Dennis Hackethal
@dennis.hackethal·Joined Jun 2024·Ideas
Founder Veritula.
Author. Software engineer. Ex Apple. Translator of The Beginning of Infinity.
dennishackethal.com
#4902·Dennis HackethalOP revised 4 months agoRational Decision-Making
Expanding on #2112…
If an idea, as written, has no pending criticisms, it’s rational to adopt it and irrational to reject it. What reason could you have to reject it? If it has no pending criticisms, then either 1) no reasons to reject it (ie, criticisms) have been suggested or 2) all suggested reasons have been addressed already.
If an idea, as written, does have pending criticisms, it’s irrational to adopt it and rational to reject it – by reference to those criticisms. What reason could you have to ignore the pending criticisms and adopt it anyway?
Or, simplified:
It is rational to adopt only those ideas which, as written, don’t have pending criticisms, and to reject ideas that do.
Brett Hall says this basically comes down to getting the “best explanation” but is “not quite right”.
#5325·Dennis HackethalOP, 17 days agoBrett Hall responds to the contradiction between HTV and ‘if you can’t program it, you haven’t understood it’: https://x.com/ToKTeacher/status/2090780593739243793
He agrees we can’t program HTV but says even if we don’t know how or why an explanation is HTV, we still know that it’s HTV.
The blog post already sidesteps that issue by granting the user the ability to input some HTV score without having to give any reasoning. That still leads to all sorts of trouble.
#5325·Dennis HackethalOP, 17 days agoBrett Hall responds to the contradiction between HTV and ‘if you can’t program it, you haven’t understood it’: https://x.com/ToKTeacher/status/2090780593739243793
He agrees we can’t program HTV but says even if we don’t know how or why an explanation is HTV, we still know that it’s HTV.
Translation: ‘trust me bro’
It’s just vibes.
#3069·Dennis HackethalOP revised 10 months agoMy 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.
Deutsch says that one should adopt explanations based on how hard they are to change without impacting their ability to explain what they claim to explain. The hardest-to-change explanation is the best and should be adopted. But he doesn’t say how to figure out which is hardest to change.
A 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
Brett Hall responds to the contradiction between HTV and ‘if you can’t program it, you haven’t understood it’: https://x.com/ToKTeacher/status/2090780593739243793
He agrees we can’t program HTV but says even if we don’t know how or why an explanation is HTV, we still know that it’s HTV.
#5311·Tyler MillsOP, 19 days agoAh, I marked my agreement in #5292 a criticism to neutralize yours, since I corrected #5293. But I should have revised it to additionally have the existing criticism no longer apply. I'll make a new revision with that change.
Since you agree that a revision was necessary, I’ve submitted a counter-criticism of #5292 so that this branch of the discussion tree is consistent (#5323). Ideas are immutable; opening a new branch won’t automatically fix broken branches.
The branch now reflects that your action was rational.
Generally speaking, when a revision addresses a criticism, we don’t submit a counter-criticism.
Let me stress ahead of time that this kind of housekeeping may not seem the most fun, but is indispensable in keeping consistent discussion trees. We can learn to enjoy it. We benefit from this kind of housekeeping by being able to look up which ideas we can rationally adopt.
#5292·Tyler MillsOP, 22 days agoWell the device may deal with some noisy neighbors, but sure, a criticism overall. Edited.
Revision done; criticism not needed.
#5183·Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 month ago@edwin-de-wit recently asked Deutsch about this:
… hard to vary can also be a property that you don’t want. Sometimes they say that complicated systems are just so entangled that they’re no longer changeable. You could call that hard to vary but it’s not a property you pursue.
Deutsch’s reply:
Quite so. So hard to vary is about explanations, not about end products. So the end product should be easy to vary, if you want to. But it should be hard to vary in the sense that you don’t want to.
Naval, who’s inspired by Deutsch, says good products are hard to vary, too: https://nav.al/good-products
Gives iPhone as example.
#5183·Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 month ago@edwin-de-wit recently asked Deutsch about this:
… hard to vary can also be a property that you don’t want. Sometimes they say that complicated systems are just so entangled that they’re no longer changeable. You could call that hard to vary but it’s not a property you pursue.
Deutsch’s reply:
Quite so. So hard to vary is about explanations, not about end products. So the end product should be easy to vary, if you want to. But it should be hard to vary in the sense that you don’t want to.
But HTV is also about art (BoI chapter 14).
A piece of art is a kind of end product. And we could write code to produce art.
What’s wrong with using melatonin indefinitely?
AFAIK it creates no physical dependence, you don’t build a tolerance, and it’s cheap. What’s not to love?
AFAIK it creates no physical dependence and you don’t build a tolerance.
#5233·Dennis Hackethal, 27 days agoWhat’s wrong with using melatonin indefinitely?
AFAIK it creates no physical dependence, you don’t build a tolerance, and it’s cheap. What’s not to love?
I was wrong to submit this criticism in this form; it should be only about the lack of dependence. Otherwise the criticism chain is inverted for #5203.
#5233·Dennis Hackethal, 27 days agoWhat’s wrong with using melatonin indefinitely?
AFAIK it creates no physical dependence, you don’t build a tolerance, and it’s cheap. What’s not to love?
What’s not to love?
#5203 already says: causes people to wake up early. (Can corroborate.)
The Blind Truth-Seeker:
https://libertythroughreason.com/the-blind-truth-seeker/
~All previous methods of preference formation focus too much on what the ideas say; on their content.
Nobody really knows just how simple an idea is (Occam’s razor) or how likely (Bayesianism), for example. In some cases it’s obvious how ideas compare, but in others not so much.
Adherents of those epistemologies are all fooling themselves into thinking they’re being rational when really they’re still acting on whim. Just fancier whim.
Focus instead on how the ideas relate, on the structure of the current state of the discussion, and preference formation gets much easier and simpler.
Then you can easily see which ideas you can adopt and which you can’t. You can even see exactly which criticisms you’d need to address to change someone’s mind, say.
Beautiful.
#5288·Tyler MillsOP, 22 days agoIt strikes me that I may have some confusion around compromise. There's an idea (from who/where? Gemini says Brett Hall...) that a compromise can actually be bad, because it is a new theory that no one was advocating for. So if it fails, it's harder to learn from and hold anyone accountable for. Yet, to resolve our procrastination and other hangups (and many problems in life), it seems like finding a common preference is the thing to do (and it seems like it works). But isn't that the same as compromising?
… it seems like finding a common preference is the thing to do …
It is.
… (and it seems like it works).
It usually does.
But isn't that the same as compromising?
No. A common preference is a new option everyone involved prefers to their respective original stance. A compromise is an option they do not prefer, but merely reluctantly agree to. And it’s usually not really new in content but resulted from mechanically mixing existing options. See the article linked in #5301.
#5288·Tyler MillsOP, 22 days agoIt strikes me that I may have some confusion around compromise. There's an idea (from who/where? Gemini says Brett Hall...) that a compromise can actually be bad, because it is a new theory that no one was advocating for. So if it fails, it's harder to learn from and hold anyone accountable for. Yet, to resolve our procrastination and other hangups (and many problems in life), it seems like finding a common preference is the thing to do (and it seems like it works). But isn't that the same as compromising?
… a compromise can actually be bad, because it is a new theory that no one was advocating for.
Compromise is always bad. It’s a form of irrationality.
#5288·Tyler MillsOP, 22 days agoIt strikes me that I may have some confusion around compromise. There's an idea (from who/where? Gemini says Brett Hall...) that a compromise can actually be bad, because it is a new theory that no one was advocating for. So if it fails, it's harder to learn from and hold anyone accountable for. Yet, to resolve our procrastination and other hangups (and many problems in life), it seems like finding a common preference is the thing to do (and it seems like it works). But isn't that the same as compromising?
Gemini says Brett Hall...
No it’s TCS: https://takingchildrenseriously.com/how-is-a-compromise-not-a-real-solution/
Time-release melatonin has solved the backfire problem for me. But I don't want to be dependent on it forever to get a good 8 hours.
Time-release melatonin has solved the backfire problem for me. But I don't want to be dependent on it forever to get a good 8 hours.
#5292·Tyler MillsOP, 22 days agoWell the device may deal with some noisy neighbors, but sure, a criticism overall. Edited.
Not to be nitpicky, especially since you ended up agreeing, but #5234 now has a pending criticism (yours), yet you acted on the idea. (Or rather, on the suggestion implied by it.) Acting on an idea with pending criticisms is technically the definition of irrationality on V.
I’m purposely not marking this a criticism so the flags don’t flip.
Idea: rational discussion graph with recursive criticism evaluation, like Veritula does now. Except the ideas are programs, not natural-language text. And they execute when they have no pending criticisms.
#5212·Tyler MillsOP, 27 days agoSo 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).
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.
#5276·Benjamin DaviesOP, 23 days agoFrom #1497, emphasis mine:
Discussion title: problem
Top-level ideas in the discussion: proposed solutions
Nested ideas: criticisms, counter-criticisms, and further solutionsThis is what I was going off. Did I misunderstand #1497?
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.
#5276·Benjamin DaviesOP, 23 days agoFrom #1497, emphasis mine:
Discussion title: problem
Top-level ideas in the discussion: proposed solutions
Nested ideas: criticisms, counter-criticisms, and further solutionsThis is what I was going off. Did I misunderstand #1497?
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?