An Invitation to a New Tradition of Rational Criticism

6 August 2026

I want to invite authors, readers, editors, critics, publishers, and serious students of ideas into a new tradition.

Before a book is published, before it is praised, defended, celebrated, dismissed, or attacked, let us pause and ask a better question:

What would have to be wrong with this book for it to deserve correction?

This is not a tradition of self-doubt as performance.

It is not false humility.

It is not a ritual apology before entering public life.

It is something stricter, more demanding, and more rational:

A tradition of exposing our best conjectures to criticism before asking others to trust them.

Every serious book enters the world as a claim on the reader’s attention. It asks for time, patience, judgment, and sometimes even moral courage. But if a book asks to be read seriously, it should also agree to be tested seriously.

The author should not merely say:

Here is what I believe.

The author should also say:

Here is where I may be wrong.

Here is what would weaken my argument.

Here is the strongest rival explanation.

Here is the distinction my argument must never violate.

Here is the evidence my claim must carry.

Here is the point at which my framework must yield.

That is the tradition I want to begin.

A book should not enter the world as a protected object.

It should enter the world as a conjecture.

The author is not outside the problem

Writers often present finished books as if they emerged cleanly from confidence.

But every serious manuscript has another story beneath it: the story of mistakes found, claims narrowed, metaphors disciplined, evidence strengthened, rival explanations taken seriously, and moral dangers confronted.

That hidden story matters.

It tells the reader whether the author has merely assembled arguments, or whether the author has allowed criticism to improve the work.

A rational author should not fear this exposure. The author should welcome it.

Not because criticism is pleasant.

It rarely is.

But because criticism is the only known method by which our ideas become less wrong.

This is the Popperian lesson: knowledge grows through conjecture and refutation. We do not move closer to truth by protecting our theories from criticism. We move closer by letting criticism find their errors.

This is also the Deutschian lesson: human beings are Universal Explainers. We are not condemned to repeat inherited mistakes. We can create better explanations. But we can do so only if we keep our explanations open to correction.

A book, therefore, should not ask to be admired first.

It should ask to be criticized well.

The imaginary prize test

Here is one way to practice this tradition.

Before publication, imagine that the book has been nominated for an imaginary prize: a Popper Prize, a Deutsch Prize, a Bold Conjecture Prize, a Conjecture Institute Prize—the name matters less than the discipline.

Then ask the strongest possible critic to prevent the book from winning.

Not a bad-faith critic.

Not a hostile reader looking for slogans.

A serious critic.

A reader who understands the book well enough to attack it at its strongest points.

Ask that critic:

Why should this book lose?

That question changes everything.

It prevents the author from hiding behind applause.

It prevents the reader from becoming a disciple.

It prevents the book from becoming a doctrine.

It turns publication into the beginning of criticism, not the end of it.

What readers should demand

Readers should begin asking authors better questions.

Not only:

What is your argument?

But also:

What would count against it?

Not only:

Who are your influences?

But also:

Which rival explanation most threatens your thesis?

Not only:

What do you criticize?

But also:

What protects your own framework from becoming protected error?

Not only:

What do you want readers to believe?

But also:

What do you want readers to test?

A serious reader is not a consumer of conclusions.

A serious reader is a participant in error-correction.

What authors should offer

Authors, in turn, should offer more than finished claims.

Before publication, they should offer a pre-publication self-audit:

What problem does the book solve?

What is its central conjecture?

What evidence carries the strongest claims?

Where might the argument overreach?

Which metaphors are useful, and which might mislead?

Which people, groups, or institutions could be unfairly reduced if the argument is misread?

Which rival explanations must be taken seriously?

Where should future criticism begin?

This does not weaken the book.

It strengthens the book.

A book that exposes itself to criticism before publication enters the world with greater dignity than one that hides its vulnerabilities behind confident prose.

Against protected books

The danger is not that authors make mistakes.

All authors make mistakes.

The danger is that authors protect their mistakes.

A protected book is one that treats criticism as betrayal.

A rational book treats criticism as continuation.

A protected author asks:

How do I defend my position?

A rational author asks:

What error has criticism revealed, and what better explanation can replace it?

This distinction matters not only for authorship, but for civilization.

The Open Society depends on public correction. Its institutions are valuable not because they guarantee truth, but because they allow error to surface without requiring human destruction.

The same should be true of books.

Let bad sentences die.

Let weak claims die.

Let overextended metaphors die.

Let insufficient explanations die.

Let theories die instead of people.

A proposed new tradition

So I propose this tradition:

Before publishing a serious book, the author should write two public essays.

The first:

What the book is about, and what the author had to go through to make it less wrong.

The second:

Why the book should lose the imaginary prize it hopes to deserve.

Together, these essays would tell readers:

This book is not sacred.

This framework is not final.

This author is not beyond criticism.

This argument is a conjecture.

• Test it.

• Improve it.

• Correct it.

• Replace it if you can produce a better explanation.

That is how serious intellectual work should enter the world.

Come along

• I invite authors to try this before their next book.

• I invite readers to demand it.

• I invite editors to encourage it.

• I invite critics to practice it with seriousness rather than contempt.

• I invite publishers to see it not as a risk, but as a mark of intellectual confidence.

And I invite all of us to treat publication not as the moment when criticism ends, but as the moment when criticism properly begins.

Let us build a tradition in which books are not protected from criticism, but dignified by it.

Let us make our conjectures bold enough to matter and clear enough to be corrected.

Let us stop pretending that finished books are final books.

No serious book should ask for immunity.

A serious book should ask for criticism.