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AlexMennen comments on Something's Wrong - Less Wrong
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I dispute the inclusion of anger at government policies as useful criticism. Any problem in government can only be suboptimal relative to a different set of policies, and as such, criticism of government should come with an argument that a solution is possible. For example, many voters oppose deficits, oppose tax increases, and say that they favor spending cuts, but will tend to oppose the overwhelming majority of possible cuts when individual expensive government programs are named. Criticism without suggestion from someone who would criticize any possible solution is useless.
I'm not advocating anger as an emotional state -- I think that's usually counterproductive.
And it's also important to avoid the kinds of internal inconsistencies you mentioned.
But I wouldn't say criticism without suggestion is useless. My point is precisely the opposite.
Consider government corruption. Useful ideas can be proposed for limiting corruption, but the fact is that (in some states, and in some countries) nothing has really succeeded. This lack of success tends to make people see corruption as ordinary, as business as usual. That's a logical fallacy. Lack of success at fighting corruption does not imply anything about how harmful or harmless it is. I remember a column by John Kass of the Chicago Tribune where he interviewed the families of children killed in car accidents by truck drivers who had gotten licenses in exchange for bribes. His point: just because corruption is traditional and common and we don't know how to fix it, does not make it harmless.
Places such as Hong Kong have been able to rapidly move from very high to extremely low corruption through government campaigns spearheaded by groups able to attain power from outside the corrupt system. See Paul Romer's recent post on the subject.
That not really relevant. What matters is the expected utility of focusing more resources on fighting corruption instead of focusing the resources elsewhere.
Right. It seems like to synthesize your point and the post we would need to say that, in evaluating a criticism, we should consider not:
Do we know of a solution to this problem?
but
Can we prove that there is no solution to this problem?
The second type of problem, we must live with. The first type, we should devote some resources to thinking about.
Nicely put! If a theist announces their revelation that pi is 3, and demands of me what two integers I take as pi's numerator and denominator, the best response is a proof that no such pair exists.
I do agree with AlexMennen that for an optimization problem this isn't adequate. One doesn't have to display an optimal solution, but one at least needs to show that there is something like a direction in which one can move which is clearly an improvement. To address SarahC's example of government corruption - It isn't sufficient to show that the corruption does damage. One also has to show that, for instance, more vigorous enforcement of anti-corruption laws won't do more damage.
I think most criticism is based on the implicit understanding that a solution is possible. Otherwise you are basically hiding behind a shield of nihilism or political anarchy or something. It seems overly restrictive to say that any criticism without an auxiliary solution is worthless. Just because you see a problem doesn't mean you are able to see a solution. I guess it's a bit like asking all voters to also be politicians.