system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
When someone says "X is just a social construct", is it a sound criticism?

Mostly when people are arguing about race or gender, one party usually will break out this line, and it has this way of stopping the discussion when it shouldn't.

there is this intuitive appeal to our judgement centers that if an idea is a man made creation it is somehow not credible. If that were true, then wouldn't money be just a social construct, or spoken/written language, or ethics, or art?

Is it because the initial argument that is being made, that gender/race is an immutable biological construct, that this counter point is effective? If something is thought to be a physical reality, but turns out to be a psychologically created one, then it is somehow false? That still does not seem to be like a satisfactory solution to the problem, since psychological constructs are still highly impactful in our lives.

Note: I am not le epic race/gender realist trying to embark on a traditionalist crusade. I just don't like being given a bad argument dressed up like a good one.
gpt
Well, "X is just a social construct" isn't really a criticism whatsoever. A criticism would be, like "Claim P about X is false, because X is just a social construct." We can't really generalize as to whether this is a sound criticism, since it's going to depend what P is. If P is something that relies on X's not being a social construct, then this is a relevant criticism. If not, then it's not.

If there's an implied criticism but the nature of the criticism isn't clear, one should ask the critic to clarify it. And that should hopefully give one the information one needs to proceed. Or if you're making this sort of criticism yourself, you should be clear about how it's meant to function as a criticism and a relevant one.