What Makes One Idea Better Than Another?

Showing only ideas leading to #5278.

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Benjamin Davies’s avatar
Benjamin DaviesOP​·​#5246​·​

When we reject explanation B in favour of explanation A, there must be some property of the explanations that comprehensively distinguishes A as better than B.

Criticized2*
Benjamin Davies’s avatar
Benjamin DaviesOP​·​#5249​·​

That property is hard-to-vary-ness.

Criticized1*
Benjamin Davies’s avatar
Benjamin DaviesOP​·​#5250​·​

The more HTV an explanation is, the more closely it corresponds to reality.

Criticized3*
Dennis Hackethal’s avatar
Dennis Hackethal​·​#5262​·​

There’s a risk in posting follow-up thoughts as nested comments. The risk is that criticism chains won’t bubble up far enough.

If you want to add more information to an idea, I suggest revising it.

Criticism of #5250
Benjamin Davies’s avatar
Benjamin DaviesOP​·​#5267​·​
Only version leading to #5278 (2 total)

They are separate ideas, and the latter ideas depend on their formers. If there is a flaw in former ideas, they apply to latter ideas, but if there is a flaw in latter ideas, they don’t necessarily apply to the former. So arranging them like this was intentional, to respect that hierarchy.

Criticism of #5262Criticized2*
Dennis Hackethal’s avatar
Dennis Hackethal​·​#5270​·​

This approach breaks search functions, where the system only goes off the ‘Criticized’ flag. Now the system shows some ideas as rationally adoptable even though they aren’t.

Criticism of #5267
Benjamin Davies’s avatar
Benjamin DaviesOP​·​#5274​·​

Would it be better to make them all root ideas?

Dennis Hackethal’s avatar
Dennis Hackethal​·​#5275​·​
Benjamin Davies’s avatar
Benjamin DaviesOP​·​#5276​·​

From #1497, emphasis mine:

Discussion title: problem
Top-level ideas in the discussion: proposed solutions
Nested ideas: criticisms, counter-criticisms, and further solutions

This is what I was going off. Did I misunderstand #1497?

Criticized1*
Dennis Hackethal’s avatar
Dennis Hackethal​·​#5278​·​

You can structure discussions any way you like as long as you make sure the structure won’t break criticism chains.

Comments are for commentary or criticism, not elaborations on the same idea. The same idea shouldn’t be spread over multiple posts. That breaks criticism chains.

Veritula threads don’t work like Twitter/X threads, where people post elaborations on the same idea in comments. They used to have to do that because Twitter enforced a character limit. Now they still do it by tradition. And I’m guessing it’s an adjustment coming to Veritula.

If you realize you need to add more info to an existing idea, put it in a revision, not a comment. Again, #5250 seems like a revision of #5249. The revision of #5249 would then be a combination of both.