For individuals, negative comments might be ego-boosting to write and heart-breaking to read. We cannot deny that many people write negative comments for less than healthy reasons, and that many others suffer psychologically as a result of such comments.<p>As a society, on the other hand, negative comments are indispensible for maintaining a balanced conversation, protecting human rights, and generally improving the state of our civilization.<p>> <i>Western culture trains us to disagree as part of learning to be critical thinkers.</i><p>And that's one of the most important reasons why liberal democracy has such a hard time taking root in other cultures.<p>In (idealized) Western courtrooms, it's the job of each attorney to try to tear apart every single thing that the other attorney says. It's unpleasant, of course. It often wastes time and resources. But it's the only way we've found so far to make sure that the process as a whole reaches a balanced conclusion. It's our worst solution except all the others.<p>Like the market economy, the power of this process comes from the fact that it harnesses the power of human selfishness for the greater good. Really, it's genius. The system is not only fault-tolerant (where "fault" means moral fault), it actually thrives on the faults of its participants.<p>A society that treats negative comments as a taboo will stagnate and go corrupt. Because you can't eliminate selfishness, cynicism, and blind spots from human nature. To pretend that such traits don't exist, or even worse, to try to suppress them, is bound to fail. (Yeah, we tried that with human sexuality.) The only solution is to acknowledge that we are often selfish, cynical, and partially blind, and to channel that energy into productive use.<p>> <i>writing negative comments feels good: It exercises our critical thinking skills without challenging anything we hold dear ... pointing out all the places other people are wrong rarely teaches us anything.</i><p>Exactly. And when I do that, it's YOUR job to challenge what I hold dear by exercising your critical thinking skills. At the end of the day, we can both learn! The more we do this to one another, the better it will be for all of us. Learning by criticism is not an individual task, it's a social project.<p>Of course, some people can't handle this. Ever been to DeviantArt? Everybody there praises everyone else's work all the time, no matter how shitty it is. Given the delicate sensibilities of a certain demographic that frequents DeviantArt, this policy probably saves lives. But should we all act like emo teenagers just because some of us behave like emo teenagers?