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  Tyler Mills commented on idea #5090.

All subsequent knowledge in the system will be descended from the initial knowledge. So all knowledge in a knowledge-growing system must be either created by or comprised of replicators.

#5090​·​Tyler MillsOP, about 4 hours ago

  Tyler Mills commented on idea #5089.

Knowledge growth (such as in genes in the biosphere, or in a person) can only proceed by conjecture and criticism -- variation and selection. In a system which can create knowledge, but has not yet, there are no modes of substantive criticism available, since that would itself require knowledge. So how can the system create knowledge at all? Because although substantive criticism is not yet possible, the crudest form of full-on refutation is: the destruction of the information medium on which a conjecture is based, i.e., death. Death is the only "undesigned" refutation. So any initial knowledge created in an otherwise empty knowledge-creating system can only be that relating to how to avoid death in the local environment. This is the knowledge which defines replicators.

#5089​·​Tyler MillsOP, about 4 hours ago

  Tyler Mills started a discussion titled ‘Misc. Conjectures Re: AGI and Evolution’. The discussion starts with idea #5089.

  Sam Cymbaluk commented on idea #4902.

Rational Decision-Making

Expanding on #2112…

If an idea, as written, has no pending criticisms, it’s rational to adopt it and irrational to reject it. What reason could you have to reject it? If it has no pending criticisms, then either 1) no reasons to reject it (ie, criticisms) have been suggested or 2) all suggested reasons have been addressed already.

If an idea, as written, does have pending criticisms, it’s irrational to adopt it and rational to reject it – by reference to those criticisms. What reason could you have to ignore the pending criticisms and adopt it anyway?

Or, simplified:

It is rational to adopt only those ideas which, as written, don’t have pending criticisms, and to reject ideas that do.

#4902​·​Dennis HackethalOP revised 3 months ago

  Sam Cymbaluk addressed criticism #2182.

You’d know it’s a DDoS long before reviewing all the contents. That amount of criticism in a short time is suspicious, so you’d investigate for signs of coordination. Companies investigating actual DDoSes don’t need to review every single request to know they’re being DDoS’ed. And no otherwise reasonable person could blame them if a few good requests get dropped during their defense efforts.

#2182​·​Dennis HackethalOP revised 10 months ago

  Sam Cymbaluk addressed criticism #4711.

To incorporate some notion of decisiveness or severity, we need to be prepared to program that into our decision-making tool. I’m not aware that anyone knows how to programmatically determine the severity or decisiveness of a criticism, and I suspect outsourcing it to the user would result in the same unintended behavior we saw with the sliders for hard to vary.

#4711​·​Dennis HackethalOP, 4 months ago

  Sam Cymbaluk addressed criticism #3028.

Say the thought of adopting some idea with no criticisms bothers you. Then you can always try to be the first to suggest criticisms, which will then give you a rational reason not to adopt the idea. If instead you fail to come up with criticisms, why not adopt it?

#3028​·​Dennis HackethalOP revised 8 months ago

  Dennis Hackethal commented on idea #5083.

I’ve formalized some of these ideas in my first paper, ‘The Structure of Rational Thought’.

https://www.academia.edu/170297518/The_Structure_of_Rational_Thought

#5083​·​Dennis HackethalOP, 6 days ago

  Dennis Hackethal reposted idea #5083.

I’ve formalized some of these ideas in my first paper, ‘The Structure of Rational Thought’.

https://www.academia.edu/170297518/The_Structure_of_Rational_Thought

#5083​·​Dennis HackethalOP, 6 days ago

  Dennis Hackethal commented on idea #4471.

How Does Veritula Work?

Veritula (Latin for ‘a bit of truth’) can help you live a life guided exclusively by reason.

To reason, within any well-defined epistemology, means to follow and apply that epistemology. Unreason, or whim, is an undue departure from it. Epistemology is the study of knowledge – basically, the study of what helps knowledge grow, what hinders its growth, and related questions.

Veritula follows, and helps you apply, Karl Popper’s epistemology, Critical Rationalism. It’s a continuation of the Athenian tradition of criticism and the only known epistemology without major flaws.¹

Critical Rationalism says that ideas are assumed true until refuted. This approach leaves us free to make bold guesses and use the full arsenal at our disposal to criticize these guesses in order to solve problems, correct errors, and seek truth. It’s a creative and critical approach. Critical Rationalism is a fallibilist philosophy: there is no criterion of truth to determine with certainty whether some idea is true or false. We all make mistakes, and by an effort, we can correct them to get a little closer to the truth. Rejecting all forms of mysticism and the supernatural, Veritula recognizes that progress is both possible and desirable, and that rational means are the only way to make ongoing progress.

Veritula is a programmatic implementation of Popper’s epistemology.

Veritula provides an objective, partly automated way to tentatively determine whether a given idea is problematic. It does not tell you what to think – it teaches you how to think.

On Veritula, ideas are discrete and immutable. Consider an idea I:

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              I

Since it has no criticisms, we tentatively consider I unproblematic. It is rational to adopt it and act in accordance with it. Conversely, it would be irrational to reject it, consider it problematic, or act counter to it. (See #2281 for more details on rational decision-making.)

Next, someone submits a criticism C1:

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              I
              |
              C1

The idea I is now considered problematic so long as criticism C1 is not addressed. How do you address it? You can revise I so that C1 doesn’t apply anymore, which restores the previous state with just the standalone I (now called I2 to indicate the revision):

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                   Revise
              I ------------> I2
              |
              C1

To track changes, Veritula offers beautiful diffing and version control for ideas.

If you cannot think of a way to revise I, you can counter-criticize C1, thereby neutralizing it with a new criticism, C2:

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              I
              |
              C1
              |
              C2

Now, I is considered unproblematic again, since C1 is problematic and thus can’t be a decisive criticism anymore.

If you can think of neither a revision of I nor counter-criticism to C1, your only option is to accept that I has been (tentatively) defeated. You should therefore abandon it, which means: stop acting in accordance with it, considering it to be unproblematic, etc.

Since there can be many criticisms (which are also just ideas) and deeply nested counter-criticisms, the result is a tree structure. For example, as a discussion progresses, one of its trees might look like this:

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              I
           /  |  \
         C11 C12 C13
         / \       \
       C21 C22     C23
                   / \
                 C31 C32

In this tree, I is considered problematic. Although C11 has been neutralized by C21 and C22, C12 still needs to be addressed. In addition, C23 would have neutralized C13, but C31 and C32 make C23 problematic, so C13 makes I problematic as well.

You don’t need to keep track of these relationships manually. Veritula automatically marks ideas accordingly.

Since decision-making follows the same logic as truth-seeking, you can use these trees to make decisions, too. Veritula implements unanimous consent as defined by Taking Children Seriously, a parenting philosophy that builds on Popper’s epistemology. When you’re planning your next move but can’t decide on a city, say, Veritula helps you criticize your ideas and make a rational decision – meaning a decision you’ll be happy with. Again, it’s rational to act in accordance with ideas that have no pending criticisms.

All ideas, including criticisms, should be formulated as concisely as possible, and separate ideas should be submitted separately, even if they’re related. Otherwise, you run the risk of receiving ‘bulk’ criticisms, where a single criticism seems to apply to more content than it actually does.

Again, criticisms are also just ideas, so the same is true for criticisms. Submitting each criticism separately has the benefit of requiring the proponent of an idea to address each criticism individually, not in bulk. If he fails to address even a single criticism, the idea remains problematic and should be rejected.

The more you discuss a given topic, the deeper and wider the tree grows. Some criticisms can apply to multiple ideas in the tree, but that needs to be made explicit by submitting them repeatedly.

Comments that aren’t criticisms – eg follow-up questions or otherwise neutral comments – are considered ancillary ideas. Unlike criticisms, ancillary ideas do not invert their respective parents’ statuses. They are neutral.

One of the main benefits of Veritula is that the status of any idea in a discussion can be seen at a glance. If you are new to a much-discussed topic, adopt the displayed status of the ideas involved: if they are marked problematic, reject them; if they are not, adopt them.

Therefore, Veritula acts as a dictionary for ideas.

One of the problems of our age is that people have same discussions over and over again. Part of the reason is widespread irrationality, expressed in the unwillingness to change one’s mind; another is that it’s simply difficult to remember or know what’s true and what isn’t. Discussion trees can get complex, so people shouldn’t blindly trust their judgment of whether some idea is true or problematic, whether nested criticisms have been neutralized or not. Going off of memory is too error prone.

Veritula solves this problem: it makes discussion trees explicit so you don’t have to remember each idea and its relation to other ideas. Veritula therefore also enables you to hold irrational people accountable: if an idea has pending criticisms, the rational approach is to either abandon it or to save it by revising it or addressing all pending criticisms.

Many people don’t like to concede an argument. But with Veritula, no concessions are necessary. The site just shows you who’s right.

Using Veritula, we may discover a bit of truth.

---

1. Popperian epistemology has some flaws, like verisimilitude, but Veritula doesn’t implement those.

#4471​·​Dennis HackethalOP revised 5 months ago

  Erik Orrje addressed criticism #5073.

But the mind has finite memory as well, and doesn't stop showing novelty. I was going to say it doesn't plateau in complexity, but actually I guess there is a ceiling... It's just that new and better ideas make better use of the finite resources; they aren't just more complex.

Not sure what you mean by the soup being more open to the world, or allowing for "more" open-ended evolution. Unless you mean the quantity. I think evolution is either open- or closed-ended, as a binary. And again, not convinced any external world or feedback is required for open-endedness (per Deutsch). It might merely be very helpful.

#5073​·​Tyler Mills, 24 days ago

  Tyler Mills posted idea #5081.

  Dennis Hackethal commented on criticism #5079.

Gemini's response to that tweet: "The text uses legitimate biochemical concepts—like the fact that fluoride is a potent halogen that hardens minerals and can be toxic in high doses—to build a narrative based on skewed history. It fabricates a geological explanation for Hereford, Texas, to erase the very thing that actually protected the town's teeth: naturally occurring fluoride."

#5079​·​Tyler Mills, 18 days ago

  Tyler Mills addressed criticism #3411.

Some things wrong with flouride:
https://x.com/ChrisMasterjohn/status/1853076325067591812?s=20

#3411​·​Benjamin DaviesOP, 7 months ago

  Dennis Hackethal commented on criticism #5075.

Assuming qualia are classical, there is nothing stopping every step in the computation comprising them from being measured, like any computation. Then, nothing is stopping that recording/program from being rerun.

#5075​·​Tyler MillsOP revised 24 days ago

  Tyler Mills commented on criticism #5075.

Assuming qualia are classical, there is nothing stopping every step in the computation comprising them from being measured, like any computation. Then, nothing is stopping that recording/program from being rerun.

#5075​·​Tyler MillsOP revised 24 days ago

  Tyler Mills revised criticism #5074.

  Tyler Mills addressed criticism #5040.

A quale can be recorded and replayed later, arbitrarily many times.

How do you know this?

#5040​·​Dennis Hackethal, about 1 month ago

  Tyler Mills addressed criticism #5071.

I also picture a primordial soup often. Maybe including these autonomous regions or layers I'm grasping at. Soups and "Turing gases" have been programmed and so far always plateau in complexity, even with no predefined criterion, so there's something else going on.

Couldn't it be that there still are limitations of the simulated environment that act as selection criteria? Such as the available memory. The "soup" definitely seems more open to the entire world, which presumably would allow for more open ended evolution (even though that still took a couple of billion years after universality was achieved).

#5071​·​Erik Orrje, 28 days ago

  Dennis Hackethal commented on idea #5070.

Great, that makes sense. True statements should ofc be criticisable depending on the problem situation.

#5070​·​Erik Orrje, 28 days ago

  Erik Orrje addressed criticism #5057.

Could you say more about those regions?

I wish! I'll try.

creativity still could occur in total isolation, but I don't think they would generate much knowledge due to the lack of external feedback.

Maybe less overall, maybe just less by our standards. Maybe still a lot of knowledge can be made in isolation, just of a schizophrenic kind, more unstable without the regularities of external reality. But I'm wondering if isolated regions of the mind can provide "external" variation to each other in that one can make changes to the other, but not vice versa (like how the world makes blind changes to DNA but not vice versa). Maybe this is how evolution happens more quickly in the mind than by random copying error and mutations alone, because there are many more sources of blind variation...

Even in isolation, the real world applies [hardware constraints]

Agreed. So by isolation from reality we shouldn't mean isolation from physics. Just that the evolution taking place in the mind has no specific causal dependence on the external reality, I think. If it's "isolated" in this sense, nothing outside the mind, if changed, would impact the mind's evolution, its content. Even though mind and world are both determined by the same physics. Reality is not necessary, in this sense, so marking this as a criticism.

I also picture a primordial soup often. Maybe including these autonomous regions or layers I'm grasping at. Soups and "Turing gases" have been programmed and so far always plateau in complexity, even with no predefined criterion, so there's something else going on.

One neat paper, for example: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2406.19108
It sounded unbounded at first, but Claude explains that in a recent followup interview, plateauing has been confirmed: https://poggio-lab.mit.edu/blogsupdates/interview-blaise-aguera-y-arcas

#5057​·​Tyler Mills, about 1 month ago

  Erik Orrje commented on idea #5068.

Like, the criticism flag isn’t just for factual errors, if that’s what you mean.

#5068​·​Dennis Hackethal, 28 days ago

  Erik Orrje revised idea #5056 and marked it as a criticism.

  Dennis Hackethal commented on idea #5067.

If you think his comment won’t work as a solution for AGI, then his comment is erroneous from that POV.

#5067​·​Dennis Hackethal, 29 days ago

  Dennis Hackethal commented on idea #5065.

Do you think my comment shouldn't count as a criticism? The content of Martin's comment doesn't contain any errors, but it can be criticised as an attempt to solve problems towards AGI

#5065​·​Erik Orrje, 29 days ago