How Does Veritula Work?
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With an account, you can revise, criticize, and comment on ideas.Forum Rules
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I’m not using AI for this response and will not do so moving forward on Veritula to respect the rules and what seems to be the sentiment behind these rules (unless they change). My criticism is made in good faith and I will try to be especially careful not to make an unwanted mistake in this regard, because usually I would ask AI to check my wording for that.
I’ve been told by someone here that they preferred to talk to a person, not to an AI. This argument is understandable when there is no effort or no thinking involved by the human who uses the AI, or even worse, when the argument is not even looked at and just fed into an LLM to produce some counter, which is disrespectful, does not honor the time, effort and good faith of the other, and why the idea of a meat proxy and the criticism regarding that behavior makes sense. However, in my opinion, AI-assisted can mean many different things, some of which should be encouraged, not restricted or even punished.
Here are two examples that come to mind:
My English is not great but the English from a Spanish friend of mine is considerably worse, and I wonder if I should tell him about this platform, because he would usually use AI to polish his English. Instead, of course, he could use Spanish and then let it be translated. I understand this would probably be possible under the current rules but I’m not entirely sure. If it is, would it also be allowed for him to use a tool that makes it sound not like a literal translation, if he still understands afterwards what is being said? An AI assist here seems helpful for everyone involved.
All my contributions on this platform before this post have been AI-assisted in part exactly because I wanted to be as respectful of my counterpart’s time and effort (and those of any observers) as possible: I am aware that we sometimes can misunderstand the other’s position or use rhetorical moves without noticing it. So I would send the conversation we have had so far to the AI, share my thoughts on how I understand it and want to proceed, ask it to steelman the other side’s view, and see if its response would help me. It would then be a back and forth where I would try to figure out for myself if I should really change my mind on this or, if not, how exactly I want to respond to the steelmanned version to make my point clear. Now, as a result here I got the criticism that the language should be simpler and the arguments shorter, which is great feedback! I would incorporate that for the future, and any other criticism that I agree would make it better for the discussion. This would then be the current best version I have to offer, but yes, it’s with the use of an AI tool instead of me going out to talk with some philosopher friends about the latest criticism, taking notes, and then have some other friend check my final version for rhetorical moves, clarity, simplicity and shortness before posting it here.
In general, one question in my mind is how future proof this kind of rule is - if we merge more with the tools around us, if they are more integrated in us, would it still not be wanted to use them if done in good faith?
The same decision may be appealed only once.
Does this not inhibit error correction? Why not just leave this to the discretion of Veritula, on a case by case basis?
As written, a limitation is placed on users, not on Veritula. I want to set expectations and protect my time by preventing an obligation to have extended discussions over moderation decisions. I remain free to make exceptions.