How Does Veritula Work?

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Dennis Hackethal’s avatar
Only version leading to #5116 (4 total)

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.

ruby
def should_adopt? idea
pending_criticisms(idea).none?
end
def pending_criticisms idea
criticisms(idea).filter { |c| should_adopt?(c) }
end
def criticisms idea
children(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.

Dennis Hackethal’s avatar

should_adopt? and pending_criticisms are implemented in terms of each other. Doesn’t that cause an infinite regress?

Criticism of #5114Criticized1
Dennis Hackethal’s avatar

No because 1) there’s always a finite amount of deeply nested criticisms, and 2) the discussion graph is acyclic.

Criticism of #5116