There are norms that dislike when people don’t respond to criticism. If you are not a carrier, there’s that, it won’t bother you personally[1], but there are others who will be affected. If you ignore a norm, it fades away or fights back. So it’s important to distinguish the positive claim from the normative claim, whether the norm asking people to respond to criticism is a good one to have around, not just whether it’s a real norm with some influence.
The norm of responding to criticism causes problems, despite the obvious arguments in support of it. Its presence makes authors uncomfortable, anticipating the obligation to respond, which creates incentives to prevent ambiguously useless criticism or for such critics to politely self-censor, and so other readers or the author miss out on the criticism that turns out to be on-point.
If on balance the norm seems currently too powerful, then all else equal it’s useful to intentionally ignore it, even as you know that it’s there in some people’s minds. When it fights back, it can make the carriers uncomfortable and annoyed, or visit punishment upon the disobedient, so all else is not equal. But perhaps it’s unjust of it to make its blackmail-like demands, even as the carriers are arguably not centrally personally responsible for the demands or even the consequences of delivering the punishment. And so even with the negative side effects of ignoring the norm there are some sort of arguments for doing that anyway.
Unless you are the author, because you’ll still experience disapproval from the carriers of the norm in the audience if you fail to obey its expectations about your behavior, even if you are not yourself a carrier.
There are norms that dislike when people don’t respond to criticism. If you are not a carrier, there’s that, it won’t bother you personally[1], but there are others who will be affected. If you ignore a norm, it fades away or fights back. So it’s important to distinguish the positive claim from the normative claim, whether the norm asking people to respond to criticism is a good one to have around, not just whether it’s a real norm with some influence.
The norm of responding to criticism causes problems, despite the obvious arguments in support of it. Its presence makes authors uncomfortable, anticipating the obligation to respond, which creates incentives to prevent ambiguously useless criticism or for such critics to politely self-censor, and so other readers or the author miss out on the criticism that turns out to be on-point.
If on balance the norm seems currently too powerful, then all else equal it’s useful to intentionally ignore it, even as you know that it’s there in some people’s minds. When it fights back, it can make the carriers uncomfortable and annoyed, or visit punishment upon the disobedient, so all else is not equal. But perhaps it’s unjust of it to make its blackmail-like demands, even as the carriers are arguably not centrally personally responsible for the demands or even the consequences of delivering the punishment. And so even with the negative side effects of ignoring the norm there are some sort of arguments for doing that anyway.
Unless you are the author, because you’ll still experience disapproval from the carriers of the norm in the audience if you fail to obey its expectations about your behavior, even if you are not yourself a carrier.