Criticisms, publishing, and political opinions.
A few quick points.
Criticisms
I like criticisms. If I ever say something incorrect, illogical, or unfair, then I want to know about it. Criticisms allow me to correct errors and apologize for unfair accusations.
Of course, criticisms need to be constructive, specific, and thoughtful. A criticism can't just be: “It sucks. I hate it.” That's not really a criticism. That’s just a random opinion. And I can’t respond to random opinions.
Also, I don’t take “You’re just presenting ideas that Chomsky and others have already expressed” to be a criticism. Different articles have different purposes. Some articles are just summaries of ideas that others have presented. Which is fine.
The article that I wrote about “theory” presents nothing new. But it presents substantive points. Substantive points that I felt had never been brought together into one clear article. And substantive points that “theory” proponents have never addressed, to my knowledge, to this very moment (I’m still waiting).
Publishing
You might argue that it’s wrong for me to publish first and correct later. Shouldn’t I put my articles through the gauntlet before I publish them? That’s a fair point. I always have to make the judgment call as to when a piece has been tested enough that it’s responsible to publish it.
The “theory” piece is rock-solid, to my knowledge. I await criticisms. If there are any serious criticisms, then I’ll make corrections and self-reflect.
Political Opinions
Recently, I had a conversation with someone about political opinions. I asked him:
Given that we all have finite time and energy, when is it OK to form a political opinion on a matter?
Given that we all have finite time and energy, when is it OK to refuse to subject a political opinion that you hold to serious, thorough, and deep scrutiny?
Does it make sense to ignore the political opinions of people who haven't published their political opinions, given that these people may well have no interest in supporting or defending their political opinions, so their political opinions could be totally baseless?
He responded:
You have to make judgments about what seems plausible—we do that all the time. It is unavoidable. I don’t worry about what is published—that is a very low and largely worthless bar. When considering an argument you have to look at whether the evidence the person cites seems consistent with what you know to be true. If they are not honest, it's not worth wasting your time. Also, if they insist their argument is very complicated and they can't summarize the basic points, it is almost certainly not worth wasting your time. If they understand the issues, they can summarize the argument.
We can’t avoid making judgments with incomplete information. We just have to try to be honest when presented with new information that may contradict our views.
I went through a phase where I insisted that I had no political beliefs whatsoever. My position was that to “agree” with something was to have a significant level of confidence in the view that could only be arrived at through significant research, testing, and challenge. I later abandoned that, and loosened up my standards of how confident you need to be in something to “agree” with it.
I still feel a bit uncomfortable about “agreeing” with so many things that I haven’t researched (or tested, or challenged) in any depth, but I feel more normal now. I feel like my usage of “agree” is now more in line with the norm. To a large extent, the norm is to “agree” first and research, test, and challenge later. That’s just the normal usage, as far as I can tell, so I needed to get on board with that.