helping me – as cooperation. As reduction of my labor. As something I do not have to think about, and is therefore off my work load. Or as something I never would have thought of without the help of critics. The problem with criticism, like data from any form of instrumentation, is that it’s loaded and framed by the provider, and unlike instrumental data, to which we applied bias both in the construction of the instrument, and in the interpretation of data, the provider of that criticism is often not only engaged in bias, but either acting as a vector for a lie, or lying himself. The difficulty one faces in celebrating criticism is found only after the rather tedious and often frustrating work of determining whether or not the criticism just includes error and bias, as does all data, but whether or not it includes vectors for lies, or lies. Laundering criticism is dirty painful and socially unpleasant work, and that is why many avoid it. But you either have to do your laundry, or someone has to do it for you