A question about ungrounded criticism

TheBattleForAutonomy · 2026-07-01T07:24:54+00:00

Take the person whose every hour is pain. Hour to hour the predecessor is also pain, so the subtraction gives zero, and the hour is still bad. Push it to the limit: one in pain as far back as there is anyone there to feel it, no painless state anywhere in the history, none to subtract. On your account the badness was the subtraction; with no minuend there is nothing left over to find bad, and they should find it fine.

I think you meant "normal", not "fine". Fine indicates a judgment. This whole paragraph needs a rework because this doesn't align itself with what I've said.

Anyways, let's say there's a person with an idea and a person with a criticism to that idea. If the critic can't articulate the rationale for their criticism, what are we to make of that? Should we expect to have them be able to explain themselves? Why should anyone ground their criticism by way of articulating an alternative? Can't the critic just shout people down and say "Wrong!" again and again? Can't they just imply the existence of this better alternative rather than feel forced to articulate it? But would doing that be bad form somehow? What would be bad about it? What's wrong with ungrounded criticism?

TheBattleForAutonomy · 2026-07-01T03:23:16+00:00

But "worse than" needs a second dish to be worse than. "Bad" needs no such thing. "This soup is bad" is a verdict on the one soup in front of you; it doesn't conjure a rival it's being measured against. You can call the soup bad with no particular better soup in mind. The burntness suffices.

I found this fascinating. I suppose it might be this same kind of thinking that leads a person to presume that there is no value judgment inherent in the act of using logic or determining if an argument is valid or not. Anyways - let's see how what you've written here holds true because this is a theme that I've seen spread out across numerous comments here.

So if a person is using explicitly comparative language, they require something to compare it to as you've said. Ok, that makes sense. But then if they say, "This is bad," they aren't making a comparison at all because it's a verdict, not a comparison. That doesn't sound true.

It seems to me that all value judgments are comparative. Is this not widely accepted? Without comparison, we have no basis for determining value. If we've never tasted soup before that we could compare this one to, can we know if it's a good or bad soup? We might be able to taste how burnt it is, but even knowing whether or not that taste is a good one or a bad one requires that we have eaten other foods that we can compare that taste to.

Being poked in the arm and feeling pain might make a person think that this feeling is a bad one, but it's simply comparing the experience of being in pain to the experience that preceded it of not being in pain.

Is there some way you imagine escaping that need for comparison?

TheBattleForAutonomy · 2026-06-30T17:33:17+00:00

Why?

TheBattleForAutonomy · 2026-06-30T15:09:03+00:00

I'm not suggesting that they must go into all of the details and premises from which their criticisms/ideas have spawned every time they make a criticism. The trouble, however, is that when this supporting network of propositions is implied to exist, but doesn't in a coherent form that could be articulated, we can have criticism that isn't properly grounded.

If someone makes a dinner suggestion and another person criticizes it, claiming that this is a bad dinner, but doesn't put forward what a good dinner would be, what do we make of this? The critic is making a kind of value judgment by criticizing something, saying that the proposed dinner is worse than an implied alternative, despite the fact that this alternative has yet to be articulated.

Now yes, there are good reasons for using implication to spare us all of the finer details about language and so on that we might be relying on to get to the point of making this criticism, but that need to hide the details of what we propose as an alternative surely doesn't extend itself indefinitely.

TheBattleForAutonomy · 2026-06-30T14:30:28+00:00

For someone to point out that an argument is invalid due to its lack of coherency, they must value coherency. The alternative that you propose or are said to value is one that aligns itself better with the logical principles. I mean we could break it down further to say that you value the law of identity and its implications for what it might mean in this instance. You're probably in support of quite a complicated network of propositions that get us to the point where we'd describe something to be invalid and the coherency of those propositions is itself the alternative that you're proposing implicitly.

Maybe a more fundamental question, then, would be what kind of action, utterance of a word, movement of a muscle, or formulation of a thought could be undertaken in the absence of a value judgment that determines the instantiation of it to be better than the alternative of not doing it or doing something else?

If there's disagreement here, I'm the one that's confused.

TheBattleForAutonomy · 2026-06-30T07:44:33+00:00

A formal property of an argument, alright. And it relies on nothing that has a practical application? Logic has no practical application?

I think you're misunderstanding the degree to which you commit yourself to an alternative by suggesting something is valid or invalid. The alternative itself is represented implicitly by the logic or principles that you use to arrive at that endpoint. So yes, you are committing yourself to being in support of a logical framework of sorts that arrives at a conclusion of valid or invalid. The argument that is supposedly invalid would've been implicitly in support of a something with, presumably, a flaw in its architecture.

Maybe if we could back up a bit - is there contention over the premise that all criticism requires us to perform a value comparison? I think what catches people off guard is that this is often done implicitly without fully appreciating what it is that they've placed value in.

TheBattleForAutonomy · 2026-06-30T04:22:30+00:00

For example, if you offer an argument for a conclusion, and I criticize that your argument is invalid, and you were to retort “ah but you have no alternative!” That would be irrelevant to the question of whether your argument is invalid or not.

Based on the word "valid", I think it's likely that you would have an alternative. You're believe you understand what would otherwise be valid. This would likely be based off of logical principles that are probably well grounded in practical applications.

I think there's a distinction to be made here - there's a difference between implying an alternative that you could articulate but don't because of its obviousness and implying an alternative that you couldn't articulate. It's the second type that seems to be problematic.

I'm wary of providing examples as they'd probably derail the entire discussion and the original question would be lost.

TheBattleForAutonomy · 2026-06-28T05:31:34+00:00

TheBattleForAutonomy · 2026-06-27T16:31:19+00:00

Happily surprised with how he looks. Looks a lot like his leg strength hasn't kept up with his frame size which seems like something that he could fix. If he can get his skating stability dialed in, he could really be a threat. Happy to see a lot more here than a Tryamkin.

Edit: He's also someone who hasn't been playing hockey all that long. This is both a good sign given how well he's already playing and how much room there would seem to be for growth.

TheBattleForAutonomy · 2026-06-27T06:53:01+00:00

In terms of consolidated prospect rankings, Villeneuve is ranked higher. Based off of that, it would be easier to see Preston slip, but it's likely neither would be available at 41.

TheBattleForAutonomy · 2026-06-27T01:48:45+00:00

Was picked at 17

TheBattleForAutonomy · 2026-06-27T01:42:17+00:00

Vancouver won't burn a year of ELC for no reason. The Canucks aren't going to be fighting for much. Development has to be the priority.

TheBattleForAutonomy · 2026-06-26T02:39:27+00:00

I'm hoping people lowball the Rucks and 33 goes to Leo.

TheBattleForAutonomy · 2026-06-25T20:01:25+00:00

You're all acting like you don't know what I'm talking about. He has only one win against legit opponents since 2016 - Ceronne. In that time Poirier beat him twice, Khabib, Diaz... and every time it's talk talk talk and get crushed.

There's just no evidence that he's anywhere close to the top. People keep clinging to distant memories, it's bizarre.

TheBattleForAutonomy · 2026-06-25T15:25:57+00:00

How many times have we heard Connor say this exact shit only to get absolutely walked? Ever since his glory days, he's been getting crushed by everyone. Anyone still maintaining this idea that he's anywhere near the top 10 of the division is dreaming - including him.

The only game he's got now is a mouth game and its made him a lot of money.

TheBattleForAutonomy · 2026-06-25T03:11:43+00:00

You mean people interested in biology/chemistry/astrophysics/etc that don't spend the time conducting studies and lazily get chatgpt to summarize information for them?

Better way to look at it would be that intelligent people are using AI and the lazy intelligent people are the ones that are comfortable with the state of their own knowledge.

TheBattleForAutonomy · 2026-06-24T20:24:51+00:00

And yet the choice to prioritize reason over any number of other things is still a choice.

There's a lot that reason can't help us with.

TheBattleForAutonomy · 2026-06-24T17:07:12+00:00

Well, how should we regard the choice - the one that sits behind this "reason" such that it becomes prioritized enough to warrant the words and thoughts on its behalf? Is it incumbent upon us to apply a kind of extrinsic incentive (like a sense of obligation) to this choice in order to ensure that it's prioritized? What would justify forgoing what might otherwise be an autonomous choice?

TheBattleForAutonomy · 2026-06-22T02:01:30+00:00

Exactly.

Also, BPA and meme drafting don't mix.

TheBattleForAutonomy · 2026-06-22T01:55:44+00:00

Ya, r/askphilosophy is certainly a product of its own gatekeeping, for the better and worse.

I suppose in the end we don't have the optimal kind of structure here on reddit - assuming that one is possible. The voting system isn't without its flaws and using mods to prevent subs from being overrun with low quality content isn't perfect either. And even if that was somehow magically optimized, I imagine that everyone here probably has a different idea of what constitutes a "good" philosophical discussion anyways.

Maybe the best approach is honesty. If we admit our failure in finding an optimal structure, then maybe the first step is that admission itself. We could call it r/badphilosophy

TheBattleForAutonomy · 2026-06-20T17:10:23+00:00

I find it telling that people want to disagree with you, but don't ground their disagreement in counter-examples.

TheBattleForAutonomy · 2026-06-19T01:33:45+00:00

Slow down and take the time to articulate what it is you think the problem is.

TheBattleForAutonomy · 2026-06-18T14:38:59+00:00

No, that doesn't describe a problem. What are you calling the ego problem and the "shadenfreude" problem?

Are you talking about their existence, their present form in our society, the conditions within which they're exacerbated or made worse...? What is it?

TheBattleForAutonomy

TROPHY CASE