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Looking at it in a Popperian way, I think problem solving is a lot like doing science.

This is true. Unfortunately, it also means that adults have an advantage at solving the ‘problem’ of how to coerce or coax their child into doing things he does not want to do – in other words, adults are more practiced at using their creativity coercively.

By the way, I have personal knowledge of Deutsch failing to be organized and to plan projects, as well as signing up for things that are too difficult for him and coercing himself to do them anyway, which is a kind of irrationality he has criticized in the past. He should know the difficulty of solving problems without those skills, which children typically don’t yet have.

Children know less about avoiding biases, logical fallacies, being organized, project planning, and many other skills that can give adults an advantage at problem solving.

That should be ‘primary’ not “primarily”.

Parents need to take primarily responsibility for problem solving instead of delegating that job to their children.

In addition to not yet having the hangups Deutsch mentions, I do think children are often more rational than adults in important ways, such as:

• being able and willing to refuse the unwanted loudly and clearly – children are often better at his than adults
• not sacrificing one’s own problem situation for the teachers’ and parents’ problem situations (ie focusing on one’s own goals without compromise)
• disliking and rejecting the arbitrary, including authority

Due to this last point in particular, children are sometimes better scientists than adults!

Also consider how fantastically creative children are, often way more creative than adults. (For example, it is extremely difficult for most adults to lose their native accent when they speak a foreign language, but bilingual children often do this effortlessly.)

There seems to be a general rule of thumb that, the older a person gets, the less knowledge he creates. So who’s the better problem solver, children or adults?

Sudden switch/moving goalposts from children being “fully rational” to just “more rational”.

In addition to the book All Life is Problem Solving (which is referenced, albeit spelled “Is” instead of the correct lowercase ‘is’, see https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/all-life-is-problem-solving-karl-popper/1128336063), Popper also wrote a book called All People Are Philosophers (Alle Menschen sind Philosophen in the original German, https://www.piper.de/buecher/alle-menschen-sind-philosophen-isbn-978-3-492-24189-2).

If all people are philosophers, then that includes children. Children are natural problem solvers.

It follows from Popperian epistemology that there can be no reliable way to get solutions to problems, let alone great ones. So holding Deutsch or TCS to that standard – ironically while referencing Popper – can’t be right.

Just having the child take the lead on problem solving, on the assumption that he’s more rational, is not a reliable way to quickly get a great solution.

Should be “easily” instead of ”easily” (the opening quotation mark).

Slighly modified archive of a discussion tree from the old Veritula site, Nov 2023.

The creation dates of the ideas were not retained but newly set. The old ‘about’ section said:

Here are some criticisms of, and comments on, an article called ‘Children “Easily” Solving Family Problems’.

Read the linked article and the one it references before you continue reading here.

If you don’t think your child can ”easily” use his creativity to solve any family problem, [...].

I 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.

Superseded by #448.

the the title of the page

Minor quibble but there’s a double “the”. Consider revising your idea to fix this typo.

@tom-nassis asked:

[H]ow do we articulate and explain a computer and creative program with freedom, free will, choice, agency, and autonomy?

I think physical determinism (which the computer as a physical object must obey) and free will etc are not in any conflict because they describe different phenomena on different levels of emergence.

And I’d go one step further: not only do they not conflict, physical determinism is required for free will to exist. It is because computers obey physical determinism that they are able to run programs in the first place, including creative programs, ie programs with free will.

2) What is the demarcation between something that processes information and the human brain?

You wrote you “have no interest in objecting against” the notion that the brain processes information. Are you asking about how the brain differs from other information processors? If so, I suggest you edit the question accordingly.

1) What is the demarcation between something that processes information and something that does not?

See #513. Something that processes information must be given some information (at least one bit) and then follow some rule for what to do with it. Then, optionally, return the result. Like the OR gate, but unlike the light switch.

Or is there something I’m missing?

It’s not a comparison. The brain literally is a computer.

What you deride as a “deflationary concept” is, to me, a vital approach to getting rid of the kind of biological mysticism that states brains have some special essence that computers could never have. Which then causes some people to think computers could never be creative or sentient, say.

As I recall, people used to think similarly about electricity: they discovered electricity in organisms before they figured out how to harness it through technology. Until then, they thought only organisms could produce electricity because they had some ‘special sauce’ that technology could never have.

Once we accept that brains are computers, there is no room left for this kind of mysticism. It’s really just taking computational universality seriously.

Think we're going to get bogged down in unclear relationships to tackle this sorry...
If anything that processes information is a computer, do all computers have programs?

I'm not objecting to the word computer per se, I just don't think a deflationary sense of the word is of any interest for comparision to the brain. The word could be of use to help illuminate what the brain is (and is not), but the comparison I sense would have to be with something more like a general purpose computer / universal computing device.

Please don’t submit multiple criticisms in the same post. Submit one criticism per post only. Familiarize yourself with how Veritula works (#465) before you continue.

People use the same argument to "prove" the existence of God. The existence of anything can then be proved simply by including in the definition that it must exist. Example: Dragons must exist because I can define "dragon" as what is traditionally thought of a dragon, plus the claim that it exists.
Also you can't at the same time say that non-existence is ruled out on logical grounds, and then define it as something that's clearly possible, namely the absence of the universe. It's conflating an abstract concept for a physical one.