How Does Veritula Work?
#5351·Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 month agoBrett’s response:
One can *call* that “rationality”. And ok. But what I’m referring to is that process which causes behaviour in humans. We create (choices) and choose them.
If one wants to extract out “coming up with ideas” from this process, ok. But that to me looks just like sentential logic.
Don’t know why the sudden reference to the rather esoteric topic of sentential logic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propositional_logic Nor does Brett explain what’s wrong with it.
#5351·Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 month agoBrett’s response:
One can *call* that “rationality”. And ok. But what I’m referring to is that process which causes behaviour in humans. We create (choices) and choose them.
If one wants to extract out “coming up with ideas” from this process, ok. But that to me looks just like sentential logic.
This isn’t merely an issue of what we call things. The difference between rationality and creativity isn’t semantics.
#5350·Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 month agoBen points out to Brett that “the step of conjecturing ideas (or criticisms) is not itself rational or irrational. rationality comes in when it comes time to decide what to do, given your state of knowledge. it is about acting according to your best ideas, rather than coming up with ideas”
Brett’s response:
One can *call* that “rationality”. And ok. But what I’m referring to is that process which causes behaviour in humans. We create (choices) and choose them.
If one wants to extract out “coming up with ideas” from this process, ok. But that to me looks just like sentential logic.
#5340·Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 month agoBrett claims in response “the whole Popperian view is that rationality *is* creativity: the *creation* of corrections to errors once identified, etc.” He’s concerned that Veritula “seems to suggest ‘rationality’ is identical to something like ‘logic’ or a purely deductive process.”
Ben points out to Brett that “the step of conjecturing ideas (or criticisms) is not itself rational or irrational. rationality comes in when it comes time to decide what to do, given your state of knowledge. it is about acting according to your best ideas, rather than coming up with ideas”
#5340·Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 month agoBrett claims in response “the whole Popperian view is that rationality *is* creativity: the *creation* of corrections to errors once identified, etc.” He’s concerned that Veritula “seems to suggest ‘rationality’ is identical to something like ‘logic’ or a purely deductive process.”
My response:
I disagree. Popper suggested measures of corroboration and verisimilitude for rational preference formation *given* a set of *already-created* theories (see quotes and explanations in my answer here: https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/137784/relevance-of-poppers-theory-of-corroboration/140003#140003). This is the tradition of preference formation David follows in BoI. Again, we need to take care not to fudge rationality and creativity.
Fix nested quotation marks
Brett claims/implies Veritula is no better than other online forums; remains “unconvinced it amounts [to] the “algorithm” for rationality.”
Brett claims/implies Veritula is no better than other online forums; remains “unconvinced it amounts [to] the ‘algorithm’ for rationality.”
#5344·Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 month agoBrett claims/implies Veritula is no better than other online forums; remains “unconvinced it amounts [to] the “algorithm” for rationality.”
I explain:
Veritula is more advanced. X only has nested commenting, like most other sites. But it has no way to distinguish between comments and criticisms and no way to count pending criticisms. It doesn’t tell you which posts you can rationally adopt. It has no version control, no clear version history, no diffing, no ability to revise most ideas outside a narrow window.
I’m not aware of any other site like Veritula that tells you which posts we can rationally adopt. No site on the market has that capability.
#5344·Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 month agoBrett claims/implies Veritula is no better than other online forums; remains “unconvinced it amounts [to] the “algorithm” for rationality.”
Worth noting that Ben had already linked to an explanation of Veritula in response, but Brett doesn’t seem to read any of the links we send him. I can tell because he keeps having more objections or questions the links already address/answer.
#4902·Dennis HackethalOP revised 5 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 claims/implies Veritula is no better than other online forums; remains “unconvinced it amounts [to] the “algorithm” for rationality.”
#5342·Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 month agoI think Brett is concerned that Veritula discounts the creation of new options. David is right to point in BoI chapter 13 that traditional accounts of rational decision-making focus too much on choosing from existing options according to a fixed formula while ignoring the fact that man is creative, ie can make new options.
Veritula doesn’t discount that. As I point out to Brett, it “lets us submit new options at any time, and it offers writing tools to make that as easy and enjoyable as possible. It actively encourages the creation of new options.”
#5341·Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 month agoIf we can have a purely deductive process to tell whether we’re being rational or not, that’s a very good thing. The opposite of something to be concerned about.
I think Brett is concerned that Veritula discounts the creation of new options. David is right to point in BoI chapter 13 that traditional accounts of rational decision-making focus too much on choosing from existing options according to a fixed formula while ignoring the fact that man is creative, ie can make new options.
#5340·Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 month agoBrett claims in response “the whole Popperian view is that rationality *is* creativity: the *creation* of corrections to errors once identified, etc.” He’s concerned that Veritula “seems to suggest ‘rationality’ is identical to something like ‘logic’ or a purely deductive process.”
If we can have a purely deductive process to tell whether we’re being rational or not, that’s a very good thing. The opposite of something to be concerned about.
#5333·Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 month agoAs I wrote to him in response, rationality and creativity are different things. They’re related, and there’s overlap, but you don’t need to code creativity to code rational preference formation. You can outsource creative input to the user, as programs usually do.
Brett claims in response “the whole Popperian view is that rationality *is* creativity: the *creation* of corrections to errors once identified, etc.” He’s concerned that Veritula “seems to suggest ‘rationality’ is identical to something like ‘logic’ or a purely deductive process.”
#5332·Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 month agoBrett says this can’t be a fully specified criterion of rationality because it’s not an AGI.
As I wrote to him in response, rationality and creativity are different things. They’re related, and there’s overlap, but you don’t need to code creativity to code rational preference formation. You can outsource creative input to the user, as programs usually do.
#4902·Dennis HackethalOP revised 5 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 says this can’t be a fully specified criterion of rationality because it’s not an AGI.
#5330·Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 month agoBrett Hall says Newtonian physics has pending criticisms but we can adopt it rationally in many situations so my criterion of rationality must be false.
#4902·Dennis HackethalOP revised 5 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 Newtonian physics has pending criticisms but we can adopt it rationally in many situations so my criterion of rationality must be false.
#5328·Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 month agoBrett Hall says this basically comes down to getting the “best explanation” but is “not quite right”.
Brett is confused about HTV. It says nothing about pending criticisms. As I replied to him, it says to prefer, “between rival theories at a given state of a discussion, those we find the most difficult to change without breaking their ability to explain what they purport to explain.”
#4902·Dennis HackethalOP revised 5 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”.
#5084·Dennis HackethalOP, 2 months agoNow also available on PhilPapers: https://philpapers.org/archive/HACTSO-6.pdf
#5175·Liberty Fitz-Claridge, about 2 months agoI think we agree that the conjecturing and criticising of explanations is where the progress happens, and this choice you're saying people make at the end among conjectured theories is (relatively) mechanical. But I would also point out that trying to measure how HTV a theory is is as futile and scientistic as trying to measure moral worth. Yet it's still possible to have meaningful discussions about morality. I can't measure the moral value of murder but I can meaningfully argue it's worse than theft. So I think the claim that "if you can't program it you don't understand it" doesn't apply so universally as #3020 implies.
I think you may have misunderstood me. I asked how I can know that our discussion about HTV will be productive if we continue it now. (For context and for others: I’ve found that Liberty and I have roughly the same discussion in various venues every few months or so. I raised this issue in the linked X thread.)
I didn’t ask you to continue the object-level discussion itself.
Please address my concern before continuing the discussion.
#3924·Dennis HackethalOP, 8 months agoIt seems that you've taken the idea of hard to vary as saying that the process of choosing between competing theories is just about measuring how much of this trait they have. One clearly wouldn’t get better explanations from doing that, as it would just be a mechanical way of judging theories.
Yes, but as I understood Deutsch, this process of choosing happens after one has conjectured and criticized a bunch of explanations. I don’t think he suggests that the application of the HTV criterion makes theories better, only that we should use it to choose between explanations after they have been guessed and improved.
So the process of choosing between already existing explanations really is “just about measuring how much of this trait they have.”
I think we agree that the conjecturing and criticising of explanations is where the progress happens, and this choice you're saying people make at the end among conjectured theories is (relatively) mechanical. But I would also point out that trying to measure how HTV a theory is is as futile and scientistic as trying to measure moral worth. Yet it's still possible to have meaningful discussions about morality. I can't measure the moral value of murder but I can meaningfully argue it's worse than theft. So I think the claim that "if you can't program it you don't understand it" doesn't apply so universally as #3020 implies.
#5083·Dennis HackethalOP, 2 months agoI’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
#5116·Dennis HackethalOP, about 2 months ago
should_adopt?andpending_criticismsare implemented in terms of each other. Doesn’t that cause an infinite regress?
No because 1) there’s always a finite amount of deeply nested criticisms, and 2) the discussion graph is acyclic.
#5114·Dennis HackethalOP revised about 2 months agoRecursive 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.
rubydef should_adopt? ideapending_criticisms(idea).none?enddef pending_criticisms ideacriticisms(idea).filter { |c| should_adopt?(c) }enddef criticisms ideachildren(idea).filter(&:criticism?)endThis 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.
should_adopt? and pending_criticisms are implemented in terms of each other. Doesn’t that cause an infinite regress?