How Does Veritula Work?
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With an account, you can revise, criticize, and comment on ideas.Recursive 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.
def should_adopt? ideapending_criticisms(idea).none?enddef pending_criticisms ideacriticisms(idea).filter { |c| should_adopt?(c) }enddef criticisms ideachildren(idea).filter(&:criticism?)end
This 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?
No because there’s always a finite amount of deeply nested criticisms.
should_adopt? and pending_criticisms are implemented in terms of each other. Doesn’t that cause a vicious cycle?
No because as they call each other, they traverse the tree, going down it each step of the way. They don’t remain at the same level.