Something that irritates me about people who are inclined to think rigorously about evidence is a tendency to lean a bit too hard on a high standard when it's convenient for them. They may even, quite often, dismiss all evidence as insufficiently strict, and then say there is no evidence at all. The criterion for calling something evidence is not that it is proof.

Why not simply say "There is no firm evidence, in my opinion, let alone proof"? This is more honest and accurate. It allows that others have cited what they believe is evidence and calls it into question without insisting that none of it can be real anywhere.

Evidence is suggestive. If you think it's evidence, call it a clue. Call it suggestive evidence to reinforce that it isn't proof.

Please don't call it "there's no evidence at all" just because you haven't been convinced by the so-called evidence you've seen, heard, or found.

When a claim is definitively disproven, the clues that hinted at it before, that were taken as evidence, are no longer evidence that the claim is true, but they remain evidence about how people think and perceive. In that sense, they are evidence *about* the claim rather than evidence *of* the claim. In hindsight, they become a different kind of evidence, but evidence they still are.

Part of listening to criticism is understanding that if you are doing something wrong, insensitive, or inconvenient, the resulting frustration may cause another person to become a bit irrational. And even if they are being highly irrational, hostile, or even just downright wrong, they may still have a point worth recognizing.

Criticism should be calm, coherent, rational, and compassionate. But when it fails at any or all of these, we should still be able to extract as much usable information as possible.

This does not mean we should stand around while people try to literally pummel us to death for getting their name wrong. But it does mean we should always be aware of the two-way responsibility in criticism.

There are some typical ways people moralize that strike me as weird.

"Holding to account" is all too rarely a discussion about *how*. Usually it's about *whether*, leaving "accountability" as some sort of blank check to the one "holding to" or else to a society's preconceptions. Just because a behavior is "unacceptable" does not mean that whatever retaliation feels preferred is automatically right. I often think of a hungry lion escaped from a zoo. We know this is very dangerous to humans (and other animals about our size), and the lion may already have injured or killed someone. Yet a tranquilizer dart is more practical and defensible than causing the lion suffering. I've yet to hear a convincing argument as to why dangerous humans are so different. Why do most of us seem not even to question our positions here? There are many ways to "hold to account," and sadism (including the normal amounts of it that make retribution seem appealing) is an extremely important force to consider with utmost caution.

"There are consequences" is particularly bizarre. Every conscious person knows that the universe is full of consequences. "Do actions have consequences?" is not a popular debate. To say "there are consequences" before creating a consequence is strange; this particular "consequence" may be your choice rather than a natural consequence. It actually sounds like a way to hide from accountability for the form of punishment a person chooses to apply. Yes, there are consequences. Many! Obviously! But no, if, as is implied, free will exists, then my free will to punish (and *how* to punish) an offender is not a natural consequence, but rather my (fallible) choice, for which I must take full responsibility. If free will does not exist, then every choice ever made has merely been a direct consequence of its inputs, and morality perhaps ought to take a different tenor as a commentary on the motions of particles and the complex results of these.