How Does Veritula Work?

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 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: it states that 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, such trees can be used for decision-making, too. 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.

Limitations of Veritula

Veritula can help you discover a bit of truth.

It’s not guaranteed to do so. It doesn’t give you a formula for truth-seeking. There’s no guarantee that an idea with no pending criticisms won’t get a new criticism tomorrow. All ideas are tentative in nature. That’s not a limitation of Veritula per se but of epistemology generally (Karl Popper).

There are currently no safeguards against bad actors. For example, people can keep submitting arbitrary criticisms in rapid succession just to ‘save’ their pet ideas. There could be safeguards such as rate-limiting criticisms, but that encourages brigading, making sock-puppets, etc. That said, I think these problems are soluble.

Opposing viewpoints should be defined clearly and openly. Not doing so hinders truth-seeking and rationality (Ayn Rand).

Personal attacks poison rational discussions because they turn an open, objective, impartial truth-seeking process into a defensive mess. It shifts the topic of the discussion from the ideas themselves to the participants in a bad way. People are actually open to harsh criticism as long as their interlocutor shows concern for how it lands (Chris Voss). I may use ‘AI’ at some point to analyze the tone of an idea upon submission.

Veritula works best for conscientious people with an open mind – people who aren’t interested in defending their ideas but in correcting errors. That’s one of the reasons discussions shouldn’t get personal. Veritula can work to resolve conflicts between adversaries, but I think that’s much harder. Any situation where people argue to be right rather than to find truth is challenging. In those cases, it’s best if an independent third party uses Veritula on their behalf to adjudicate the conflict objectively.

Veritula only works for explicit ideas. If you have an inexplicit criticism of an idea, say, then Veritula can’t help with that until you’re able to write the criticism down, at which point it’s explicit. (The distinction between explicit vs inexplicit ideas goes back to David Deutsch. ‘Inexplicit’ means ‘not expressed in words or symbols’.)

How to Structure Discussions

Overall, I think the starting point of a discussion isn’t all that important as long as you’re willing to keep correcting errors. (Popper)

But for those looking for a starting point, you can take inspiration from what I wrote in #502. You can either structure a discussion around a single problem:

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

Or, if the discussion is wider than a single problem, you can treat it as a collection of problems:

Discussion title: some topic (such as ‘abortion’)
Top-level ideas: problems
Nested ideas: solutions, criticisms and so on

Either way, discussions map onto Popper’s problem-oriented philosophy. If that’s what people want – I’m keeping discussion structures open and flexible in case they don’t.

And, as I wrote: “Note also that revisions act as solutions to problems. So do counter-criticisms, in a way.”

I agree with @tom-nassis that it’s best if discussion titles are problem statements (#506).

Avoid duplicate criticisms during revisions

When revising a criticism, check the box that says “Supersedes previous version?”. This will automatically ‘neutralize’ the older version to avoid counting a criticism twice.

What Does “Battle Tested” Mean?

One of @edwin-de-wit’s ideas recently got the blue label that says “battle tested” – well done, Edwin! – so he asked me what it means.

It means that the idea has at least three criticisms, all of which have been addressed.

The label is awarded automatically. It’s a tentative indicator of quality. Battle-tested ideas generally contain more knowledge than non-battle-tested ones.

When there are two conflicting ideas, each with no pending criticisms, go with the (more) battle-tested one. This methodology maps onto Popper’s notion of a critical preference.

The label is not an indicator of an idea’s future success, nor should it be considered a justification of an idea.

You can see all battle-tested ideas currently on Veritula on this page. Those are all the best, most knowledge-dense ideas on this site.

Recursive Epistemology

Veritula implements a recursive epistemology. For a criticism to be pending, it can’t have any pending criticisms itself, and so on, in a deeply nested fashion.

def criticized? idea
  pending_criticisms(idea).any?
end

def pending_criticisms idea
  criticisms(idea).filter { |c| pending_criticisms(c).none? }
end

def criticisms idea
  children(idea).filter(&:criticism?)
end

This approach is different from non-recursive epistemologies, which handle criticisms differently. For example, they might not consider deeply nested criticisms when determining whether an idea is currently criticized.

If I understand Veritula correctly, we first start with an idea. We accept that idea as true until it is criticized. The idea is considered problematic until all criticism is resolved. Since the goal is to live a rational life, we would seek to resolve the problems within the idea before we act on it. We don't submit bulk ideas or criticisms. Ideas (including criticisms), even if related, should generally be submitted separately. Also, avoid duplicate ideas.

@dennis-hackethal you have regularly pointed out to me that it’s a mistake to assign strengths or weaknesses to arguments—for example, in #1809 and #1927. I’d love to get to the bottom of that.

On one hand, I see what you mean. A criticism can either be counter-criticized or it can be an unresolved error. If it’s a bad criticism, you quickly counter it—say, by clarifying why it’s irrelevant—and move on.

I also see why talking about a “gradient” or comparative strength between arguments is problematic: there’s no objective criterion to measure them against. We can only say one theory is better than another when both attempt to explain the same phenomenon—then we can evaluate them using properties such as hard-to-varyness and other criteria Deutsch describes. (We can get into that if you’d like, though I don’t think that’s our main disagreement.). But this comparison doesn’t apply when we’re dealing with very different criticisms of a single idea, because there’s no common standard to measure them against. Comparing their “strength” becomes arbitrary.

However, I still think there are good and bad criticisms, just as there are good and bad explanations (following Deutsch’s distinction: for instance, bad explanations are easy to vary or point to authorities to justify themselves rather than offering a hard-to-vary account of how and why something works). While I could simply counter-criticize bad criticisms and move on, there’s also the matter of efficiency and opportunity cost: I don’t want to waste time repeatedly countering poor criticisms, or worse, get stuck in circular debates with people who don’t recognize that some arguments aren’t good criticisms at all. I’d rather focus my attention on good criticisms.

To clarify what I mean, here’s an excerpt from my book:

The most important principle to remember while criticizing is: Criticize, don’t defend or attack. Good explanations invite criticism of their intrinsic content—whether the explanation itself works, solves the problem, and avoids worse side effects. Bad explanations, by contrast, deflect criticism onto irrelevant, extrinsic properties such as authority or track record—e.g., “this is the method that successful company X uses,” “I believe strongly in this approach,” or “it’s coming from person Y, so it’s worthless.”

That kind of “criticism” isn’t real criticism at all. It’s just attacking or defending. And when we play that game, the explanation itself stays untouched and stagnant. The idea doesn’t get scrutinized or improved—it only gets shielded or dismissed for irrelevant reasons.

That being said, I agree with the points you brought up in #2061, namely that there can be no positive arguments for an idea. By extension, if Veritula would require a specific format or mode of criticism, we’d fall into the very error Popper warns about with the Myth of the Framework—the mistaken belief that criticism requires a shared framework or language. So, Veritula should functionally remain as it is. At most, you might consider adding guidelines on what constitutes good versus poor criticism, so that critics can improve their skills. But I agree: the person who created the idea should remain solely responsible for addressing the criticisms they receive, not dismissing them as “bad” and moving on.

Tagging @bart-vanderhaegen because he and I have discussed this at length—in fact, I got the defending/attacking framing from him.

Rational 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?