How Does Veritula Work?

if somebody suggests some system they can’t put into practice, then the system is no good.

Agreed. My point is that you can't refute a flaw by saying the flaw doesn't have a workable system to resolve it. "Your boat has a hole in it". "Yeah, well I don't have any way of fixing it". That doesn't resolve the criticism of the boat. If it's unfixable and a real flaw, you might just need a new boat.

#5096​·​Sam Cymbaluk, 3 days ago

if somebody suggests some system they can’t put into practice, then the system is no good.

Agreed. My point is that you can't refute a flaw by saying the flaw doesn't have a workable system to resolve it. "Your boat has a hole in it". "Yeah, well I don't have any way of fixing it". That doesn't resolve the criticism of the boat. If it's unfixable and a real flaw, you might just need a new boat.

#5096​·​Sam Cymbaluk, 3 days ago

if somebody suggests some system they can’t put into practice, then the system is no good.

Agreed. My point is that you can't refute a flaw by saying the flaw doesn't have a workable system to resolve it. "Your boat has a hole in it". "Yeah, well I don't have any way of fixing it". That doesn't resolve the criticism of the boat. If it's unfixable and a real flaw, you might just need a new boat.

#5096​·​Sam Cymbaluk, 3 days ago

Maybe I’m misunderstanding you, but if somebody suggests some system they can’t put into practice, then the system is no good.

#5094​·​Dennis HackethalOP, 3 days ago

Is rejecting an idea equivalent to adopting it's negation?

#5088​·​Sam Cymbaluk, 3 days ago

An inability to improve on the criticized aspect of a system is not a refutation of that criticism.

#5086​·​Sam Cymbaluk, 3 days ago

This approach does not specify how long you should spend coming up with criticisms before adopting it, therefore it cannot be put into action as stated. The delay must be nonzero otherwise, the fresh idea "you should ignore criticisms" would nullify the system.

#5085​·​Sam Cymbaluk, 3 days ago

But what if the idea that you should be suspicious of a large volume of criticism in a short time has pending criticism itself?

#5087​·​Sam Cymbaluk, 3 days ago

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?

Or, simplified:

It is rational to adopt only those ideas which, as written, don’t have pending criticisms, and to reject ideas that do.

#4902​·​Dennis HackethalOP revised 3 months ago

You’d know it’s a DDoS long before reviewing all the contents. That amount of criticism in a short time is suspicious, so you’d investigate for signs of coordination. Companies investigating actual DDoSes don’t need to review every single request to know they’re being DDoS’ed. And no otherwise reasonable person could blame them if a few good requests get dropped during their defense efforts.

#2182​·​Dennis HackethalOP revised 10 months ago

To incorporate some notion of decisiveness or severity, we need to be prepared to program that into our decision-making tool. I’m not aware that anyone knows how to programmatically determine the severity or decisiveness of a criticism, and I suspect outsourcing it to the user would result in the same unintended behavior we saw with the sliders for hard to vary.

#4711​·​Dennis HackethalOP, 4 months ago

Say the thought of adopting some idea with no criticisms bothers you. Then you can always try to be the first to suggest criticisms, which will then give you a rational reason not to adopt the idea. If instead you fail to come up with criticisms, why not adopt it?

#3028​·​Dennis HackethalOP revised 8 months ago

I’ve formalized some of these ideas in my first paper, ‘The Structure of Rational Thought’.

https://www.academia.edu/170297518/The_Structure_of_Rational_Thought

#5083​·​Dennis HackethalOP, 9 days ago

I’ve formalized some of these ideas in my first paper, ‘The Structure of Rational Thought’.

https://www.academia.edu/170297518/The_Structure_of_Rational_Thought

#5083​·​Dennis HackethalOP, 9 days ago

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 well-defined 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: 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 ongoing 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.

On Veritula, ideas are discrete and immutable. Consider an idea I:

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              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 be irrational to reject it, consider it problematic, or act counter to it. (See #2281 for more details on rational decision-making.)

Next, someone submits a criticism C1:

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              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):

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                   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:

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              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:

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              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 automatically marks ideas accordingly.

Since decision-making follows the same logic as truth-seeking, you can use these trees to make decisions, too. Veritula implements unanimous consent as defined by Taking Children Seriously, a parenting philosophy that builds on Popper’s epistemology. 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.

---

1. Popperian epistemology has some flaws, like verisimilitude, but Veritula doesn’t implement those.

#4471​·​Dennis HackethalOP revised 5 months ago

What reason could you have to ignore the pending criticisms and adopt [the criticized idea] anyway?

Maybe the criticisms aren’t decisive.

#2138​·​Dennis HackethalOP revised 10 months ago

What reason could you have to ignore the pending criticisms and adopt [the criticized idea] anyway?

Maybe the criticisms aren’t decisive.

#2138​·​Dennis HackethalOP revised 10 months ago

What reason could you have to ignore the pending criticisms and adopt [the criticized idea] anyway?

Maybe the criticisms aren’t decisive.

#2138​·​Dennis HackethalOP revised 10 months ago

irrational

What's bad in being irrational? Ration overrated and has pretty indirect relation with the common sense. How rationality will help you to stand the right up, and do the thing? And what if you can't? In general: why not considering each judgement, as a true one? Let's talk about that: each person has it's own experience, which you will never live thru, and from their personal perception of this reality, their point absolutely have right to make sense. Not better, nor worse, then anyone's else. Could you prove that that person actually live in the same world you do? How you can be sure that everything you know make sense, and next moment you will not wake up, saying: what a weird dream I saw! How you would measure a truenesslessnessless, how can you expect that successful strategy will not fail next day? Let's touch the ground for a moment: what we ACTUALLY know about us, and the place where we are? If you like me, you know about this world only two things:
1. the World is such so it's existence, essence, the law, a form of being -- inevitable leads to appearing there of you;
2. and you, wonderfully, has an ability -- to perceive an experience, live thru time and flow of entropy, learn, learn something about your own existence, beingnesslessnessless, learn about limit of own ability to learn -- marvelously comprehend something despite all of that, something, or maybe, at least, one -- for sure -- the World is such the place you know about for sure exactly one thing -- whereinit thisnesslessnesslesssness of is allows to exist in it the you one, who able to perceive and comprehend it. And that's it. Everything behind that -- our imagination. But you are here, and I respect it, and welcoming you. So I'm totally open to trust any story of your own perspective on this journey, because: who I am to judge, what is true. And it's okay for me if you are not or notn't.
3. Because things here always falls into two items: the ones which lands in first or second.
4. And the rest ones.

#4549​·​Yurii Pytomets revised 4 months ago

irrational

What's bad in being irrational? Ration overrated and has pretty indirect relation with the common sense. How rationality will help you to stand the right up, and do the thing? And what if you can't? In general: why not considering each judgement, as a true one? Let's talk about that: each person has it's own experience, which you will never live thru, and from their personal perception of this reality, their point absolutely have right to make sense. Not better, nor worse, then anyone's else. Could you prove that that person actually live in the same world you do? How you can be sure that everything you know make sense, and next moment you will not wake up, saying: what a weird dream I saw! How you would measure a truenesslessnessless, how can you expect that successful strategy will not fail next day? Let's touch the ground for a moment: what we ACTUALLY know about us, and the place where we are? If you like me, you know about this world only two things:
1. the World is such so it's existence, essence, the law, a form of being -- inevitable leads to appearing there of you;
2. and you, wonderfully, has an ability -- to perceive an experience, live thru time and flow of entropy, learn, learn something about your own existence, beingnesslessnessless, learn about limit of own ability to learn -- marvelously comprehend something despite all of that, something, or maybe, at least, one -- for sure -- the World is such the place you know about for sure exactly one thing -- whereinit thisnesslessnesslesssness of is allows to exist in it the you one, who able to perceive and comprehend it. And that's it. Everything behind that -- our imagination. But you are here, and I respect it, and welcoming you. So I'm totally open to trust any story of your own perspective on this journey, because: who I am to judge, what is true. And it's okay for me if you are not or notn't.
3. Because things here always falls into two items: the ones which lands in first or second.
4. And the rest ones.

#4549​·​Yurii Pytomets revised 4 months ago

But you’re not at war all the time.

It depend on the perspective and viewpoint. We are at war, literally, and pretty often -- figuratively, each of us. So the constrains are real and the space for creativity and "freedom" rely on available resources, that would be naïve to ignore them in your theory. But there's, definitely, a threshold, above which cooperation and synergy -- brings more on the long-term perspective, than costs. But constrains are still here locally (e.g. limited time and cognitive/computational complexity/energy). Also, each consensus have a price to be established, and an infrastructural tax to work.

#4609​·​Yurii Pytomets revised 4 months ago

Enjoy your crystal clearness. Feel free to remove my account, please, since I see no such option. I see no perspective in communication with ones who found it discomfortable to retrospect frames of own perspective.

#4592​·​Yurii Pytomets revised 4 months ago