Dennis Hackethal
@dennis-hackethal·Member since June 2024
Activity
#2884·Benjamin Davies, 12 days agoSince users are able to revise other users’ ideas, why is it standard practice on Veritula to submit trivial improvements to ideas (such as correction of typos, poor grammar and redundancies) as criticisms, rather than directly revising the idea itself? Example: #2865
Perhaps I have misunderstood the intention of enabling users to revise other people’s ideas.
There are a few reasons people might send criticisms instead of revising an idea themselves:
- You get a chance to disagree.
- Submitting a criticism is easier.
- A criticism is a written record explaining why a revision is necessary.
Because of the third reason, you may see people post a criticism and then immediately revise your idea to address it.
Maybe I’m wrong but I’m sensing a bit of frustration between the lines. Please note that Veritula pursues a higher standard of error correction than other platforms. Some criticisms may be unexpected; discussions could go in a direction you did not anticipate. You may receive criticisms that would be deemed nitpicky on other platforms, but they’re not meant to be. They may go beyond what’s strictly socially acceptable. I intend criticism to be a gift to you. For ‘small’ criticisms, it’s usually best to revise accordingly and not counter-criticize.
Your idea reads more like a question than a criticism. But since I’ve (hopefully) answered it, I’m marking this response a criticism to neutralize it.
Sorry, I was debugging something and temporarily disabled this feature. Should be back up.
#2753·Benjamin Davies revised 16 days agoIdea: Veritula Articles
Currently, Veritula is a discussion website. I believe it could one day do what Wikipedia and Grokipedia do, but better.
A step towards that would be enabling users to produce ‘articles’ or something similar.
An ‘Articles’ tab would be distinct from the ‘Discussions’ tab, featuring explanatory documents similar to encyclopedia entries, and perhaps also blogpost-like content.
Articles focus on distilling the good ideas created/discovered in the discussions that occur on Veritula.
I still think that Veritula already offers what you want – posting a single, top-level idea that is structured any way you like, to a new discussion whose title can be as open-ended as you like – but I’m sympathetic to your motivation.
Not every user is always interested in starting a discussion. Maybe they just want to put some information out there. And although others should still be able to discuss that information, criticism chains and all, that may not always be their primary motivation for posting the information in the first place.
So I’m open to replacing the word ‘discussion’ with a more general word. It should still communicate a sort of ‘grouping’ of ideas but need not be as narrow as ‘discussion’. Would that help?
ChatGPT suggestions:
Topic, thread, subject, space, entry, note / post / piece, context, cluster.
It’s also worth considering what each word would sound like in terms of UI elements. For example, ‘Start a new topic’, ‘Share a space’, etc.
#2753·Benjamin Davies revised 16 days agoIdea: Veritula Articles
Currently, Veritula is a discussion website. I believe it could one day do what Wikipedia and Grokipedia do, but better.
A step towards that would be enabling users to produce ‘articles’ or something similar.
An ‘Articles’ tab would be distinct from the ‘Discussions’ tab, featuring explanatory documents similar to encyclopedia entries, and perhaps also blogpost-like content.
Articles focus on distilling the good ideas created/discovered in the discussions that occur on Veritula.
You wrote in #2856:
… is there anything wrong with just titling a discussion 'Karl Popper' and then putting the equivalent of an encyclopedia article in the about section?
If you are willing to do that, I don’t see the need for this new feature.
#2755·Benjamin Davies, 16 days agoTop-level ideas need to be published to a specific discussion, which will cause some amount of silo-ing or similar dynamics.
See #2765. People can make discussions as general as they want. So there need not be any silo-ing.
#2856·Benjamin Davies, 12 days agoSince discussions themselves are criticisable, is there anything wrong with just titling a discussion 'Karl Popper' and then putting the equivalent of an encyclopedia article in the about section? That is functionally identical to what an article would be, but I am interested if you would prefer discussions not be used that way.
… is there anything wrong with just titling a discussion 'Karl Popper' and then putting the equivalent of an encyclopedia article in the about section?
About sections are for context or background info, not content.
#2856·Benjamin Davies, 12 days agoSince discussions themselves are criticisable, is there anything wrong with just titling a discussion 'Karl Popper' and then putting the equivalent of an encyclopedia article in the about section? That is functionally identical to what an article would be, but I am interested if you would prefer discussions not be used that way.
… is there anything wrong with just titling a discussion 'Karl Popper' and then putting the equivalent of an encyclopedia article in the about section?
Yes. About sections can’t be part of criticism chains.
#2857·Benjamin Davies, 12 days agoNote: Discussions with outstanding top-level criticisms do not render a 'criticised' pill like ideas with outstanding criticisms do.
They’re not supposed to, see #2871.
#2856·Benjamin Davies, 12 days agoSince discussions themselves are criticisable, is there anything wrong with just titling a discussion 'Karl Popper' and then putting the equivalent of an encyclopedia article in the about section? That is functionally identical to what an article would be, but I am interested if you would prefer discussions not be used that way.
Since discussions themselves are criticisable…
They’re not, see #2871.
#2855·Benjamin Davies, 12 days agoI just realised that it is possible to publish a top-level idea as a 'criticism' in a discussion, in the way I have advocated an article would be criticisable. I am struggling to understand what it means to criticise a discussion. @dennis-hackethal may you please explain this?
I am struggling to understand what it means to criticise a discussion.
Top-level criticisms don’t criticize the discussion as a whole. They’re just criticisms of something. Anything. It depends on context.
For example, top-level criticisms in the Veritula – Meta discussion are often bug reports. So they’re criticisms of Veritula.
#2829·Benjamin DaviesOP revised 13 days agoThe Open Society
This is the political philosophy of Critical Rationalism, detailed by Karl Popper in The Open Society and Its Enemies. An open society is one in which each individual is largely enabled to make their own personal decisions, as opposed to a tribal or collectivist society. It replaces the justificationist political question, "Who should rule?", with the fallibilist question: "How can we structure our institutions so that we can remove bad rulers and bad policies without violence?". In this view, democracy is not "rule by the people" (an essentialist definition) but is valued as the only known institutional mechanism for error-correction and leadership change without bloodshed.
their own personal
Double (triple?) tautology
#2829·Benjamin DaviesOP revised 13 days agoThe Open Society
This is the political philosophy of Critical Rationalism, detailed by Karl Popper in The Open Society and Its Enemies. An open society is one in which each individual is largely enabled to make their own personal decisions, as opposed to a tribal or collectivist society. It replaces the justificationist political question, "Who should rule?", with the fallibilist question: "How can we structure our institutions so that we can remove bad rulers and bad policies without violence?". In this view, democracy is not "rule by the people" (an essentialist definition) but is valued as the only known institutional mechanism for error-correction and leadership change without bloodshed.
is largely enabled to
can
#2829·Benjamin DaviesOP revised 13 days agoThe Open Society
This is the political philosophy of Critical Rationalism, detailed by Karl Popper in The Open Society and Its Enemies. An open society is one in which each individual is largely enabled to make their own personal decisions, as opposed to a tribal or collectivist society. It replaces the justificationist political question, "Who should rule?", with the fallibilist question: "How can we structure our institutions so that we can remove bad rulers and bad policies without violence?". In this view, democracy is not "rule by the people" (an essentialist definition) but is valued as the only known institutional mechanism for error-correction and leadership change without bloodshed.
each individual
I see several opportunities for simplification of language in this idea. The quote above is one of them. You could instead say ‘everyone’ or ‘people’.
Doesn’t sound as serious/legitimate as I’d like in this context.
#2829·Benjamin DaviesOP revised 13 days agoThe Open Society
This is the political philosophy of Critical Rationalism, detailed by Karl Popper in The Open Society and Its Enemies. An open society is one in which each individual is largely enabled to make their own personal decisions, as opposed to a tribal or collectivist society. It replaces the justificationist political question, "Who should rule?", with the fallibilist question: "How can we structure our institutions so that we can remove bad rulers and bad policies without violence?". In this view, democracy is not "rule by the people" (an essentialist definition) but is valued as the only known institutional mechanism for error-correction and leadership change without bloodshed.
The Open Society
This is the political philosophy …
I haven’t read that book but it seems weird to call a society a philosophy. You sure that’s what Popper means?
#2816·Benjamin Davies revised 13 days agoThe user could publish it as a separate independent idea, including a link to the idea they want to relate/refer to.
This is how relating discussions works currently. For instance, if I start a discussion on Bitcoin, I might want to connect it to the existing discussion on Zcash. At present, the only way to achieve this is by adding a link to the Zcash discussion within my new Bitcoin discussion.
I suspect you would agree with me that this approach to how discussions interact isn’t really an issue. I also think it wouldn’t be an issue for independently published ideas, for the same reasons.
Note: This has lead me to the idea that links within Veritula could be bidirectional. Each idea could have an option to display all other ideas that refer to it. I will submit this as a top-level idea in this thread.
lead
led
The user could publish it as a separate independent idea, including a link to the idea they want to relate/refer to.
Posting a sibling on an existing discussion is far easier.
The user could publish it as a separate independent idea, including a link to the idea they want to relate/refer to.
Posting a sibling on an existing discussion is far easier.
#2816·Benjamin Davies revised 13 days agoThe user could publish it as a separate independent idea, including a link to the idea they want to relate/refer to.
This is how relating discussions works currently. For instance, if I start a discussion on Bitcoin, I might want to connect it to the existing discussion on Zcash. At present, the only way to achieve this is by adding a link to the Zcash discussion within my new Bitcoin discussion.
I suspect you would agree with me that this approach to how discussions interact isn’t really an issue. I also think it wouldn’t be an issue for independently published ideas, for the same reasons.
Note: This has lead me to the idea that links within Veritula could be bidirectional. Each idea could have an option to display all other ideas that refer to it. I will submit this as a top-level idea in this thread.
The user could publish it as a separate independent idea, including a link to the idea they want to relate/refer to.
Posting a sibling on an existing discussion is far easier.
You may want to hit the bell icon for each discussion and at the top of the page listing all discussions. Then you’ll be notified of every activity on existing discussions, and of new discussions.
That’s what notifications are for. You’d want to hit the bell icon for each discussion and at the top of the page listing all discussions. Then you’ll be notified of every activity on existing discussions, and of new discussions. The notification page keeps track of read vs unread notifications.
#2853·Benjamin Davies, 12 days agoI noticed that the idea count of some discussions in the Discussions page seem to be inaccurate. In the Keeping Tidy discussion, I count 13 ideas, including revisions, while the listing for it on Discussions says it contains 17.
You forgot to count comments on older versions of ideas.
#2829·Benjamin DaviesOP revised 13 days agoThe Open Society
This is the political philosophy of Critical Rationalism, detailed by Karl Popper in The Open Society and Its Enemies. An open society is one in which each individual is largely enabled to make their own personal decisions, as opposed to a tribal or collectivist society. It replaces the justificationist political question, "Who should rule?", with the fallibilist question: "How can we structure our institutions so that we can remove bad rulers and bad policies without violence?". In this view, democracy is not "rule by the people" (an essentialist definition) but is valued as the only known institutional mechanism for error-correction and leadership change without bloodshed.
Broken links
#2823·Benjamin DaviesOP, 13 days agoPolitical Holism
Synonymous with large-scale social engineering, this is the political program that follows from Historicism. It is the attempt to remodel an entire society from a central blueprint, based on a historicist prophecy of an "ideal" state. Popper argued this program is both violent and irrational. It is violent because it requires the suppression of all dissent to enact the central plan, and it is irrational because when an entire system is changed at once, it becomes impossible to trace the consequences of any single action, making it impossible to learn from mistakes.
Broken link
#2833·Benjamin DaviesOP, 13 days agoI notice that I tend to work harder at being tidy when I am well fed, or have consumed dopaminergic substances like nicotine.
A former coworker told me he sometimes struggled with self-doubt when he was in college. Then he noticed that the self-doubt would appear when he hadn’t eaten in a while. It consistently disappeared after meals.
#2840·Benjamin DaviesOP revised 13 days agoI think part of the problem is that I don’t have a dedicated final place where everything lives. I think creating and designating these spaces would go a long way, as I wouldn’t need to work out a place to put every item each time.
Related to that, here’s a tip I like to follow. Anytime you go to a new place, like a hotel room or an AirBnB, designate a spot for your keys and valuables. Do this immediately upon arrival. After that, put those things there consistently. Never put them anywhere else. That should make it much harder to lose your valuables while traveling.