How Does Veritula Work?
Showing only #2140 and its comments.
See full discussionLog in or sign up to participate in this discussion.
With an account, you can revise, criticize, and comment on ideas.Decision-Making on Veritula
Expanding on #2112…
If an idea 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 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?
What reason could you have to ignore the pending criticisms and adopt it anyway?
Maybe the criticisms aren’t very good.
Then you counter-criticize them for whatever you think they lack (which should be easy if they really aren’t good), thus addressing them and restoring the idea.
If [an idea] has no pending criticisms, then either 1) no reasons to reject it have been suggested …
If no one has even tried to criticize the idea, its adoption seems premature. (This is a modification of Kieren’s view.)
That would itself be a criticism, but it would lead to an infinite regress: any leaf of the discussion tree would always get one criticism claiming that its advocacy is premature. But then the criticism would become the new leaf and would thus have to be criticized for the same reason, and so would every subsequent criticism, forever and ever.
What reason could you have to ignore the pending criticisms and adopt [the criticized idea] anyway?
Maybe the criticisms aren’t decisive.
If you don’t have any counter-criticisms, how could the criticisms not be decisive?
Popper didn’t say to correct some errors while ignoring others for no reason. He spoke of error correction, period.
This criticism reminds me of a passage in Objective Knowledge, where Popper says some people defend ugly theories by claiming they’re tiny, like people do with ugly babies. Just because (you think) a criticism is tiny doesn’t mean it’s not ugly.
If an idea does have pending criticisms, it’s irrational to adopt it …
What if I want to adopt it anyway?
If an idea has no pending criticisms, it’s rational to adopt it and irrational to reject it.
What if there are multiple ideas with no pending criticisms?
Then you can go with the more battle-tested one (see #1948). Or you can pick one at random. Doesn’t matter.
How do you not make yourself vulnerable to DDoS attacks on your life and actions under this system?
Attack means bad faith, which is a type of counter-criticism.
But how do I know that’s what’s going on before I get through the content of the 1000 criticisms or whatever. There could be a valid one in there! Maybe from someone unaffiliated with the attack.
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.
How about I hold this idea to be true: ‘entertaining criticisms is good.’ But I receive a letter purporting to contain a criticism of this idea, and it has a note attached to it stating that it contains such a criticism. Should I open the letter? Assume that it has no pending counter-criticisms. Have we constructed an unreadable letter?
Well, if you were to open the letter anyway, and somebody criticized you for it, you could offer the following counter-criticisms: 1) you cannot be expected to adopt an idea while being prevented from entertaining it; 2) somebody artificially constructed a situation designed to abuse the literal content of the two rules in #2140 in order to violate their intention, which is to promote critical thinking and rationality; 3) just because ideas have no pending criticisms doesn’t mean you don’t get to question those ideas – otherwise no one could ever submit a first criticism.
What if I have an inexplicit criticism of the idea?
Make a reasonable effort to make the criticism explicit so it can be brought into direct conflict with the parent idea and examined further. In the meantime, do consider it a pending criticism and don’t act on the parent idea. You can also submit a placeholder criticism saying something like ‘I have an inexplicit criticism of this idea.’
But I want to remain free to act on whim instead!
You retain that freedom. Veritula has no power over you. Being irrational is your prerogative (as long as you don’t violate anyone else’s consent in the process). Just don’t pretend to yourself or others that you’re being rational when you’re not.
It might be worth stating that the underlying philosophy of Veritula, in conjunction with fallibilism, says that progress is both possible and desirable, and that rational means are the only way to make progress. This means an end to mysticism and the supernatural.