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Kaj_Sotala comments on Open Thread, November 8 - 14, 2013 - Less Wrong Discussion
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If I feel bad about a piece of criticism, I automatically become defensive and incapable of learning from it (until I can distance myself from the bad feeling and thus become less defensive).
I doubt making mistakes on purpose would realistically be a problem, at least for me. Even if it did feel good, having done a great work and knowing that I'd done my best would still be even better.
I have this problem too, but the timespan is pretty short. I think receiving criticism in person has even a bigger problem, that is the critic senses I get hurt and tones it down too much. When directly asking for criticism I'm tempted to declare "I will look butthurt at first but keep going and later I'll be thankful for learning so much more." The best teachers I've had gave criticism regardless of my feelings.
There's an important difference between making intentional mistakes, and becoming careless. By incentivization of mistakes I meant the latter.
Ah, that does sound more plausible. If I'm in an environment where I can trust others to catch my mistakes, and I don't feel bad about those mistakes being pointed out, then I could definitely see myself getting more sloppy and relying on others to catch the mistakes instead of looking for them myself. In fact, I'm pretty sure that I have done that on a few occasions...
On the other hand, this might also make for a useful cure for perfectionism. It's not obvious that trying to catch every mistake yourself would be the optimal division of labor, assuming that you really are in an environment where you can trust on others to correct some of the mistakes. Of course, it could be a problem if you develop lazy habits and carry them over to an environment without that external assistance.
I agree that we could probably rely more on others to catch our mistakes in certain contexts where equal expertise can be assumed. The problem is, if you're writing an article or a book for example, you're usually the expert compared to your readership, so you can't really expect others to reliably correct your mistakes, and some of your mistakes get cluelessly adopted.
My usual version of this is "I don't like receiving criticism, and I don't promise to take it well, though I promise to make my best efforts to do so and I usually succeed. That said, still less do I like having earned criticism withheld from me, so my preference is to receive criticism where I've earned it. If you remind me of this, I will do my best to be grateful."