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#6009·Dennis Hackethal, about 24 hours agoHi Michael, welcome to V.
The halting problem shows that no algorithm can correctly decide, for every program and input, whether the program will halt. Yet we can understand why such an algorithm is impossible, and we can determine the answer in particular cases.
Yes, we can, but note the switch from knowing such an impossible algorithm to understanding why such an algorithm is impossible. Those are two different things.
What exactly is being claimed to be unknowable here?
A universal halting algorithm.
Thanks. I agree that knowing an algorithm and understanding why it is impossible are different things. The theorem says there is no universal halting algorithm to know.
The contradiction arises when we assume that an algorithm satisfying those requirements exists. The conclusion is that no algorithm meets those requirements. Describing such an algorithm as “unknowable” seems to treat it as something that exists but is inaccessible to us, when its existence is precisely what the theorem rules out.
Consider an exact circle made from finitely many straight line segments. We will never discover what such a figure looks like because no figure satisfies those requirements. Calling its appearance “unknowable” seems to turn the nonexistence of an object into a limitation on our knowledge of it.
In the same way, “we will never know a universal halting algorithm” amounts to saying that we will never discover an algorithm that does not exist, based on our current theories. If that is all you mean by “unknowable,” I think the only thing we would not agree about is the definition of “unknowable” itself.
#6013·Dennis HackethalOP, about 19 hours agoOne thing I haven’t decided yet: each circle in the graphic links to its idea, but it could instead link to its own page of incoming links.
Most links won’t have incoming links themselves.
#6012·Dennis HackethalOP, about 19 hours agoDone as of
14003625. Each idea now has a separate page listing all the ideas that link to it. For example: https://veritula.com/ideas/5546-how-does-veritula-work-veritula-latin-for/linksThe page features a ring with discussions and profiles grouping the referring ideas:
The page as a whole looks like this, listing the ideas in text form as well:
Last but not least, an idea with referring links gets a new pill badge:
Let me know if this is along the lines of what you had in mind.
One thing I haven’t decided yet: each circle in the graphic links to its idea, but it could instead link to its own page of incoming links.
#2818·Benjamin Davies, 12 months agoIdea: Links within Veritula could be made bidirectional. While viewing an idea, users could see all the ideas that refer to it. This could be displayed as a list of backlinks at the bottom of the idea’s page.
Done as of 14003625. Each idea now has a separate page listing all the ideas that link to it. For example: https://veritula.com/ideas/5546-how-does-veritula-work-veritula-latin-for/links
The page features a ring with discussions and profiles grouping the referring ideas:
The page as a whole looks like this, listing the ideas in text form as well:
Last but not least, an idea with referring links gets a new pill badge:
Let me know if this is along the lines of what you had in mind.
#4727·Dennis HackethalOP, 7 months agoNeed summaries at top of discussions. Could be AI generated.
Related: #6007
#6006·Michael Briffa, 2 days ago"Veritula could be a place where people break news stories and others can quickly fact-check and improve upon reports by revising them."
I ask myself where I go when I want 'answers' to such problems and immediately I think prediction markets. It's mainly because I think the financial incentives and outcome based 'test' serve as highly reliable error correction. I wonder what different utility Veritula would add in this regard.
The criticism chains? I know of no other site that has them.
#6008·Michael Briffa, 1 day agoIt is unclear to me why uncomputable should mean unknowable. The halting problem shows that no algorithm can correctly decide, for every program and input, whether the program will halt. Yet we can understand why such an algorithm is impossible, and we can determine the answer in particular cases. Are you equating the impossibility of a universal computational procedure with the impossibility of knowledge? What exactly is being claimed to be unknowable here?
Hi Michael, welcome to V.
The halting problem shows that no algorithm can correctly decide, for every program and input, whether the program will halt. Yet we can understand why such an algorithm is impossible, and we can determine the answer in particular cases.
Yes, we can, but note the switch from knowing such an impossible algorithm to understanding why such an algorithm is impossible. Those are two different things.
What exactly is being claimed to be unknowable here?
A universal halting algorithm.
#3973·Dennis Hackethal, 9 months agoBy definition, there is nothing in the unknowable, since it can't be known.
This isn’t true. There are unknowable things. Look up uncomputable functions, see eg
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computable_function#Uncomputable_functions_and_unsolvable_problems
- https://www.reddit.com/r/compsci/comments/2s2wgy/what_is_an_uncomputable_function/.
So there are things that computers like our brains can never access – there are fundamental, natural limitations.
In this context, I think of mysticism as restricting criticism and preventing error correction, ie creating a man-made barrier for reason. That’s different.
It is unclear to me why uncomputable should mean unknowable. The halting problem shows that no algorithm can correctly decide, for every program and input, whether the program will halt. Yet we can understand why such an algorithm is impossible, and we can determine the answer in particular cases. Are you equating the impossibility of a universal computational procedure with the impossibility of knowledge? What exactly is being claimed to be unknowable here?
#2752·Benjamin Davies, 12 months agoTop-level ideas in a discussion thread are not standalone pages.
One thing that Wikipedia does well is having a structured, high level page for each idea/subject. This enables readers to get a good sense of an idea quickly.
Right now, to get a good sense of an idea on Veritula, a user often has to study a branching discussion, which can take a lot of work depending on how the discussion played out. A discussion also emphasises things that were relevant to the disagreements that took place in the discussion, rather than distilling the most important elements of an idea into a hierarchy, regardless of disagreements that took place in getting to it (like an encyclopedia entry does).
How I find myself using Veritula at the moment is looking at the latest developing threads. Catching up on the context of that thread through clicking “Activity” is not time-effective; it reminds me of trying to catch up with a group chat full of messages. Threads naturally become messy, and not all points serve to advance the problem (some can be misunderstandings or micro-corrections). For this reason, there should be some summary that considers the following as context:
- The thread problem + metadata
- The discussion points under that thread (considering different branches) that relate to the problem.
- A prompt that aims at addressing “messiness” minimisation.
The summary should preserve substantive developments, competing answers and unresolved criticisms, while compressing resolved misunderstandings and linking back to the relevant posts.
If such a setup, including the summary, prompt and rules for what gets included, were kept open and criticiazable, we should arrive at a good system (so there should be a thread where we can iterate on ideas).
#628·Dennis HackethalOP, about 2 years agoI agree that Veritula deserves to scale to something huge.
Looking through the history of Wikipedia, I see that its core concept is that of “compiling the world's knowledge in a single location […]”. To be clear, I think the core concept of Veritula is to be a programmatic implementation of Popper’s rational discussion methodology; it then becomes a dictionary for ideas as a result. It’s also less about listing facts and more about listing ideas and their logical relationship (though criticisms do provide built-in fact-checking mechanisms). That said, with enough users, Veritula could become a place with a lot of knowledge.
The linked site traces some of the success of Wikipedia to volunteers: “The use of volunteers was integral in making and maintaining Wikipedia.” So early adopters such as yourself are crucial.
In addition, 9/11 apparently played a role in making Wikipedia famous:
The September 11 attacks spurred the appearance of breaking news stories on the homepage, as well as information boxes linking related articles. At the time, approximately 100 articles related to 9/11 had been created. After the September 11 attacks, a link to the Wikipedia article on the attacks appeared on Yahoo!'s home page, resulting in a spike in traffic.
Veritula could be a place where people break news stories and others can quickly fact-check and improve upon reports by revising them. An urgent story would draw a lot of users to the site, too.
Something like Wikipedia’s arbitration process could be interesting, too.
Something similar to Wikipedia’s page-protection feature to combat “edit warring” and “prevent vandalism” could address the issue of people posting criticisms in rapid succession to protect their pet ideas.
Your suggestion to look to Wikipedia for inspiration is spot on. Thanks.
"Veritula could be a place where people break news stories and others can quickly fact-check and improve upon reports by revising them."
I ask myself where I go when I want 'answers' to such problems and immediately I think prediction markets. It's mainly because I think the financial incentives and outcome based 'test' serve as highly reliable error correction. I wonder what different utility Veritula would add in this regard.
#6002·Moritz Wallawitsch, 2 days ago·AI-assistedFair, but if the discussion itself is clear and concise, it doesn’t need an AI summary either. I agree that a long discussion could benefit even when each individual idea is concise.
… if the discussion itself is clear and concise …
Sure but often they’re not…
#6003·Moritz Wallawitsch, 2 days ago·AI-assistedThen prohibit unnecessary verbosity directly. Human-written text can be verbose, and AI-edited text can be concise. That doesn’t explain why someone using AI to edit their own argument should have to disclose it.
I might do that too. It arguably already falls under the rule against sabotaging debate. But the rules already explain the need for disclosure as well.
I don’t understand why you’re fighting this rule so hard. It’s not like you’re not allowed to use AI. You are. Just disclose it.
#5983·Dennis HackethalOP, 3 days agoAI-generated text is notoriously verbose regardless of who came up with an idea.
Then prohibit unnecessary verbosity directly. Human-written text can be verbose, and AI-edited text can be concise. That doesn’t explain why someone using AI to edit their own argument should have to disclose it.
#5982·Dennis HackethalOP, 3 days agoSummary feature proposed in #4727 is for discussions not ideas.
Fair, but if the discussion itself is clear and concise, it doesn’t need an AI summary either. I agree that a long discussion could benefit even when each individual idea is concise.
#5980·Dennis Hackethal, 3 days ago·AI-assistedIt doesn’t play the whole codebase at once. It walks through the code line by line, and when a file changes, it jumps to the changed lines and plays an accent made from them, rising or falling with that file’s health. So a small change in a big codebase is as audible as one in a small codebase. What’s quieter in a big codebase is the overall stage, and that’s on purpose: one long function shouldn’t make a whole healthy codebase sound sick. Bugs are the exception, since they count in full. One syntax error drops even a huge project from beautiful to meh.
I think you defeated my criticism. That’s kind of cool, I get it.
#5990·Dennis Hackethal, 3 days agoMidnight Ride: Production Errors That Fix Themselves (Almost)
https://blog.dennishackethal.com/posts/midnight-ride-production-errors-that-fix-themse
This could extend beyond fixing errors to improving page load times, search quality, and reducing churn, provided you can measure whether a change helped. My friend Samay co-wrote this about a similar loop using production feedback and evals to improve tax agents:
https://openai.com/index/building-self-improving-tax-agents-with-codex/
Kitty Comes Home: my first game made with Claude Opus 5.5.
You play as a little kitten trying to find your way back to your mom.
Play for free here: https://blog.dennishackethal.com/posts/kitty-comes-home
Teaser trailer: https://youtu.be/bcM2BI-41cY
This takes me back to my startup days in Berlin. It was common knowledge among founders that anyone overly worried about telling people about their great idea because someone might ‘steal’ it was a newbie founder. It’s almost always a mistake not to tell people, for several reaasons:
- Your idea probably isn’t new anyway. Somebody has probably already tried it before you and realized why it doesn’t work.
- If you don’t share your idea, you don’t get any critical feedback. You’ll make more mistakes. It will be harder to launch it.
- Most people don’t care. They have their own problems. They’re not looking to copy ideas.
Tik Tok came up with reels and then Instagram copied the feature. Arguably, Instagram does it better now. Imagine the founder of Tik Tok getting angry with Zuckerberg and trying to shame him online. That would be ridiculous.
People get angry because they hope to control more than they actually can. Ideas spread; we can’t control people’s speech. One can’t expect secrecy from people who didn’t agree to secrecy. If it’s important, like industry secrets or product launches, one should make people sign NDAs. If something is truly secret, the only person you should tell is your lawyer. Aside from that, sharing generously and openly is more profitable for you 99% of the time anyway.
This takes me back to my startup days in Berlin. It was common knowledge among founders that anyone overly worried about telling people about their great idea because someone might ‘steal’ it was a newbie founder. It’s almost always a mistake not to tell people, for several reaasons:
- Your idea probably isn’t new anyway. Somebody has probably already tried it before you and realized why it doesn’t work.
- If you don’t share your idea, you don’t get any critical feedback. You’ll make more mistakes. It will be harder to launch it.
- Most people don’t care. They have their own problems. They’re not looking to copy ideas.
Tik Tok did reels and then Instagram copied the feature. Arguably, Instagram does it better now. Imagine the founder of Tik Tok getting angry with Zuckerberg and trying to shame him online. That would be ridiculous.
As Ben points out, reels go all the way back to Vine! Which corroborates point 1 above: the idea probably isn’t new. And your customers don’t care either way. They only care that your product solves their problems better than the competitors’ products.
People get angry because they hope to control more than they actually can. Ideas spread; we can’t control people’s speech. One can’t expect secrecy from people who didn’t agree to secrecy. If it’s important, like industry secrets or product launches, one should make people sign NDAs. If something is truly secret, the only person you should tell is your lawyer. Aside from that, sharing generously and openly is more profitable for you 99% of the time anyway.
Simplify language
It also pays to be concise: the more you write, the more text there is to criticize. It’s in Vincent’s own interest to be less verbose. Not sure he realizes that.
It also pays to be brief: the more you write, the more text there is to criticize. It’s in Vincent’s own interest to be less verbose. Not sure he realizes that.
#5993·Dennis HackethalOP, 2 days agoThese three paragraphs could be shortened to: ‘basing badges on non-AI use may discourage non-native speakers.’ Verbosity is a recurring issue
It also pays to be concise: the more you write, the more text there is to criticize. It’s in Vincent’s own interest to be less verbose. Not sure he realizes that.
#5985·Vincent Brunsch, 3 days agoThat all makes sense to me, thanks. But there is a cost: my previous badges were removed which means that my contributions would have stayed limited to 3 per day if I understand the rules correctly. This should change of course, now, that I do not use AI for responses, so I should be fine in the log run, but my friend, who would then disclose that he uses AI for all his discussions, would never be able to submit more than 3 ideas per day, and would also never be able to join more than one discussion per week because none of his responses would count towards earning the necessary badges https://veritula.com/badges.
My criticism goes deeper though: I really think that there is a case to make that for the goal you describe, to find a bit of truth (or maybe just the current best explanation), it is actually better to use AI, simply because we can spend less time correcting bad faith, misunderstandings, unclear language etc. (Also, one might just say "well, so it takes a bit more time, no problem" - but it's more complicated, because bad faith is often provoking emotions etc which often ends debates before finding a bit more truth)
In our sample discussion about animal consciousness, if I would correct for the "too long" and "not simple enough", I think it would be helpful. But of course, now that I know that you don't appreciate it and since you are currently the only one responding, I will gladly follow your wish not to use it.I guess, the point I'm trying to make is really that it should not be coming with any form of punishment (like that this does not count for badges) IF the AI assist is clearly done in good faith.
I guess, the point I'm trying to make is really that it should not be coming with any form of punishment (like that this does not count for badges) IF the AI assist is clearly done in good faith.
Absence of a reward != punishment
#5985·Vincent Brunsch, 3 days agoThat all makes sense to me, thanks. But there is a cost: my previous badges were removed which means that my contributions would have stayed limited to 3 per day if I understand the rules correctly. This should change of course, now, that I do not use AI for responses, so I should be fine in the log run, but my friend, who would then disclose that he uses AI for all his discussions, would never be able to submit more than 3 ideas per day, and would also never be able to join more than one discussion per week because none of his responses would count towards earning the necessary badges https://veritula.com/badges.
My criticism goes deeper though: I really think that there is a case to make that for the goal you describe, to find a bit of truth (or maybe just the current best explanation), it is actually better to use AI, simply because we can spend less time correcting bad faith, misunderstandings, unclear language etc. (Also, one might just say "well, so it takes a bit more time, no problem" - but it's more complicated, because bad faith is often provoking emotions etc which often ends debates before finding a bit more truth)
In our sample discussion about animal consciousness, if I would correct for the "too long" and "not simple enough", I think it would be helpful. But of course, now that I know that you don't appreciate it and since you are currently the only one responding, I will gladly follow your wish not to use it.I guess, the point I'm trying to make is really that it should not be coming with any form of punishment (like that this does not count for badges) IF the AI assist is clearly done in good faith.
These three paragraphs could be shortened to: ‘basing badges on non-AI use may discourage non-native speakers.’ Verbosity is a recurring issue
Marked as a criticism, as requested in #5957. Text unchanged.
Fixed. The discussion title now uses title case: ‘Immortality, Billionaires, and Copying Business Ideas Is Not Immoral’.
Fixed. The discussion title now uses title case: ‘Immortality, Billionaires, and Copying Business Ideas Is Not Immoral’.
Midnight Ride: Production Errors That Fix Themselves (Almost)
https://blog.dennishackethal.com/posts/midnight-ride-production-errors-that-fix-themse
#5988·Dennis Hackethal, 3 days agoThis takes me back to my startup days in Berlin. It was common knowledge among founders that anyone overly worried about telling people about their great idea because someone might ‘steal’ it was a newbie founder. It’s almost always a mistake not to tell people, for several reaasons:
- Your idea probably isn’t new anyway. Somebody has probably already tried it before you and realized why it doesn’t work.
- If you don’t share your idea, you don’t get any critical feedback. You’ll make more mistakes. It will be harder to launch it.
- Most people don’t care. They have their own problems. They’re not looking to copy ideas.
Tik Tok came up with reels and then Instagram copied the feature. Arguably, Instagram does it better now. Imagine the founder of Tik Tok getting angry with Zuckerberg and trying to shame him online. That would be ridiculous.
People get angry because they hope to control more than they actually can. Ideas spread; we can’t control people’s speech. One can’t expect secrecy from people who didn’t agree to secrecy. If it’s important, like industry secrets or product launches, one should make people sign NDAs. If something is truly secret, the only person you should tell is your lawyer. Aside from that, sharing generously and openly is more profitable for you 99% of the time anyway.
Reels go all the way back to Vine!