How Does Veritula Work?
Discussion started by Dennis Hackethal
How Does Veritula Work?
Veritula (Latin for ‘a bit of truth’) provides an objective, partly automated way to tentatively determine whether a given idea is problematic.
It follows Karl Popper’s epistemology, which says that ideas are assumed true until refuted. This approach leaves us free to make bold conjectures and use the full arsenal at our disposal to criticize these conjectures in order to correct errors and seek truth. It’s a creative and critical approach.
Veritula is a programmatic implementation of Popper’s epistemology.
Consider an idea I
:
I
Since it has no criticisms, I
is considered unproblematic. It is rational to adopt it, tentatively consider it unproblematic, 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:
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.
But 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 decision. 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.
Ideas that are neither criticisms nor top-level conjectures – eg follow-up questions or neutral comments – are considered ancillary ideas. Unlike criticisms, they 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, the rational course of action is to 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 the same discussions are had over and over again, sometimes by the same people. 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.
As a convenience, this checkbox is now checked automatically for criticisms.
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.
The idea is not good if it has outstanding criticisms.
Don’t worry about which ideas are better than others. That’s a remnant of justificationism. Only go by whether an idea has outstanding criticisms.
Say you have an idea, that you take to be true, but at the same time, you understand that that idea has flaws, you haven't come up with a better idea yet, so you act based on this idea.
I guess that's where figuring that out before acting comes in.
Can you give an example of a flawed idea you think is true and want to act on?
PS: You forgot to @mention me. Again, if you want me to get notified, check the section that says ‘Replying to’ above the textarea when you write the comment. If it doesn’t list me, @mention me.
The reframing of an idea with criticism being problematic instead of false solves this. Because now I’m not acting based on a false idea but a problematic idea.
I don’t think that solves it because one shouldn’t act on a problematic idea either. And falseness can still be the reason an idea is problematic in the first place.
So, please give an example.
The current city I live in. I have outstanding criticisms about it. But I still live here.
The mere idea ‘continue living in city X’ may have pending criticisms. But so might the idea ‘leave X’. Maybe leaving is too expensive right now, or you’d have to find a new job and you like your job more than you want to leave, etc. In which case there could be a third idea: ‘At some point I’d like to leave X, but for right now that’s too expensive and too cumbersome, so staying in X for another year is fine.’ And that idea may not have any pending criticisms.
Does that make sense?
It does. But wouldn't that explain away the problem itself? I guess understanding and moving the problem into the future where I might be better suited to solve it is a good idea. So now I am acting on an explanation that solves the problem tentatively.
It’s just an example. We’re not actually trying to solve the problem of where you want to live. We’re trying to understand how Veritula works.
Another example is physics. The idea ‘Newtonian physics is the true explanation of gravity’ has pending criticisms. For all we know, it’s false. But the idea ‘As an architect, I use Newtonian physics to make calculations because it’s simpler than general relativity and gives nearly identical results on earth’ may have no pending criticisms. So it’s rational for the architect to go with Newtonian physics.
The architect isn’t moving the problem into the future. Finding the true explanation of gravity was never his problem. He’s picking the best tool for the job, today.