Dennis Hackethal’s avatar

Dennis Hackethal

@dennis-hackethal·Member since June 2024

Badges

 User
Registered their account.
 Initiator
Started their first discussion.
 Engager
Participates in three or more discussions.
 Novice
Submitted their first idea.
 Beginner
Submitted their 10th idea.
 Intermediate
Submitted their 50th idea.
 Advanced
Submitted their 100th idea.
 Critic
 Private
 Lieutenant
 Captain
 Defender
 Shield
 Watchman
 Copy editor
Created their first revision.
 Assistant editor
Created their 10th revision.
 Associate editor
Created their 50th revision.
 Professional
Submitted their 500th idea.
 Deputy editor
Created their 100th revision.
 Colonel
 Master
Submitted their 1000th idea.
 Bulwark
 General

Activity

  Dennis Hackethal commented on criticism #2728.

Feature idea: private discussions only the creator and invited people can see. This could be a paid feature; $2 per discussion, say.

#2728·Dennis HackethalOP revised 22 days ago

This is done as of 9b5788c but it’s still free for now. Will make it a paid feature after some more testing and polishing.

  Dennis Hackethal revised idea #3132. The revision addresses ideas #1202 and #1211.

What do you think of: it’s the law of the excluded middle that constrains the universe to exist. Nothing can’t exist, so the only alternative that’s left is for something to exist.

What do you think of: it’s the law of the excluded middle that constrains the universe to exist. Nothing can’t exist, so the only alternative that’s left is for something to exist.

  Dennis Hackethal revised idea #1194.

Fix grammar


What do you think of: it’s the fact that the law of the excluded middle that constrains the universe to exist. Nothing can’t exist, so the only alternative that’s left is for something to exist.

What do you think of: it’s the law of the excluded middle that constrains the universe to exist. Nothing can’t exist, so the only alternative that’s left is for something to exist.

  Dennis Hackethal criticized idea #3089.

Core Moral Virtues (influenced by Ayn Rand and CR)

  • Rationality: The commitment to the ongoing deliberate use of conjecture and criticism.

  • Honesty: A refusal to evade one's thoughts, a commitment to searching for one's own errors, and a refusal to fake reality to others.

  • Integrity: The refusal to permit a breach between one's best ideas and one's actions.

  • Independence: The acceptance of one's own mind as the first and final executor of rationality within their own lives.

  • Justice: The application of rationality in judging ideas, people, and actions and acting on those evaluations proportionately.

  • Productiveness: The application of rationality to sustaining and improving one's life and circumstances.

  • Pride: An insatiable drive to find and fix errors in one's character, knowledge, and creations. “Moral Ambitiousness” as Ayn Rand puts it.

#3089·Benjamin DaviesOP, 5 days ago

Integrity: The refusal to permit a breach between one's best ideas and one's actions.

Phrasing it in terms of ‘best’ ideas could be tricky. Recall that we don’t (currently) know how to classify ideas as better/best/worse/worst.

I suggest speaking of one’s convictions instead.

  Dennis Hackethal criticized idea #3089.

Core Moral Virtues (influenced by Ayn Rand and CR)

  • Rationality: The commitment to the ongoing deliberate use of conjecture and criticism.

  • Honesty: A refusal to evade one's thoughts, a commitment to searching for one's own errors, and a refusal to fake reality to others.

  • Integrity: The refusal to permit a breach between one's best ideas and one's actions.

  • Independence: The acceptance of one's own mind as the first and final executor of rationality within their own lives.

  • Justice: The application of rationality in judging ideas, people, and actions and acting on those evaluations proportionately.

  • Productiveness: The application of rationality to sustaining and improving one's life and circumstances.

  • Pride: An insatiable drive to find and fix errors in one's character, knowledge, and creations. “Moral Ambitiousness” as Ayn Rand puts it.

#3089·Benjamin DaviesOP, 5 days ago

Rationality: The commitment to the ongoing deliberate use of conjecture and criticism.

This is vague and compatible with irrational uses of conjecture and criticism. People can use them to come up with evasions and lies.

Would it make sense to refer to #2281 instead?

  Dennis Hackethal criticized idea #3089.

Core Moral Virtues (influenced by Ayn Rand and CR)

  • Rationality: The commitment to the ongoing deliberate use of conjecture and criticism.

  • Honesty: A refusal to evade one's thoughts, a commitment to searching for one's own errors, and a refusal to fake reality to others.

  • Integrity: The refusal to permit a breach between one's best ideas and one's actions.

  • Independence: The acceptance of one's own mind as the first and final executor of rationality within their own lives.

  • Justice: The application of rationality in judging ideas, people, and actions and acting on those evaluations proportionately.

  • Productiveness: The application of rationality to sustaining and improving one's life and circumstances.

  • Pride: An insatiable drive to find and fix errors in one's character, knowledge, and creations. “Moral Ambitiousness” as Ayn Rand puts it.

#3089·Benjamin DaviesOP, 5 days ago

Moral Ambitiousness

The only quote I could (quickly) find is lowercase: https://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/pride.html#order_2:~:text=by%20the%20term%3A%20%22-,moral%20ambitiousness,-.%22%20It%20means%20that

I recommend getting in the habit of copy/pasting from original sources, and linking them.

  Dennis Hackethal criticized idea #3125.

Applied Virtues

  • Curiosity: The drive to find new problems and generate conjectures.

  • Self-Criticism: The primary tool of intellectual honesty.

  • Clarity: The virtue of refining thoughts to be less ambiguous and easier to criticise.

  • Epistemic Humility: The consistent recognition of one's own fallibility.

  • Thoroughness: The commitment to accounting for all known uncontroverted ideas and pending criticisms that may pertain to the problem at hand. {This seems weak}

  • Good Faith: The commitment to "steel-manning" ideas and criticisms.

  • Resilience / Fortitude: The ability to recover from failure and re-apply the process.

  • Decisiveness: The will to act once a conjecture is provisionally accepted and criticism is exhausted.

  • Courage: The will to face the potential pains of the epistemic process (facing uncomfortable truths, acting on counter-intuitive conclusions, thinking alone).

  • Accountability: A social manifestation of integrity; the willingness to "own" the consequences of one's actions.

  • Reliability: The practice of meeting one's voluntary commitments.

  • Proportionality: The skill of acting proportionately to a given situation, criticism or event.

  • Intellectual Impartiality: The skill of separating the content of an idea from its source, allowing criticism to be applied fairly.

  • Fairness: The consistent application of the same critical standards to all ideas.

  • Intellectual Patience: The willingness to give a problem the time it needs, rather than using a problematic solution (a solution with pending criticisms). {Okay but what if it is an emergency?}

  • Foresight & Planning: The application of conjecture and criticism to problems pertaining to future circumstances.

  • Diligence / Industriousness: The sustained application of effort to the problem-solving process, usually to a particular problem.

  • Creativity / Ingenuity: The skill of generating novel conjectures and criticisms.

  • Efficiency: The drive to reduce the work, resources or steps it takes to solve problems.

  • Resourcefulness: The skill of solving problems within constraints.

  • Purposefulness: The skill of defining a hierarchy of problems to solve, ensuring one's productive effort is directed at goals worth pursuing.

  • Focus: The ability to sustain mental effort.

  • Sharpness: Raw mental processing power.

  • Energy / Vitality: The capacity to be highly productive, especially over long durations.

  • Athleticism / Physicality: The capacity of the body to execute actions.

  • Memory: The ability to store and retrieve important conjectures and criticisms.

  • Conscientiousness: The opposite of negligence. A commitment to making genuine efforts; not cutting corners.

  • Excellence: The opposite of mediocrity. Man can go “as high as his ability will carry him” (The Virtue of Selfishness, ch. 12).

#3125·Benjamin DaviesOP revised 2 days ago

Is there overlap between conscientiousness and thoroughness? Is being thorough part of being conscientious?

  Dennis Hackethal commented on criticism #2169.

Veritula should have some way to indicate agreement; some way to indicate that a particular thread of a discussion is resolved, at least for the time being.

#2169·Dennis HackethalOP revised about 2 months ago

The Effective Altruism forum has an interesting way to react to posts.

There’s an ‘Agree’ button and a ‘Disagree’ button. Those are apparently anonymous. Then separately, there’s a button to ‘Add a reaction’ of either ‘Heart’, ‘Helpful’, ‘Insightful’, ‘Changed my mind’, or ‘Made me laugh’. And those are apparently not anonymous.

I wonder why they chose to make some reactions anonymous but not others. I don’t think I’d want a ‘Heart’ or ‘Made me laugh’ button, they seem too social-network-y. Also, ‘Heart’ seems like a duplicate of ‘Agree’. But ‘Insightful’ and ‘Changed my mind’ seem epistemologically relevant. Maybe ‘Helpful’, too.

If I did decide to go with ‘Agree’ and ‘Disagree’ buttons, I wouldn’t make them anonymous, though.

  Dennis Hackethal submitted idea #3120.

What does digital tidiness mean to you?

  Dennis Hackethal revised criticism #3115. The revision addresses idea #3117.

The activity feed already shows updates to discussions. Could just include changes to the privacy setting there. And, whenever the privacy setting does change, separately notify participants of the change.

The activity feed already shows updates to discussions. Could just include changes to the privacy setting there. And, whenever the privacy setting does change, notify participants of the change.

  Dennis Hackethal addressed criticism #3115.

The activity feed already shows updates to discussions. Could just include changes to the privacy setting there. And, whenever the privacy setting does change, separately notify participants of the change.

#3115·Dennis HackethalOP revised 4 days ago

On second thought, the reason for the privacy change may well be related to the reason for any changes to the title or about section, so doing it in the same notification might actually be clearer for users.

  Dennis Hackethal revised criticism #3113. The revision addresses idea #3112.

The activity feed already shows updates to discussions. Could just include changes to the privacy setting there. And, whenever the privacy setting does change, separately notify participants of the change.

The activity feed already shows updates to discussions. Could just include changes to the privacy setting there. And, whenever the privacy setting does change, separately notify participants of the change.

  Dennis Hackethal revised criticism #3110.

The activity feed already shows updates to discussions. Could just include changes to the privacy setting there. And, whenever the privacy setting does change, notify participants of the activity.

The activity feed already shows updates to discussions. Could just include changes to the privacy setting there. And, whenever the privacy setting does change, separately notify participants of the change.

  Dennis Hackethal addressed criticism #3110.

The activity feed already shows updates to discussions. Could just include changes to the privacy setting there. And, whenever the privacy setting does change, notify participants of the activity.

#3110·Dennis HackethalOP revised 4 days ago

A change to the privacy setting is notable enough that it requires a dedicated notification independent of any changes to a discussion title or about section.

  Dennis Hackethal revised criticism #3109.

The activity feed already shows updates to discussions. Could just include changes to the privacy setting there. And, whenever the privacy setting does change, notify participants.

The activity feed already shows updates to discussions. Could just include changes to the privacy setting there. And, whenever the privacy setting does change, notify participants of the activity.

  Dennis Hackethal addressed criticism #3108.

How would you notify participants of changes to the privacy setting?

#3108·Dennis HackethalOP, 4 days ago

The activity feed already shows updates to discussions. Could just include changes to the privacy setting there. And, whenever the privacy setting does change, notify participants.

  Dennis Hackethal addressed criticism #2728.

Feature idea: private discussions only the creator and invited people can see. This could be a paid feature; $2 per discussion, say.

#2728·Dennis HackethalOP revised 22 days ago

How would you notify participants of changes to the privacy setting?

  Dennis Hackethal submitted criticism #3107.

Preview links of discussions should show the name of the discussion being linked.

See eg https://x.com/agentofapollo/status/1991252721618547023

h/t @benjamin-davies

  Dennis Hackethal archived idea #3087 along with any revisions.
  Dennis Hackethal criticized idea #3087.

Please add a ‘first, previous, next, last’ navigation thing to the top of the activity feed page and similar pages. Currently I need to scroll to the bottom to go to a different page.

#3087·Benjamin Davies, 5 days ago

Good call. I made the pagination ‘sticky’ as of 1e7a85d. Archiving this but let me know if something isn’t working right.

  Dennis Hackethal commented on idea #3097.

I am stuck on the subject of self-discipline.

It seems important to be able to get things done, even when we aren’t in the mood for it (basic chores, for example).

But this conflicts with CR ideas to do with self-coercion.

#3097·Benjamin DaviesOP, 5 days ago

Yeah I’d consider discipline irrational because it means one part of you coerces another.

Having said that, there could be value in learning how to deal productively with situations where you cannot avoid coercion. Like the government forcing you to do your taxes, which you will only do if you translate that external coercion into internal coercion. Nobody else can really coerce you, only you can coerce yourself. It would be nice to do this productively and also in a way that doesn’t practice/internalize self-coercion. And it should be rare. I don’t think basic chores qualify.

  Dennis Hackethal addressed criticism #3101.

If the discussion owner accidentally removes someone and then adds them back right away, it sucks if all the associated records are still gone.

#3101·Dennis HackethalOP, 5 days ago

In later implementations, I could maybe implement a ‘soft’ delete or grace period. Or I could keep the associated records and rely on authorization rules to prevent access. But as of right now, that’s a premature consideration.

  Dennis Hackethal addressed criticism #3100.

Those could be deleted when the user is removed.

#3100·Dennis HackethalOP, 5 days ago

If the discussion owner accidentally removes someone and then adds them back right away, it sucks if all the associated records are still gone.

  Dennis Hackethal addressed criticism #3099.

What if they still have subscriptions or bookmarks in that discussion?

#3099·Dennis HackethalOP, 5 days ago

Those could be deleted when the user is removed.

  Dennis Hackethal addressed criticism #3072.

There could be hard cutoff: they lose access to everything, including their own ideas in that discussion.

#3072·Dennis HackethalOP, 6 days ago

What if they still have subscriptions or bookmarks in that discussion?