Veritula – Meta
Discuss Veritula itself. For feedback and suggestions.
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With an account, you can revise, criticize, and comment on ideas, and submit new ideas.Now that there are user profiles (#408), each profile can have a tab for unproblematic ideas. Among all the ideas a user has submitted, those are the ones he can rationally hold. And another tab for problematic ideas, ie ideas he has submitted that he cannot rationally hold.
Then people could occasionally check the second tab for ideas they think they can rationally hold but actually can’t. And then they can work on addressing criticisms. A kind of ‘mental housekeeping’ to ensure they never accidentally accept problematic ideas as true.
Diffs should omit unchanged lines. Maybe just leave up to three lines around changed content for context – that’s how git does it.
Done as of cc8e3e9. It now says ‘x unchanged lines collapsed’. See eg this activity.
Now that diffs are formatted, they don’t omit unchanged lines anymore.
Veritula deserves to scale to the size of Wikipedia.
But it never will, unless its users innovate.
How can the global success of Wikipedia inspire Veritula?
I agree that Veritula deserves to scale to something huge.
Looking through the history of Wikipedia, I see that its core concept is that of “compiling the world's knowledge in a single location […]”. To be clear, I think the core concept of Veritula is to be a programmatic implementation of Popper’s rational discussion methodology; it then becomes a dictionary for ideas as a result. It’s also less about listing facts and more about listing ideas and their logical relationship (though criticisms do provide built-in fact-checking mechanisms). That said, with enough users, Veritula could become a place with a lot of knowledge.
The linked site traces some of the success of Wikipedia to volunteers: “The use of volunteers was integral in making and maintaining Wikipedia.” So early adopters such as yourself are crucial.
In addition, 9/11 apparently played a role in making Wikipedia famous:
The September 11 attacks spurred the appearance of breaking news stories on the homepage, as well as information boxes linking related articles. At the time, approximately 100 articles related to 9/11 had been created. After the September 11 attacks, a link to the Wikipedia article on the attacks appeared on Yahoo!'s home page, resulting in a spike in traffic.
Veritula could be a place where people break news stories and others can quickly fact-check and improve upon reports by revising them. An urgent story would draw a lot of users to the site, too.
Something like Wikipedia’s arbitration process could be interesting, too.
Something similar to Wikipedia’s page-protection feature to combat “edit warring” and “prevent vandalism” could address the issue of people posting criticisms in rapid succession to protect their pet ideas.
Your suggestion to look to Wikipedia for inspiration is spot on. Thanks.
To prevent edit warring and vandalism, maybe Veritula could have a reputation system similar to that of Stack Overflow, where you need to earn enough reputation before you can edit someone else’s post, say.
Would it be possible / worth it to produce a competitor to Wikipedia based on Popperian epistemology? Larry Sanger (a founder of Wikipedia) has said that he now thinks Wikipedia should have competing articles on the same topic to allow for the fact that people disagree.
The idea of having a Wikipedia equivalent that presents high quality competing articles detailing different alternative explanations for things (with some sort of versioning and methods of criticism) excites me greatly.
I have thought of producing something like this myself, which was part of what drew me to Veritula.
Would it be possible / worth it to produce a competitor to Wikipedia based on Popperian epistemology?
Yes, sure.
The idea of having a Wikipedia equivalent that presents high quality competing articles detailing different alternative explanations for things (with some sort of versioning and methods of criticism) excites me greatly.
Me, too. I think Veritula’s design allows for this pretty naturally since the topic of a discussion can be general enough for various competing ideas to be posted in the discussion.
We ‘just’ need to get more users. As I wrote in #628, posting a breaking news story could work. If users submit ideas on events as they unfold and then criticize those ideas, visitors see what’s happening at a glance. It could be easier for them to know which ideas they can adopt than on conventional news channels or even Wikipedia, IMO.
There are also ‘timeless’ debates that have been going on for decades where Veritula can offer clarity. Like on the abortion debate. People shouldn’t have to keep debating that over and over when it’s a matter where objective truth can be found and then acted on.
I have thought of producing something like this myself, which was part of what drew me to Veritula.
I’m curious btw, how did you hear about Veritula?
Me, too. I think Veritula’s design allows for this pretty naturally since the topic of a discussion can be general enough for various competing ideas to be posted in the discussion.
One thing that Wikipedia articles are very good for is providing well-structured information on a given subject. Discussion threads are not so well structured (the order of information is not based on how high-level or foundational it is, like an encyclopedia entry would be, but rather on the nested chronology of whatever discussion happened to take place.)
Top-level ideas can be structured any way you as author want them to be. (Any idea at any level can, but top-level ideas are presumably where articles could live.) The structure of any particular idea can be different from the structure of the discussion as a whole.
Me, too. I think Veritula’s design allows for this pretty naturally since the topic of a discussion can be general enough for various competing ideas to be posted in the discussion.
Veritula emphasises making one point at a time for ease of criticism and discussion, which is useful in a forum but makes absorbing the totality of an idea a little more tedious compared to a quick glance at an encyclopedia article. (It is possible I have misunderstood some aspect of Veritula here.)
Veritula cautions against making multiple points at once so as to avoid ‘bulk criticism’. But people can write as much as they want in a single idea. For example, you can find several long-form articles in ‘How Does Veritula Work?’. It just depends on how confident people are in their ideas, and how much they have practiced using Veritula.
As much as I dislike LLMs, I’m thinking of using them to show summaries of discussions at the top of the page. Summaries would reflect ideas without pending criticisms.
My vision is for an online encyclopedia that contains complete articles describing the totality of a perspective, with articles for alternate explanations readily available. I see many problems with this idea but I think it is worth exploring.
I’m curious btw, how did you hear about Veritula?
I believe I came across it while exploring your blog. My ‘Popperian Wikipedia’ idea was particularly sharp in my mind in that moment, so I was very excited to see how you had set things up here. I think a tremendous amount of it is transferable.
I’m happy to have you and for your contributions, but I have to ask: do you see yourself building a Veritula competitor at some point in the future?
No, I think the ‘Popperian Wikipedia’ idea is too different to Veritula for it to be a competitor. Veritula is primarily a discussion tool. I envision more of an encyclopedia of competing ideas presented independently of each other, with no (or very little) discussion functionality.
For example, on the topic of addiction, this site would contain different articles explaining different models of what addiction is, how it works, etc. Each article would explain the given model from within its own framework, rather than from some pre-approved framework and set of sources (as is currently the case at Wikipedia).
I realise “methods of criticism” in my reply above may have confused that somewhat.
I think my idea could be made within Veritula, if you would be interested. Different explanations could be cataloged in Wikipedia-style articles (with versioning), which could then be referred to and discussed in threads here. Maybe we should open a discussion for this potential feature?
At the end of the day, I think something like that should exist in the world, and I am indifferent to how it might come about. It wouldn’t bother me if I wasn’t involved. I would also consider financially supporting someone who gave me good reason to think they had the vision, the motivation, and the technical skill to create it.
I would also consider financially supporting someone who gave me good reason to think they had the vision, the motivation, and the technical skill to create it.
I’m interested. Let’s continue this discussion privately for now. Email me: dh at dennishackethal.com
Feature to collapse all criticized ideas of a discussion? Useful for todo lists.
Or each discussion could have a search/filter form to filter ideas not just by criticized or not but also content and potentially other attributes.
Or the existing search page could be filtered by discussion. For example, I could link to that page with an additional query param discussion_id=1 or something like that.
The red ‘Criticized’ label shows how many pending criticisms an idea has. For example ‘Criticized (5)’ means the idea has five pending criticisms.
But if there are lots of comments, including non-criticisms and addressed criticisms, it’s hard to identify pending criticisms.
There should be an easy way to filter comments of a given idea down to only pending criticisms.
The red ‘Criticized’ label could be a link leading to a filtered version of ideas#show.
The red ‘Criticized’ label could be clickable and filter the displayed comments ‘in place’.
That would probably be stretching the capabilities of Stimulus…
Veritula should have some way to indicate agreement; some way to indicate that a particular thread of a discussion is resolved, at least for the time being.
People could wrongly think they have epistemological relevance. For example, they might adopt an idea that has pending criticism just because it got positive reactions.
Reactions could be limited to the recipient of a comment.
That limits the scope of the problem but doesn’t eliminate it. A single recipient could still react in a distracting way.
There’s value in reacting to top-level ideas, too.
There’s value in others being able to react as well. Maybe an idea affects them in some way or they want to voice support.
The red “Criticized” label is far more prominent than reactions would be.
Reactions can be ambiguous. It wouldn’t always be clear which part of an idea someone is reacting to.
I could implement reactions on a per-paragraph basis.
It isn’t clear what would happen during a revision. A paragraph might be changed or deleted. Too complicated.
But presumably, the same is true for reactions to ideas as a whole. Reactions would have to be removed for revisions.
For reactions to paragraphs, at least you could tell if the content someone reacted to has changed, and only then remove the reaction.
Why should reacts persist through revisions?
Then what does somebody do who wants to react to an idea as a whole? Do they react to the last paragraph?
The way I picture it, as you hover over different paragraphs, a reaction button appears and moves between paragraphs. So it would always be clear that reactions are on specific paragraphs. The user would pick whatever paragraph they most wish to react to.
The purpose of the reaction would be to record a kind of agreement or acknowledgment.
That way, Veritula could show ‘pending’ criticisms to users, say – ‘pending’ in the sense that they haven’t responded to those criticisms. So in addition to revising or counter-criticizing, they get a chance to accept a criticism without it remaining in a ‘pending’ state.
Posting arbitrary emojis doesn’t achieve that purpose.
This is a good idea.
I often receive criticisms that I have no counter-criticisms for, and it would be nice to be able to acknowledge those, both as a way to display gratitude, and as a way to indicate that I think something is tentatively settled.
The Effective Altruism forum has an interesting way to react to posts.
There’s an ‘Agree’ button and a ‘Disagree’ button. Those are apparently anonymous. Then separately, there’s a button to ‘Add a reaction’ of either ‘Heart’, ‘Helpful’, ‘Insightful’, ‘Changed my mind’, or ‘Made me laugh’. And those are apparently not anonymous.
I wonder why they chose to make some reactions anonymous but not others. I don’t think I’d want a ‘Heart’ or ‘Made me laugh’ button, they seem too social-network-y. Also, ‘Heart’ seems like a duplicate of ‘Agree’. But ‘Insightful’ and ‘Changed my mind’ seem epistemologically relevant. Maybe ‘Helpful’, too.
If I did decide to go with ‘Agree’ and ‘Disagree’ buttons, I wouldn’t make them anonymous, though.
Revisions are complicated. Too many options (superseding a previous version, ‘Is criticism?’, unchecking comments). It might help to have a more guided processes over multiple screens.
I notice that when I amend a criticism I have made, I’m not able to see what I am criticising. It would be good if the edit screen showed the comment I am disagreeing with similar to how it does when I first go to write a criticism.
Feature idea: pay people to criticize your idea.
You start a ‘criticism bounty’ of ten bucks, say, per pending criticism received by some deadline.
The amount should be arbitrarily customizable (while covering transaction costs). The user also indicates a ceiling for the maximum amount they are willing to spend.
There could then be a page for bounties at /bounties. And a page listing a user’s bounties at /:username/bounties.
When starting a bounty, the user indicates terms such as what kinds of criticism they want. This way, they avoid having to pay people pointing out typos, say.
Anyone can start a bounty on any idea. There can only be one bounty per idea at a time.
To ensure a criticism is worthy of the bounty, the initiator gets a grace period of 24 hours at the end to review pending criticisms. They may even award a bounty to problematic criticisms, at their discretion. Inaction automatically awards the bounty to all pending criticisms at the end of the grace period. If doing so would exceed the ceiling, more recent criticisms do not get the bounty.
Need to address the risk of the initiator himself being a bad actor who rejects pending criticisms for arbitrary reasons just to avoid paying.
There could be an additional grace period for admins to review the initiator’s selections.
People who feel cheated can reach out to admins to report bad bounty initiators. Admins can then prevent such initiators from starting more bounties in the future.
A modification of #2513 could work. Say you start a bounty. Your card is authorized for twice the ceiling. If you’re a good citizen, you’ll be charged the ceiling, at most. But if you’re found to submit arbitrary criticisms to avoid paying, your card is charged the full authorization. Admins can even decide to stop the bounty early if they detect abuse before the grace period beings.
I can roll out the feature to a few trusted users. Then I can reevaluate later with more experience to judge actual risks rather than speculate ahead of time.
Need to address the risk of people submitting arbitrary counter-criticisms just before the deadline to exclude competing criticisms from the bounty.
The grace period for the initiator unfortunately does not address this risk since he may decide not to review problematic criticisms.
Feature idea: page at /ideas/:id/guide which shows you an idea and helps you address all pending criticisms one by one, if any. At the end, it shows a message ‘You’re all set!’ or something like that.
When copying a box quote from Veritula, the box quote formatting (>) is lost.
To be clear, if you copy the entire box quote and paste it into a textarea, it will start with the > sign. I just double checked.
You’re saying you’d still want the > if you only copy/pasted part of the box quote, right?
To be clear, if you copy the entire box quote and paste it into a textarea, it will start with the > sign. I just double checked.
This doesn't work for me the way it does for you. I tried copying the entire quote, and also in a separate attempt, copying extra stuff above and below the box quote, and neither gave me the > sign.
I have tried on my windows computer and my iPad.
… copying extra stuff above and below the box quote, and neither gave me the > sign.
Cannot reproduce, neither on iPad nor macOS.
‘Veritula’ is a difficult name, people don’t know how to spell or pronounce it. They can’t easily remember it.
Idea: ‘The Second Renaissance’, ‘2nd Renaissance’, ‘2R’ for short.
‘Renaissance’ isn’t exactly easy to spell either.
Idea: ‘Reason Arena’, ‘RA’
I like something with ‘Arena’ because it would imply action, some ideas winning out over others, and has a Darwinian aspect to it. Our best ideas are the tentative champions in the arena of ideas, waiting for the next challenger.
Idea: ‘Conjecture Arena’, ‘CA’
Feature idea: pay people to address criticisms (either revise an idea and check off criticisms or counter-criticize).
Idea: Links within Veritula could be made bidirectional. While viewing an idea, users could see all the ideas that refer to it. This could be displayed as a list of backlinks at the bottom of the idea’s page.
This could lead to a cool knowledge graph feature down the line, where users could see how ideas might relate across discussions, and which ideas are referred to the most.
I am currently unable to zoom out to the full width when accessing Veritula on mobile.
This change is on purpose. The zoom feature was buggy. After zooming out far enough, the navbar and footer got cut off on the right. So I replaced it with proper scrolling.
Would you say zooming was indispensable or just nice to have?
It means that I have to scroll sideways to see the end of each line in a paragraph, which makes it more difficult to read ideas. It feels quite bad to use, compared to using Veritula on my computer, where the entire width of a paragraph is visible at all times.
A solution might be to adjust the mobile site dynamically to fit the user’s phone width.
‘Discussions’ are too narrow a term for a collection of ideas. See #2878.
While ideas should always be ‘discussable’, that doesn’t mean everyone who wants to share an idea always wants to start a discussion. Maybe they just want to put some information out there.
Why is similarity a bad thing in and of itself? It can be reminiscent of discussions as long as it’s less narrow.
Similarity is fine if it is less narrow, but ‘thread’ doesn’t seem any less narrow than ‘discussion’ to me. A ‘thread’ usually means a reply chain.
I have an inexplicit criticism of this relating to “school subject”.
Sounds like a voice chat (like Twitter spaces)
I can’t decide if this communicates a grouping of ideas. Seems borderline.
“Go check out the Karl Popper context on Veritula” would only make sense if you are already a Veritula user who is accustomed to using this terminology.
This actually seems anti-discussion. Sounds like a grouping of ideas that are only related by conceptual proximity, rather than building on each other.
Preview links of discussions should show the name of the discussion being linked.
See eg https://x.com/agentofapollo/status/1991252721618547023
h/t @benjamin-davies
@dennis-hackethal see the revision chain on #3164. Revision 5 improved the content but I accidentally removed valuable comments. Revision 6 (a revision of revision 4) brought back the comments but I failed to include the content improvement in revision 5. I then made revision 7 to have both the comments and the improved content.
Maybe it should be possible to amend which comments apply to an idea without needing to make a whole new revision. This could behave weirdly in some edge cases, but it’s food for thought. If you think the way it currently works is going to be best, that seems fine to me.
Idea: voice spaces, like Twitter spaces, except an AI generates a transcript and automatically turns it into a discussion tree, with criticism chains and all.