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Then people could occasionally check the second tab for ideas they think they can rationally hold but actually can’t. And then they can work on addressing criticisms. A kind of ‘mental housekeeping’ to ensure they never accidentally hold on to problematic ideas.

Then people could occasionally check the second tab for ideas they think they can rationally hold but actually can’t. And then they can work on addressing criticisms. A kind of ‘mental housekeeping’ to ensure they never accidentally accept problematic ideas as true.

My critique of David Deutsch’s The Beginning of Infinity as a programmer. In short, his ‘hard to vary’ criterion is fatally underspecified and impossible to apply.

He says people should adopt explanations based on how hard they are to change. The hardest-to-change explanation is the best and should be adopted.

This decision-making method is a computational task. He says you haven’t understood a computational task if you can’t program it. He can’t program the steps for finding out how ‘hard to vary’ an explanation is, if only because those steps are underspecified. There are too many open questions.

So by his own yardstick, he hasn’t understood his epistemology.

You will find that and many more criticisms here: https://blog.dennishackethal.com/posts/hard-to-vary-or-hardly-usable

My critique of David Deutsch’s The Beginning of Infinity as a programmer. In short, his ‘hard to vary’ criterion at the core of his epistemology is fatally underspecified and impossible to apply.

He says people should adopt explanations based on how hard they are to change. The hardest-to-change explanation is the best and should be adopted.

This decision-making method is a computational task. He says you haven’t understood a computational task if you can’t program it. He can’t program the steps for finding out how ‘hard to vary’ an explanation is, if only because those steps are underspecified. There are too many open questions.

So by his own yardstick, he hasn’t understood his epistemology.

You will find that and many more criticisms here: https://blog.dennishackethal.com/posts/hard-to-vary-or-hardly-usable

My critique of David Deutsch’s The Beginning of Infinity as a programmer. In short, his ‘hard to vary’ criterion is fatally underspecified and impossible to apply.

He says people should adopt explanations based on how hard they are to change. The hardest-to-change explanation is the best and should be adopted.

This decision-making method is a computational task. He says you haven’t understood a computational task if you can’t program it. He can’t program the steps for finding out how ‘hard to vary’ an explanation is, if only because it’s underspecified. There are too many open questions.

So by his own yardstick, he hasn’t understood his epistemology.

You will find that and many more criticisms here: https://blog.dennishackethal.com/posts/hard-to-vary-or-hardly-usable

My critique of David Deutsch’s The Beginning of Infinity as a programmer. In short, his ‘hard to vary’ criterion is fatally underspecified and impossible to apply.

He says people should adopt explanations based on how hard they are to change. The hardest-to-change explanation is the best and should be adopted.

This decision-making method is a computational task. He says you haven’t understood a computational task if you can’t program it. He can’t program the steps for finding out how ‘hard to vary’ an explanation is, if only because those steps are underspecified. There are too many open questions.

So by his own yardstick, he hasn’t understood his epistemology.

You will find that and many more criticisms here: https://blog.dennishackethal.com/posts/hard-to-vary-or-hardly-usable

My critique of David Deutsch’s The Beginning of Infinity as a programmer. In short, his ‘hard to vary’ criterion is fatally underspecified and impossible to apply.

He says people should adopt explanations based on how hard they are to change. The hardest-to-change explanation is the best and should be adopted.

This decision-making method is a computational task. He says you haven’t understood a computational task if you can’t program it. He can’t program the steps for finding out how ‘hard to vary’ an explanation is, if only because it’s underspecified. There are too many open questions.

So by his own yardstick, he hasn’t understood his epistemology.

https://blog.dennishackethal.com/posts/hard-to-vary-or-hardly-usable

My critique of David Deutsch’s The Beginning of Infinity as a programmer. In short, his ‘hard to vary’ criterion is fatally underspecified and impossible to apply.

He says people should adopt explanations based on how hard they are to change. The hardest-to-change explanation is the best and should be adopted.

This decision-making method is a computational task. He says you haven’t understood a computational task if you can’t program it. He can’t program the steps for finding out how ‘hard to vary’ an explanation is, if only because it’s underspecified. There are too many open questions.

So by his own yardstick, he hasn’t understood his epistemology.

You will find that and many more criticisms here: https://blog.dennishackethal.com/posts/hard-to-vary-or-hardly-usable

My critique of David Deutsch’s The Beginning of Infinity as a programmer. In short, his ‘hard to vary’ criterion is fatally underspecified and impossible to apply. He says you haven’t understood a computational task if you can’t program it. He can’t program the steps for finding out how ‘hard to vary’ an explanation is, so by his own yardstick, he hasn’t understood his epistemology.

https://blog.dennishackethal.com/posts/hard-to-vary-or-hardly-usable

My critique of David Deutsch’s The Beginning of Infinity as a programmer. In short, his ‘hard to vary’ criterion is fatally underspecified and impossible to apply.

He says people should adopt explanations based on how hard they are to change. The hardest-to-change explanation is the best and should be adopted.

This decision-making method is a computational task. He says you haven’t understood a computational task if you can’t program it. He can’t program the steps for finding out how ‘hard to vary’ an explanation is, if only because it’s underspecified. There are too many open questions.

So by his own yardstick, he hasn’t understood his epistemology.

https://blog.dennishackethal.com/posts/hard-to-vary-or-hardly-usable

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 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.

Consider an idea I:

              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 generally be irrational to reject it, consider it problematic, or act counter to it.

Next, someone submits a criticism C1:

              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):

                   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:

              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:

              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 marks ideas accordingly, automatically.

Because decision-making is a special case of, ie follows the same logic as, truth-seeking, you can use such trees for decision-making, 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.

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 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.

Consider an idea I:

              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:

              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):

                   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:

              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:

              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 marks ideas accordingly, automatically.

Because decision-making is a special case of, ie follows the same logic as, truth-seeking, you can use such trees for decision-making, 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.

Fallibilism is the view that there is no criterion to say with certainty what’s true and what’s false. As a result, we inevitably make mistakes and all of our knowledge is tentative in nature. Nothing is obvious but depends on what one understands about reality. It also means that no knowledge is beyond revision, even if it claims to be. This means that we can't be certain about anything, because we don't have a criterion of truth. Knowledge grows by addressing problems in our knowledge. We solve problems by guessing solutions and testing them. This also means we should always be careful not to destroy or even slow down the things and ideas that correct errors and thereby create knowledge. Some of those ideas are freedom, privacy, and free markets. We are also never the passive recipients of our knowledge; we are the creators.

This view is mainly influenced by Popper, and errors are my own.

Fallibilism is the view that there is no criterion to say with certainty what’s true and what’s false. As a result, we inevitably make mistakes; all of our knowledge is tentative.

Nothing is obvious but depends on what one understands about reality. No knowledge is beyond revision, even if it claims to be.

Knowledge grows by correcting errors in our knowledge. We correct errors by guessing solutions to problems and then criticizing and testing those proposed solutions.

We should always be careful not to destroy or even slow down the means of error correction.

This view is mainly influenced by Popper, and errors are my own.

Fallibilism is the view that there is no criterion to say with certainty what’s true and what’s false. As a result, we inevitably make mistakes and all of our knowledge is tentatively true. Nothing is obvious but depends on what one understands about reality. It also means that no knowledge is beyond revision, even if it asserts itself to be so. This means that we can't be certain about anything, because we don't have a criterion of truth. Knowledge grows by addressing problems in our knowledge. We solve problems by guessing solutions and testing them. This also means we should always be careful not to destroy or even slow down the things and ideas that correct errors and thereby create knowledge. Some of those ideas are freedom, privacy, and free markets. We are also never the passive recipients of our knowledge; we are the creators.

This view is mainly influenced by Popper, and errors are my own.

Fallibilism is the view that there is no criterion to say with certainty what’s true and what’s false. As a result, we inevitably make mistakes and all of our knowledge is tentative in nature. Nothing is obvious but depends on what one understands about reality. It also means that no knowledge is beyond revision, even if it claims to be. This means that we can't be certain about anything, because we don't have a criterion of truth. Knowledge grows by addressing problems in our knowledge. We solve problems by guessing solutions and testing them. This also means we should always be careful not to destroy or even slow down the things and ideas that correct errors and thereby create knowledge. Some of those ideas are freedom, privacy, and free markets. We are also never the passive recipients of our knowledge; we are the creators.

This view is mainly influenced by Popper, and errors are my own.

I’ve made dozens of pizzas by now. I’ve gotten pretty good at it.

Ingredients

• Store-bought dough (312g)
• Tomato sauce (70g, low sodium)
• Mozzarella (whole milk, fresh, 100g)
• 2g extra virgin olive oil (optional)
• Semolina flour

Then, for garnish:

• Oregano
• Fresh basil leaves
• A dash of salt

Steps

1. Preheat oven for 1 hour. Ends up somewhere around 450°F.
2. Preheat pizza steel for 30 min on top rack underneath broiler, reaches about 650°F.
3. In the meantime, rest dough on counter top until it reaches room temperature.
4. Grate cheese and measure tomato sauce.
5. Dust counter with semolina flour and stretch the dough.
6. Add tomato sauce.
7. Place dough on peel.
8. Place dough on steel; still on top rack with the broiler still on.
9. Bake for 2 minutes.
10. Take out to add cheese and oregano.
11. Bake for another 1.5 minutes on top rack; again, the broiler is still on. Can turn it off halfway through if the pizza is burning on top but the center of the dough needs more time to bake.
12. Optional: take out steel and let pizza rest on steel for another minute to make the bottom crispy.
13. Optional: in the meantime, apply small amount of olive oil to the outer crust and sprinkle salt on outer crust. (Kind of overrated, not really worth the extra calories.)
14. Remove from steel and serve.

I’ve made dozens of pizzas by now. I’ve gotten pretty good at it.

Ingredients

• Store-bought dough (312g)
• Tomato sauce (70g, low sodium)
• Mozzarella (whole milk, 100g – fresh will taste better but will also make the dough less crispy due to juices)
• 2g extra virgin olive oil (optional)
• Semolina flour

Then, for garnish:

• Oregano
• Fresh basil leaves
• A dash of salt

Steps

1. Preheat oven for 1 hour. Ends up somewhere around 450°F.
2. Preheat pizza steel for 30 min on top rack underneath broiler, reaches about 650°F.
3. In the meantime, rest dough on counter top until it reaches room temperature.
4. Grate cheese and measure tomato sauce.
5. Dust counter with semolina flour and stretch the dough. Make it thin so it gets crispy.
6. Add tomato sauce.
7. Place dough on peel.
8. Place dough on steel; still on top rack with the broiler still on.
9. Bake for 2 minutes.
10. Take out to add cheese and oregano.
11. Bake for another 1.5 minutes on top rack; again, the broiler is still on. Can turn it off halfway through if the pizza is burning on top but the center of the dough needs more time to bake.
12. Optional: take out steel and let pizza rest on steel for another minute to make the bottom crispy.
13. Optional: in the meantime, apply small amount of olive oil to the outer crust and sprinkle salt on outer crust. (Kind of overrated, not really worth the extra calories.)
14. Remove from steel and serve.

My conjecture

Conjecture: addiction is the result of the entrenchment of a conflict between two or more preferences in a mind.

Picture a smoker who wants to give up smoking but also really enjoys smoking. Those preferences conflict.

If the conflict is entrenched, then both preferences get to live on indefinitely. The entrenchment will not let the smoker give up smoking. He will become a chain smoker.

My Conjecture

Conjecture: addiction is the result of the entrenchment of a conflict between two or more preferences in a mind.

Picture a smoker who wants to give up smoking but also really enjoys smoking. Those preferences conflict.

If the conflict is entrenched, then both preferences get to live on indefinitely. The entrenchment will not let the smoker give up smoking. He will become a chain smoker.

Solutions for the conflict may need to be found creatively, case by case. It depends on the nature of the particular entrenchment and the preferences involved. A more overarching answer for how to cure addiction might involve Randian ideas around introspection and getting one’s reason and emotions in the proper order.

That would be self-coercive.

That would be irrational and self-coercive.

How did you conclude that the criticisms aren’t good in the first place? You need counter-criticisms to arrive at that conclusion in the first place.

How did you conclude that the criticisms aren’t good? You need counter-criticisms to arrive at that conclusion in the first place.

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.

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?