Activity Feed

  Tyler Mills addressed criticism #5282.

Finding quiet places in a city is indeed doable, but it's hard to even come close to guaranteeing success. There's no way to sample an apartment for 24 hours before moving in. It comes down to scoping it out, reading reviews, interviewing other residents if you can, then signing the lease and hoping for the best. If it's a bad fit, moving again is a huge, costly hassle.

#5282​·​Tyler MillsOP, 4 days ago

Increase reliability of the quiet apartment search by thoroughly interviewing several neighboring residents.

  Tyler Mills addressed criticism #5236.

You may be overstating the difficulty. IIRC you like rural America. Finding a quiet place to live should be doable, even in cities but especially in rural places. (Believe it or not I once stayed at an Airbnb in Tahoe that was TOO quiet to sleep. It was so quiet it kinda freaked me out. And that’s saying something because I love quiet.)

#5236​·​Dennis Hackethal, 8 days ago

Finding quiet places in a city is indeed doable, but it's hard to even come close to guaranteeing success. There's no way to sample an apartment for 24 hours before moving in. It comes down to scoping it out, reading reviews, interviewing other residents if you can, then signing the lease and hoping for the best. If it's a bad fit, moving again is a huge, costly hassle.

  Tyler Mills addressed criticism #5236.

You may be overstating the difficulty. IIRC you like rural America. Finding a quiet place to live should be doable, even in cities but especially in rural places. (Believe it or not I once stayed at an Airbnb in Tahoe that was TOO quiet to sleep. It was so quiet it kinda freaked me out. And that’s saying something because I love quiet.)

#5236​·​Dennis Hackethal, 8 days ago

I would not say I care for rural America. It sounds nice on the one hand, but conflicts with my anti-hermit hangup (I don't want to be isolated from society, at least not too much...). My vague ideal has always been: "big city in the near distance." Agreed that too quiet is a problem but that's trivial to solve compared to too loud.

  Tyler Mills addressed criticism #5227.

But you don’t have that obligation right now, right?

#5227​·​Dennis Hackethal, 8 days ago

I do not have a consistent 9am obligation now, no. But my implicit hope here is to find lasting solutions. I expect to have morning obligations again one day, maybe very soon.

  Dennis Hackethal addressed criticism #5212.

So just stay up 18 hours every day, and sleep in the next day by the extra two hours (assuming 8, which seems optimal for me).

#5212​·​Tyler MillsOP, 9 days ago

I tried this for a few days recently. By day three or four I went to bed at around 6am and woke up at 2pm. Didn’t feel great the rest of the day. Went back to a more regular sleep schedule after that and feeling better now.

  Dennis Hackethal commented on idea #5276.

From #1497, emphasis mine:

Discussion title: problem
Top-level ideas in the discussion: proposed solutions
Nested ideas: criticisms, counter-criticisms, and further solutions

This is what I was going off. Did I misunderstand #1497?

#5276​·​Benjamin DaviesOP, 5 days ago

You can structure discussions any way you like as long as you make sure the structure won’t break criticism chains.

Comments are for commentary or criticism, not elaborations on the same idea. The same idea shouldn’t be spread over multiple posts. That breaks criticism chains.

Veritula threads don’t work like Twitter/X threads, where people post elaborations on the same idea in comments. They used to have to do that because Twitter enforced a character limit. Now they still do it by tradition. And I’m guessing it’s an adjustment coming to Veritula.

If you realize you need to add more info to an existing idea, put it in a revision, not a comment. Again, #5250 seems like a revision of #5249. The revision of #5249 would then be a combination of both.

  Dennis Hackethal criticized idea #5276.

From #1497, emphasis mine:

Discussion title: problem
Top-level ideas in the discussion: proposed solutions
Nested ideas: criticisms, counter-criticisms, and further solutions

This is what I was going off. Did I misunderstand #1497?

#5276​·​Benjamin DaviesOP, 5 days ago

Possibly yeah. It doesn’t look like you were going off that. #5246 isn’t a proposed solution. Neither is #5250. That’s an elaboration on #5249.

  Benjamin Davies commented on idea #5275.
#5275​·​Dennis Hackethal, 5 days ago

From #1497, emphasis mine:

Discussion title: problem
Top-level ideas in the discussion: proposed solutions
Nested ideas: criticisms, counter-criticisms, and further solutions

This is what I was going off. Did I misunderstand #1497?

  Dennis Hackethal commented on idea #5274.

Would it be better to make them all root ideas?

#5274​·​Benjamin DaviesOP, 6 days ago
  Benjamin Davies commented on criticism #5270.

This approach breaks search functions, where the system only goes off the ‘Criticized’ flag. Now the system shows some ideas as rationally adoptable even though they aren’t.

#5270​·​Dennis Hackethal, 6 days ago

Would it be better to make them all root ideas?

  Dennis Hackethal revised criticism #5269.

But the UI won’t reflect that automatically. Now you have to remember which threads have structure and which don’t. Will you remember that, say, six months from now?

But the UI won’t reflect that automatically. Now you have to remember which threads have this structure and which don’t. Will you remember that, say, six months from now?

  Dennis Hackethal addressed criticism #5267.

They are separate ideas, and the latter ideas depend on their formers. If there is a flaw in former ideas, they apply to latter ideas, but if there is a flaw in latter ideas, they don’t necessarily apply to the former. So arranging them like this was intentional, to respect that hierarchy.

#5267​·​Benjamin DaviesOP revised 7 days ago

This approach breaks search functions, where the system only goes off the ‘Criticized’ flag. Now the system shows some ideas as rationally adoptable even though they aren’t.

  Dennis Hackethal addressed criticism #5267.

They are separate ideas, and the latter ideas depend on their formers. If there is a flaw in former ideas, they apply to latter ideas, but if there is a flaw in latter ideas, they don’t necessarily apply to the former. So arranging them like this was intentional, to respect that hierarchy.

#5267​·​Benjamin DaviesOP revised 7 days ago

But the UI won’t reflect that automatically. Now you have to remember which threads have structure and which don’t. Will you remember that, say, six months from now?

  Benjamin Davies revised criticism #5266.

They are seperate ideas, and the latter ideas depend on the former. If there is a flaw in former ideas, they apply to latter ideas, but if there is a flaw in latter ideas, they don’t necessarily apply to the former. So arranging them like this was intentional, to respect that hierarchy.

They are separate ideas, and the latter ideas depend on their formers. If there is a flaw in former ideas, they apply to latter ideas, but if there is a flaw in latter ideas, they don’t necessarily apply to the former. So arranging them like this was intentional, to respect that hierarchy.

  Benjamin Davies addressed criticism #5262.

There’s a risk in posting follow-up thoughts as nested comments. The risk is that criticism chains won’t bubble up far enough.

If you want to add more information to an idea, I suggest revising it.

#5262​·​Dennis Hackethal, 7 days ago

They are seperate ideas, and the latter ideas depend on the former. If there is a flaw in former ideas, they apply to latter ideas, but if there is a flaw in latter ideas, they don’t necessarily apply to the former. So arranging them like this was intentional, to respect that hierarchy.

  Dennis Hackethal criticized idea #5253.

Popper says to prefer ideas that are better corroborated, more truthlike. I wrote about this recently, pasting it here:


Corroboration was meant to help us form rational preferences between ideas. From The Logic of Scientific Discovery (pp. 281-282):

We can sometimes rationally justify the preference for a theory in the light of its corroboration, that is, of the present state of the critical discussion of the competing theories, which are critically discussed and compared from the point of view of assessing their nearness to the truth (verisimilitude). The current state of this discussion may, in principle, be reported in the form of their degrees of corroboration.

Specifically, corroboration helps you form a rational preference between two theories that have both been shown to be false while there are no known alternatives. From Conjectures and Refutations (p. 318):

… even after t2 has been refuted in its turn, we can still say that it is better than t1, for although both have been shown to be false, the fact that t2 has withstood tests which t1 did not pass may be a good indication that the falsity-content of t1 exceeds that of t2 while its truth-content does not. Thus we may still give preference to t2, even after its falsification, because we have reason to think that it agrees better with the facts than did t1.

That “t2 has withstood tests which t1 did not pass” means t2 is better corroborated than t1.

#5253​·​Dennis Hackethal, 7 days ago

There’s no need to single out corroboration or verisimilitude as special kinds of criticism.

Preference formation using either can easily be reduced to the method of counting pending criticisms:

Idea A fails to survive two tests.
Idea B fails to survive only one of the two.
Idea C says: I have only A and B; I don’t have time to create another; although both are false, I have to act; so for now I prefer B since at least it passes a test A doesn’t.

If idea C has no pending criticisms, then we should adopt it. (And thus ‘transitively’ adopt B.)

  Dennis Hackethal revised idea #5258. The revision addresses idea #5263.

We can rationally prefer A over B if and only if A has no pending criticisms whereas B has at least one.

The property you mention is the existence of pending criticisms.

We can rationally prefer A over B if A has no pending criticisms whereas B has at least one.

The property you mention is the existence of pending criticisms.

  Dennis Hackethal criticized idea #5258.

We can rationally prefer A over B if and only if A has no pending criticisms whereas B has at least one.

The property you mention is the existence of pending criticisms.

#5258​·​Dennis Hackethal, 7 days ago

You can still prefer A over B if neither has pending criticisms. The “if and only if” is too strict.

  Dennis Hackethal criticized idea #5250.

The more HTV an explanation is, the more closely it corresponds to reality.

#5250​·​Benjamin DaviesOP, 7 days ago

There’s a risk in posting follow-up thoughts as nested comments. The risk is that criticism chains won’t bubble up far enough.

If you want to add more information to an idea, I suggest revising it.

  Benjamin Davies criticized idea #5246.

When we reject explanation B in favour of explanation A, there must be some property of the explanations that comprehensively distinguishes A as better than B.

#5246​·​Benjamin DaviesOP, 7 days ago

Progress does not require a complete ranking of every live explanation. If B has a fatal flaw while no fatal flaw is currently known in A or C, the flaw in B is enough to reject B while A and C both remain live. There does not need to be one property that all three explanations possess to different degrees.

  Benjamin Davies criticized idea #5250.

The more HTV an explanation is, the more closely it corresponds to reality.

#5250​·​Benjamin DaviesOP, 7 days ago

Take the same explanation in two possible realities. The explanation has the same content and the same HTV in both, but it can correspond to one reality and fail to correspond to the other. HTV alone therefore cannot determine correspondence.

  Dennis Hackethal commented on idea #5246.

When we reject explanation B in favour of explanation A, there must be some property of the explanations that comprehensively distinguishes A as better than B.

#5246​·​Benjamin DaviesOP, 7 days ago

We can rationally prefer A over B if and only if A has no pending criticisms whereas B has at least one.

The property you mention is the existence of pending criticisms.

  Benjamin Davies criticized idea #5249.

That property is hard-to-vary-ness.

#5249​·​Benjamin DaviesOP, 7 days ago

An explanation can be harder to vary than a rival and still contain a fatal flaw of another kind. Unless every possible fatal flaw is itself a form of ETV, HTV cannot comprehensively determine which explanation should be rejected.