Mediocre criticism can get plenty of upvotes as long as it’s a culture fit.
If the author does a good job of pitching it to Less Wrongers, then the critical post can activate readers’ it’s virtuous to be open-minded mindset and turn their critical faculties towards the thing that the post is criticizing and away from the post itself. So instead of evaluating the post according to their ordinary standards of epistemics and quality, they instead try to find anything in it that seems good / insightful / overly neglected / provoking of new useful thoughts / on a promising track.
Mediocre criticism can get plenty of upvotes as long as it’s a culture fit.
If the author does a good job of pitching it to Less Wrongers, then the critical post can activate readers’ it’s virtuous to be open-minded mindset and turn their critical faculties towards the thing that the post is criticizing and away from the post itself. So instead of evaluating the post according to their ordinary standards of epistemics and quality, they instead try to find anything in it that seems good / insightful / overly neglected / provoking of new useful thoughts / on a promising track.