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On critique
Does anyone have any good pieces on the nature of critique? Some of my own thoughts below, might write something longer on this at some point, I've had thoughts on this (and feedback in video game production) pinging around my head recently.
First, critique is good. It encourages those who create [a business venture, a piece of art or entertainment, an analysis] to do their best work, so that there are no holes in what they produce. Letting others see your project or idea - having it face reality - is good practice.
Second, in practice a lot of critique is bad. It can be directed at what is not the core of the product, aka, that the critic has missed the point of the venture - or, and this happens more rarely, has gotten the point but is arguing that the point is bad - and is in fact making a critique which would not make the product the best along the dimensions that are valuable to the producer, but those that are valuable or obvious to the critic.
Third, nor can we leverage back at the critics the unequivocal burden so often phrased as "do it better yourself then". While it can often be the case that those who critique are in the best position to do create something based on the principles of that critique (the positive version of this remark), it seems to me that it is more often the case that, instead, we are merely heaping a larger emotion burden on the shoulders of those who have disagreement with the means or aims of someone else (the negative version).
I think a lot of things fall in this third bucket, where A will make a thing, B will say A is not taking X into account, and C will say "well, B, what would a project taking X into account look like?". And B, who probably has other obligations and is already trying to make ends work on their own projects, has not the time nor energy to spend to ideate or instantiate a project around X.
The EAGxNordics talks are starting to appear on the CEA Youtube channel. Here's some notes on which ones I liked and would recommend to watch (for reference I put together the raw footage we got from the venue into publishable form, and have therefore watched them all already).
(I will check back and add a link Sibylle's talk is published)
On the longlist would also be talks by: Anders Sandberg, Caroline Jeanmaire, Rachel Waddell & Mathias Bonde, Henri Thunberg, Jacob Arbeid, Phil Trammell.
Now, I have more recommendations, but I think there's also a pernicious problems in people holding talks; some people are really good at holding talks, but I'm not sure how good their underlying content is. So, the talks I thought were really good, but which I haven't really sat down and thought about much were;