Getting it right: Criticism

# Getting it right: Criticism
By David Thorstad
Published: 2026-03-20
 Getting it right (Part 4: Criticism)
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> Group discussion is not always efficient. When ­people have their ideas closely aligned to start with, it leads to polarization. When ­people start with conflicting ideas and no common goal, it tends to exacerbate differences. Group discussion is typically beneficial when participants have differ­ent ideas and a common goal
> 
> Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber, [*The enigma of reason*](https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674237827)

### 1\. Introduction

This is Part 4 of my series [Getting it right](https://reflectivealtruism.com/category/getting-it-right/). This series highlights ways in which effective altruists think and act admirably.

[Part 1](https://reflectivealtruism.com/2025/04/04/getting-it-right-part-1-altruism/) discussed altruism. Many effective altruists donate large parts of their income to charity, and some go further by risking their health in challenge trials or even donating organs to total strangers.

[Part 2](https://reflectivealtruism.com/2025/05/30/getting-it-right-part-2-global-health/) discussed global health. Effective altruists were instrumental in the push towards more rigorous and evidence-based methods in global health, and have committed well over a billion dollars to global health causes.

[Part 3](https://reflectivealtruism.com/2025/11/28/getting-it-right-part-3-ambition/) discussed ambition. Effective altruists dream big, and they are often successful in bringing about large-scale change.

Today’s post discusses criticism. It is hard for movements to engage with their critics. While no one is perfect, effective altruists often do a remarkably good job engaging with their critics.

### 2\. Why engage with critics?

An increasingly popular view in cognitive science holds that [**reasoning is for argument**](https://www.dan.sperber.fr/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/MercierSperberWhydohumansreason.pdf). On this view, humans often reason with the goal of argumentatively supporting beliefs that they or their communities already accept.

This view predicts that individual reasoning should show some pathologies. It should show limited accuracy, because reasoning can be directed at supporting existing beliefs even when those beliefs are not true. Individual reasoning should show self-serving biases, giving rise to a psychological immune system  in which reasoning is used to help us to think better of ourselves than the evidence supports. And individual reasoning should show a range of myside biases, such as confirmation bias, which favor an individual’s own side in an argument.

Suppose, however, that we are not so locked inside our own perspective that we cannot recognize the truth when we see it. Or, barring that, suppose that the spectators to an argument can at least do this, even when the reasoners themselves cannot. This suggests that **reasoning will often perform well in 

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