But if we updated our standards such that we no longer accept those things, they would no longer be passable, and something else would be "just barely passable"

But if we updated our standards such that we no longer accept those things, they would no longer be passable, and something else would be "just barely passable". My point - inasmuch as there was a serious one - wasn't that we shouldn't raise our standards but that the framing isn't particularly helpful in determining whether we should (while rhetorically sounding like it is).