How Does Veritula Work?
Showing only #1935 and its comments.
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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 false until all criticism is resolved. Since the goal is to live a rational life, we wouldn't act in accordance with an idea that has outstanding criticism. 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 considered false until all criticism is resolved.
It’s not necessarily considered false. It depends on the criticism.
A criticism pointing out a typo doesn’t necessarily make an idea false.
A criticism pointing out that an idea is arbitrary doesn’t necessarily make it false. For example, if an idea says ‘the laws of physics did it’ in response to a physics problem, that idea will be criticized as arbitrary even though it’s true.
Refutations mean an idea is false. A refutation explains why an idea must be false/cannot be true. Not all criticisms are refutations.
I suggest you revise #1935 to say that ideas with outstanding criticisms are considered problematic.
What if, at that time, the best idea one has is the false idea?
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.
… we wouldn't act in accordance with an idea that has outstanding criticism.
In #1926, I suggested changing it to “we wouldn't act in accordance with an idea that has outstanding criticisms”, plural. You changed it to singular “criticism”.
You presumably typed this passage manually instead of copy/pasting. I believe you previously stated a preference for manual typing so as to better process what you type.
I don’t think you made this change on purpose. I’m guessing it was an error.
If you’re going to type manually, you should double check to make sure it’s exactly the same, eg using cmd + f.
Or you could type it manually, then erase, then paste. Manual typing is error prone. Just copy/paste. Or maybe you did copy/paste but you didn’t include the ‘s’ in the selection. Either way, there are errors for you to correct here.
I’m not marking this a criticism because I think your change it still grammatically correct. I’m pointing out a potential source of future errors.
I started with looking it up, whether to include the ‘s’ in ‘criticism’ to find that it didn’t matter much.
Fair enough. I’ve marked your idea as a criticism since I was wrong when I wrote “I don’t think you made this change on purpose. I’m guessing it was an error.”