Another relevant quote from BoI, chapter 13 (bold emphasis mine):

[Conventionally, people think] of decision-making as a process of selecting from existing options according to a fixed formula …

This is like the self-described addicts in #4640 flip-flopping between blocking and unblocking certain websites: they try to select from existing options rather than create new ones. Continuing:

But in fact that is what happens only at the end of decision-making – the phase that does not require creative thought. In terms of Edison’s metaphor, the model refers only to the perspiration phase, without realizing that decision-making is problem-solving, and that without the inspiration phase nothing is ever solved and there is nothing to choose between. At the heart of decision-making is the creation of new options and the abandonment or modification of existing ones.
   To choose an option, rationally, is to choose the associated explanation. Therefore, rational decision-making consists not of weighing evidence but of explaining it, in the course of explaining the world. One judges arguments as explanations, not justifications, and one does this creatively, using conjecture, tempered by every kind of criticism. It is in the nature of good explanations – being hard to vary – that there is only one of them. Having created it, one is no longer tempted by the alternatives. They have been not outweighed, but out-argued, refuted and abandoned. During the course of a creative process, one is not struggling to distinguish between countless different explanations of nearly equal merit; typically, one is struggling to create even one good explanation, and, having succeeded, one is glad to be rid of the rest.

I have some quibbles about explanations being hard to vary, but overall I think Deutsch is right in this quote. The addicts from #4640 are certainly tempted by their current options, they struggle to create even one good alternative, and after having created it, they’d be glad to be rid of their current options.

Coercion in the economy is when a trade happens even though the price would otherwise be too high for at least one of the parties involved.

If emotions are price signals in the mind, maybe bad emotions signal a high price. Coercing yourself to do something you don’t want to do then means to disregard that high price and do the thing anyway. You pay a high price you wouldn’t otherwise pay. Similar to coercion in the economy.

Is there a universal evil at work in both coercive economies and coercive minds? A kind of socialism of the mind?

Maybe traditional/coercive parenting enables this kind of behavior. It’s like he’s his own strict parent, punishing himself.

Curing addiction

If I’m right that the cause of addiction is an entrenched conflict between preferences (#3040), then there’s a simple cure for addiction:¹ common-preference finding with yourself.

Common-preference finding is a concept I am borrowing from a parenting philosophy called Taking Children Seriously (TCS), cofounded by David Deutsch:

A common preference is a solution to a problem, or resolution of a disagreement, that all parties prefer to their prima facie positions, and to all other candidate solutions they can think of. It is the solution that pleases everyone involved in the disagreement.

I think common-preference finding is not only the solution to conflicts between people, but also to conflicts between preferences inside a single person. When such conflicts inside a single mind are entrenched, we are dealing with addiction. Since addiction is a special kind of conflict, the solution to addiction is the same as the solution to conflicts generally: common-preference finding.

Take an alcoholic. The two entrenched preferences, in the simplest possible terms, are: to drink, and to stop drinking. In this context, I think it helps to view this single alcoholic as two people. In other words, we can view each preference as a person, or an autonomous actor of sorts. Not because the alcoholic necessarily has a split personality in the clinical sense – although we’ll soon see that the addict acts as his own adversary – but because it helps illustrate the logic behind common-preference finding: it’s fundamentally no different within a single person than across people.

So again, let’s view an alcoholic as two people, just as a thought experiment. They’re forced to be roommates and combine their finances. One of them wants to drink and spend their money on alcohol, whereas the other does not want that. Moving out – choosing not to associate – is not an option because there’s no freedom of association inside a single mind. Although we may choose not to be roommates with an alcoholic, the alcoholic has no choice but to be roommates with himself.

How are these two ‘people’ to live together in harmony? As long as they’re in conflict, they will try to undermine each other. One will put the liquor in the top cabinet to make it harder to reach – the other will get it anyway. One will ask a friend to hold on to his credit card, the other will convince that same friend to give it back.

We can see the same self-adversarial dynamic in addictions to various things. For example, somebody asked (emphasis mine):

What can I do against my addiction to certain websites? I'm addicted to some sites, and I already tried to block them, but I always go back to unblock. I always waste a lot of time on them, and I'm annoyed by myself than I can[’t] stay away from them.

Do you see the dynamic? He’s like two people: person A blocks the website, until the urge to visit it gets too strong and person B unblocks it. Then person A gets annoyed at person B – who was presumably annoyed at person A for blocking the site in the first place. And the only way to get (temporary) relief from this conflict is to indulge and visit the site again – or so it seems.

This person’s frustration makes it easier to see that, again, knowledge inside a single mind does not act fundamentally differently from knowledge across minds. When you’re in conflict with somebody else, you may feel hopeless at times, like there’s no way to reach that person. If only they’d listen to reason! But that situation is not fundamentally different when that other person is yourself. People sometimes think you should be able to just ‘will away’ those conflicting preferences inside you, but that isn’t always easier to do with yourself than it is with someone else.

Somebody responded to the tortured soul above. Again we see the same self-adversarial dynamic at play:

I have the same problem.

The only solution I have is to remove your accounts completely, or make it so that you can never login again.

A good way for this is to implement a 2-way verification on your account with an Authentication app, then you logout, remove your TOKENS in the Authentication app, and then clear the web browser. You can also reset the backup codes for the 2 way authentication before log out the final time and don't save them.

Now you are out for good.

Except you’re not. Remember, the addict is his own creative adversary. He’ll find ways to get what he wants, at his own expense. So the same respondent immediately contradicts himself (emphasis mine):

I did this, but I managed to get back in by talking to the owner of the site. Why did I do this? 😔

The key is to never give yourself the permission to never under any circumstances look at the site again. … If you look at the site again, I will guarantee you that you will find a way to get back in.

In other words, this person suggests that the ‘solution’ to this conflict between preferences is to entrench it even further by having one run roughshod over the other. That’s not a solution. On the contrary, I suspect it would just frustrate that other part of him, which would then want to visit the site even more, and find even more creative ways to visit it. If somebody else disregarded your preferences, wouldn’t you feel justified in disregarding theirs? Yes. Why should that be any different when that somebody else is yourself? It isn’t.

This respondent continues:

Find something else to do. Because you can not [sic] remove a habbit [sic], you [c]an only replace it by something else. This is the secret [to] habbit building. Maybe every time you feel the urge to look at the website, take a book from your bookshelf and start reading that instead.

Now, whether reading is an actual solution to this conflict depends on the person. Given this respondent’s previous statements, I suspect he’s merely suggesting another form of self-coercion: read whether you like it or not. Again, that will not work; it may well worsen the addiction. But if reading is something both parts of him prefer to their respective initial position, then the addiction should disappear quickly because there’s no reason for either part to continue holding its initial position.

The logic would be the same for the alcoholic from our thought experiment: if part A of his mind wants to spend money on alcohol, while part B wants to spend that money on movie tickets instead, but then they find they both prefer to spend the money on a new book, then they will be in harmony again.

In short, the cure to addiction is common-preference finding with yourself. Unfortunately, there’s no predetermined recipe that you could follow. What you can do, though, is best described by the quote from The Beginning of Infinity from #760:

[W]hat is necessary for progress is to exclude ideas that fail to survive criticism, and to prevent their entrenchment, and to promote the creation of new ideas.

By definition, once you’re addicted, it’s too late to prevent entrenchment. But that still leaves two possible actions: discarding ideas that fail to survive criticism and promoting the creation of new ideas. In essence, using Veritula.

The cure for addiction is to create new ideas until you find at least one that you are completely unconflicted about.

Curing addiction

If I’m right that the cause of addiction is an entrenched conflict between preferences (#3040), then there’s a simple cure for addiction:¹ common-preference finding with yourself.

Common-preference finding is a concept I am borrowing from a parenting philosophy called Taking Children Seriously (TCS), cofounded by David Deutsch:

A common preference is a solution to a problem, or resolution of a disagreement, that all parties prefer to their prima facie positions, and to all other candidate solutions they can think of. It is the solution that pleases everyone involved in the disagreement.

I think common-preference finding is not only the solution to conflicts between people, but also to conflicts between preferences inside a single person. When such conflicts inside a single mind are entrenched, we are dealing with addiction. Since addiction is a special kind of conflict, the solution to addiction is the same as the solution to conflicts generally: common-preference finding.

Take an alcoholic. The two entrenched preferences, in the simplest possible terms, are: to drink, and to stop drinking. In this context, I think it helps to view this single alcoholic as two people. In other words, we can view each preference as a person, or an autonomous actor of sorts. Not because the alcoholic necessarily has a split personality in the clinical sense – although we’ll soon see that the addict acts as his own adversary – but because it helps illustrate the logic behind common-preference finding: it’s fundamentally no different within a single person than across people.

So again, let’s view an alcoholic as two people, just as a thought experiment. They’re forced to be roommates and combine their finances. One of them wants to drink and spend their money on alcohol, whereas the other does not want that. Moving out – choosing not to associate – is not an option because there’s no freedom of association inside a single mind. Although we may choose not to be roommates with an alcoholic, the alcoholic has no choice but to be roommates with himself.

How are these two ‘people’ to live together in harmony? As long as they’re in conflict, they will try to undermine each other. One will put the liquor in the top cabinet to make it harder to reach – the other will get it anyway. One will ask a friend to hold on to his credit card, the other will convince that same friend to give it back.

We can see the same self-adversarial dynamic in addictions to various things. For example, somebody asked (emphasis mine):

What can I do against my addiction to certain websites? I'm addicted to some sites, and I already tried to block them, but I always go back to unblock. I always waste a lot of time on them, and I'm annoyed by myself than I can[’t] stay away from them.

Do you see the dynamic? He’s like two people: person A blocks the website, until the urge to visit it gets too strong and person B unblocks it. Then person A gets annoyed at person B – who was presumably annoyed at person A for blocking the site in the first place. And the only way to get (temporary) relief from this conflict is to indulge and visit the site again – or so it seems.

This person’s frustration makes it easier to see that, again, knowledge inside a single mind does not act fundamentally differently from knowledge across minds. When you’re in conflict with somebody else, you may feel hopeless at times, like there’s no way to reach that person. If only they’d listen to reason! But that situation is not fundamentally different when that other person is yourself. People sometimes think you should be able to just ‘will away’ those conflicting preferences inside you, but that isn’t always easier to do with yourself than it is with someone else.

Somebody responded to the tortured soul above. Again we see the same self-adversarial dynamic at play:

I have the same problem.

The only solution I have is to remove your accounts completely, or make it so that you can never login again.

A good way for this is to implement a 2-way verification on your account with an Authentication app, then you logout, remove your TOKENS in the Authentication app, and then clear the web browser. You can also reset the backup codes for the 2 way authentication before log out the final time and don't save them.

Now you are out for good.

Except you’re not. Remember, the addict is his own creative adversary. He’ll find ways to get what he wants, at his own expense. So the same respondent immediately contradicts himself (emphasis mine):

I did this, but I managed to get back in by talking to the owner of the site. Why did I do this? 😔

The key is to never give yourself the permission to never under any circumstances look at the site again. … If you look at the site again, I will guarantee you that you will find a way to get back in.

In other words, this person suggests that the ‘solution’ to this conflict between preferences is to entrench it even further by having one run roughshod over the other. That’s not a solution. On the contrary, I suspect it would just frustrate that other part of him, which would then want to visit the site even more, and find even more creative ways to visit it. If somebody else disregarded your preferences, wouldn’t you feel justified in disregarding theirs? Yes. Why should that be any different when that somebody else is yourself? It isn’t.

This respondent continues:

Find something else to do. Because you can not [sic] remove a habbit [sic], you [c]an only replace it by something else. This is the secret [to] habbit building. Maybe every time you feel the urge to look at the website, take a book from your bookshelf and start reading that instead.

Hope this helps.

Now, whether reading is an actual solution to this conflict depends on the person. Given this respondent’s previous statements, I suspect he’s merely suggesting another form of self-coercion: read whether you like it or not. Again, that will not work; it may well worsen the addiction. But if reading is something both parts of him prefer to their respective initial position, then the addiction should disappear quickly because there’s no reason for either part to continue holding its initial position.

The logic would be the same for the alcoholic from our thought experiment: if part A of his mind wants to spend money on alcohol, while part B wants to spend that money on movie tickets instead, but then they find they both prefer to spend the money on a new book, then they will be in harmony again.

In short, the cure to addiction is common-preference finding with yourself. Unfortunately, there’s no predetermined recipe that you could follow. What you can do, though, is best described by the quote from The Beginning of Infinity from #760:

[W]hat is necessary for progress is to exclude ideas that fail to survive criticism, and to prevent their entrenchment, and to promote the creation of new ideas.

By definition, once you’re addicted, it’s too late to prevent entrenchment. But that still leaves two possible actions: discarding ideas that fail to survive criticism and promoting the creation of new ideas. In essence, using Veritula.

The cure for addiction is to create new ideas until you find at least one that you are completely unconflicted about.

Here’s a specific example of a working cure for addiction to sugar soda. Apparently, many people struggle with that.

Picture a man who likes the taste of soda but dislikes its fattening effects. (Sugar sodas are high in calories.) And let’s say the conflict between these two preferences is entrenched because his wife doesn’t want him to drink soda (for health reasons, say), and she chastises him, so he hides it from her and can’t talk about it openly, which makes error correction harder. In addition, he was made fun of as a kid for being overweight, so he feels awful whenever he thinks about dieting and can’t deal with the problem effectively. Such conditions are a breeding ground for entrenchment.

The solution in this case is to switch from regular sugar soda to the corresponding diet-soda equivalent. Like switching from Coke to Diet Coke or Coke Zero. It tastes virtually the same and has no calories. So now both parts of him get what they want. :)

Here’s a specific example of a working cure for addiction to sugar soda. Apparently, many people struggle with that.

Picture a man who likes the taste of soda but dislikes its fattening effects. (Sugar sodas are high in calories.) And let’s say the conflict between these two preferences is entrenched because his wife doesn’t want him to drink soda (for health reasons, say), and she chastises him, so he hides it from her and can’t talk about it openly, which makes error correction harder. In addition, he was made fun of as a kid for being overweight, so he feels awful whenever he thinks about dieting and can’t deal with the problem effectively. Such conditions are a breeding ground for entrenchment.

The solution in this case is to switch from regular sugar soda to the corresponding diet-soda equivalent. Like switching from Coke to Diet Coke or Coke Zero. It tastes virtually the same and has no calories. So now both parts of him get what they want. :)

The part about putting the liquor in the top cabinet reminds me a bit of my relationship with salt.

One part of me has been trying to eat less salt, for health reasons. But another part of me likes the taste of salt; it makes many dishes taste better.

I’ve noticed that placing the salt shaker on my dinner table makes it harder to resist putting salt on my food. So I put the salt shaker in my kitchen cabinet. That simple act makes me want salt less because I don’t want to get up to grab it.

The problem is, this isn’t a solution. It’s a self-coercive patch. The part of me that doesn’t want salt gets to run roughshod over the part that does. That’s not a common preference; it’s arbitrary.

I’ve tried coming up with some solutions, like replacing salt with potassium-chloride, but it doesn’t taste good, so then I don’t eat it as much. I just go back to salt instead.

Though I’m an advocate of rationality, I always like to remind people not to see me as a representative of it. This is an example of why. My relationship with salt is clearly irrational. If I had mastered rationality, I would have already found a solution.

My Conjecture

Conjecture: addiction is the result of the entrenchment of a conflict between two or more preferences in a mind.

Picture a smoker who wants to give up smoking but also really enjoys smoking. Those preferences conflict.

If the conflict is entrenched, then both preferences get to live on indefinitely. The entrenchment will not let the smoker give up smoking. He will become a chain smoker.

As I write in #4624, curing addiction involves finding a common preference between the conflicting parts of the addict’s mind: something both parts prefer to their initial positions. In addition, it may involve Randian ideas around introspection and getting one’s reason and emotions in the proper order.

Curing addiction

If I’m right that the cause of addiction is an entrenched conflict between preferences (#3040), then there’s a simple cure for addiction:¹ common-preference finding with yourself.

Common-preference finding is a concept I am borrowing from a parenting philosophy called Taking Children Seriously (TCS), cofounded by David Deutsch:

A common preference is a solution to a problem, or resolution of a disagreement, that all parties prefer to their prima facie positions, and to all other candidate solutions they can think of. It is the solution that pleases everyone involved in the disagreement.

I think common-preference finding is not only the solution to conflicts between people, but also to conflicts between preferences inside a single person. When such conflicts inside a single mind are entrenched, we are dealing with addiction. Since addiction is a special kind of conflict, the solution to addiction is the same as the solution to conflicts generally: common-preference finding.

Consider an alcoholic. The two entrenched preferences, in the simplest possible terms, are: to drink, and to stop drinking. In this context, I think it helps to view this single alcoholic as two people. In other words, we can view each preference as a person, or an autonomous actor of sorts. Not because the alcoholic necessarily has a split personality in the clinical sense – although we’ll soon see that the addict acts as his own adversary – but because it helps illustrate the logic behind common-preference finding: it’s fundamentally no different within a single person than across people.

So again, let’s view an alcoholic as two people, just as a thought experiment. They’re forced to be roommates and combine their finances. One of them wants to drink and spend their money on alcohol, whereas the other does not want that. Moving out – choosing not to associate – is not an option because there’s no freedom of association inside a single mind. Although we may choose not to be roommates with an alcoholic, the alcoholic has no choice but to be roommates with himself.

How are these two ‘people’ to live together in harmony? As long as they’re in conflict, they will try to undermine each other. One will put the liquor in the top cabinet to make it harder to reach – the other will get it anyway. One will ask a friend to hold on to his credit card, the other will convince that same friend to give it back.

We can see the same self-adversarial dynamic in addictions to various things. For example, somebody asked (emphasis mine):

What can I do against my addiction to certain websites? I'm addicted to some sites, and I already tried to block them, but I always go back to unblock. I always waste a lot of time on them, and I'm annoyed by myself than I can[’t] stay away from them.

Do you see the dynamic? He’s like two people: person A blocks the website, until the urge to visit it gets too strong and person B unblocks it. Then person A gets annoyed at person B – who was presumably annoyed at person A for blocking the site in the first place. And the only way to get (temporary) relief from this conflict is to indulge and visit the site again – or so it seems.

This person’s frustration makes it easier to see that, again, knowledge inside a single mind does not act fundamentally differently from knowledge across minds. When you’re in conflict with somebody else, you may feel hopeless at times, like there’s no way to reach that person, and you wish they’d just listen to reason. But that situation is not fundamentally different when that other person is yourself! People sometimes think you should be able to just ‘will away’ those conflicting preferences inside you, but that isn’t always easier to do with yourself than it is with someone else.

Somebody responded to the tortured soul above. Again we see the same self-adversarial dynamic at play:

I have the same problem.

The only solution I have is to remove your accounts completely, or make it so that you can never login again.

A good way for this is to implement a 2-way verification on your account with an Authentication app, then you logout, remove your TOKENS in the Authentication app, and then clear the web browser. You can also reset the backup codes for the 2 way authentication before log out the final time and don't save them.

Now you are out for good.

Except you’re not. Remember, the addict is his own creative adversary. He’ll find ways to get what he wants. So the same respondent immediately contradicts himself (emphasis mine):

I did this, but I managed to get back in by talking to the owner of the site. Why did I do this? 😔

The key is to never give yourself the permission to never under any circumstances look at the site again. … If you look at the site again, I will guarantee you that you will find a way to get back in.

In other words, this person suggests that the ‘solution’ to this conflict between preferences is to entrench it even further by having one run roughshod over the other. That’s not a solution. On the contrary, I suspect it would just frustrate that other part of him, which would then want to visit the site even more, and find even more creative ways to visit it. If somebody else disregarded your preferences, wouldn’t you feel justified in disregarding theirs? Yes. Why should that be any different when that somebody else is yourself? It isn’t.

This respondent continues:

Find something else to do. Because you can not [sic] remove a habbit [sic], you [c]an only replace it by something else. This is the secret [to] habbit building. Maybe every time you feel the urge to look at the website, take a book from your bookshelf and start reading that instead.

Hope this helps.

Now, whether reading is an actual solution to this conflict depends on the person. Given this respondent’s previous statements, I suspect he’s merely suggesting another form of self-coercion: read whether you like it or not. Again, that will not work; it may well worsen the addiction. But if reading is something both parts of him prefer to their respective initial position, then the addiction should disappear quickly because there’s no reason for either part to continue holding its initial position.

The logic would be the same for the alcoholic from our thought experiment: if part A of his mind wants to spend money on alcohol, while part B wants to spend that money on movie tickets instead, but then they find they both prefer to spend the money on a new book, then they will be in harmony again.

In short, the cure to addiction is common-preference finding with yourself. Unfortunately, there’s no predetermined recipe that you could follow. What you can do, though, is best described by the quote from The Beginning of Infinity from #760:

[W]hat is necessary for progress is to exclude ideas that fail to survive criticism, and to prevent their entrenchment, and to promote the creation of new ideas.

By definition, once you’re addicted, it’s too late to prevent entrenchment. But that still leaves two possible actions: discarding ideas that fail to survive criticism and promoting the creation of new ideas. In essence, using Veritula.

The cure for addiction is to create new ideas until you find at least one that you are completely unconflicted about.

Ration overrated and has pretty indirect relation with the common sense.

That’s fine. Common sense is often found to be wrong upon closer inspection. It’s rationality that helps us seek truth. Common sense says the sun rotates around the earth; rationality helped us understand why that isn’t the case.

“truenesslessnessless”, “beingnesslessnessless”, “thisnesslessnesslesssness”, “thisnesslessnesslesssness”

What? You’re rambling.

A ‘supercession’ isn’t some special flag in the system – it’s just another criticism that can be countercriticized. So I hesitate to implement special functionality for ‘special’ criticisms.

Podge wrote in the FoR book club:

[A]n institution that forbids action unless unanimity is reached seems not to function coherently. There are two possibilities. If postponement is uncontroversial, then no special rule is needed, since institutions for adjudicating between competing preferences are only operative when there is disagreement. If postponement itself is contested, then it’s not clear how this rule could be applied consistently, because not acting on x is itself a choice about which we are conflicted.

Maybe fun = profitable thinking. Not in the sense of ‘thoughts that lead to good monetary decisions’. I mean it in the literal sense that there’s wealth being created inside your mind.

Maybe fun = profitable thinking.

web-haptics: Haptic Feedback Finally Comes to iOS Safari

lochie just published a package bringing haptic feedback to the web: web-haptics. I spent four years at Apple working mostly on UIs, so I pay close attention to design and UX. In terms of presentation, use case, and attention to detail, this package comes as close to perfect as I’ve seen.

The problem

On Android, haptics have been available through navigator.vibrate(), but iOS does not support this API. There is a workaround, though – the input element with the switch attribute:

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<input type="checkbox" switch>

See this switch input in action here. On iOS, the input renders not as a regular checkbox but as a switch that can be toggled on or off:

Open the link on your iPhone, tap the switch, and you’ll feel haptic feedback. As far as I know, this is currently the only known practical workaround to trigger haptic feedback on the web in iOS.

Implementation

lochie cleverly bases his package on this single workaround and pushes it to its limits. The key lines are here, creating a switch input on the fly:

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javascript

const hapticCheckbox = document.createElement("input");
hapticCheckbox.type = "checkbox";
hapticCheckbox.setAttribute("switch", "");

The package also creates an associated label and clicks it to trigger haptic feedback on the connected input:

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javascript

this.hapticLabel.click();

(My understanding is that iOS will not trigger the haptic feedback when the input is programmatically clicked – so the ‘workaround within the workaround’ is to click the associated label instead.)

Custom haptics (!)

But web-haptics can do more than just trigger a single haptic ‘pulse’. The trigger function lets you pass in your own patterns with pulses of different duration and intensity, and even delays.

Want a simple success haptic? Trigger two pulses, as shown on the package homepage:

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javascript

trigger([
  { duration: 30 },
  { delay: 60, duration: 40, intensity: 1 },
])

Or simply call trigger('success') as a shortcut.

Here’s an error haptic I made based on Apple’s human interface guidelines:

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trigger([
  { duration: 40, intensity: 0.7 },
  { delay: 40, duration: 40, intensity: 0.7 },
  { delay: 40, duration: 40, intensity: 0.9 },
  { delay: 40, duration: 50, intensity: 0.6 },
])

lochie’s website even gives you an editor to make custom haptics. As you click and drag, both pulses and code update in real time. This experience is developer bliss:

Usage

Importing the package is easy. In Rails, for example:

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# config/importmap.rb
pin "web-haptics", to: "https://esm.sh/web-haptics@0.0.6"

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import { WebHaptics } from 'web-haptics';

// In a Stimulus controller somewhere
let haptics = new WebHaptics();
haptics.trigger('success'); // or 'error', 'warning', etc for built-in haptics
haptics.trigger([
  { duration: 40, intensity: 0.7 },
  { delay: 40, duration: 40, intensity: 0.7 },
])

Pass a debug option to the constructor to hear clicks in development/on desktop:

1

new WebHaptics({ debug: true });

Again, this package comes as close to perfect as I’ve seen. In fact, I already use it on Veritula: as you type in a text field, an error haptic plays when you exceed the max length (#4473).

I highly recommend web-haptics by lochie.

Users can now pick a custom @username.

I just changed mine to @dennis.hackethal. (Period instead of hyphen.) Old profile links are automatically redirected. Old @mentions are automatically updated.

@usernames used to be assigned automatically based on a user’s first and last name. Now, users have more choice.

To change your @username, go to Settings.

But there’s no indication that the current version has been superseded.

This was a big week for Veritula. Users can now:

• ✍️ Post ideas to their own profile, and others’ profiles, outside of discussions. (Beta)
• 🔄 Repost ideas.
• 🙋‍♂️ Set a profile description under Settings. Tell others about yourself!
• 💻 Embed discussions on third-party sites. Similar feature to Disqus and Giscus. Ideal for comments on blogs, say. See the embed code under Settings. (Early beta)
• 🌉 Show images while preserving viewers’ privacy.¹

Embed discussions on third-party sites.

Dirk is already rocking an embedded discussion on his blog: https://www.dirkswebsite.nl/blog/bedrock/

Forum Rules

Veritula welcomes a wide range of discussion topics. Generally speaking, people have free speech here. Unpopular topics will not automatically get people banned. The goal of moderation is to preserve productive, truth-seeking discussion.

Behavior that is intended, or likely, to sabotage debate or prevent progress is a bannable offense. Such behavior includes, but is not limited to, harassment, brigading, rage baiting, public shaming, and persistent bad-faith argumentation or refusal to engage substantively.

Veritula takes intellectual property seriously and reserves the right to take down content that infringes on others’ intellectual property.

Veritula also reserves the right to take down obscene content such as pornography.

Serious instances of off-platform behavior that clearly would have violated these rules on-platform may result in removal.

Depending on the severity of an infraction, moderators may issue a warning, temporarily lock an account, or permanently ban the account.

Looking for loopholes in these rules, or abusing the letter to violate the spirit of these rules, is a bannable offense.

Moderation decisions are at the discretion of Veritula.

Users may appeal moderation decisions by contacting the moderators within a reasonable time after a decision. Appeals should explain why the decision was wrong. Appeals are reviewed at the moderators’ discretion. The same decision may be appealed only once.

Talks with moderators should remain respectful and constructive. Changes to these rules should be proposed before issues arise by criticizing this idea.

This was a big week for Veritula. Users can now:

• ✍️ Post ideas to their own profile, and others’ profiles, outside of discussions. (Beta)
• 🔄 Repost ideas.
• 🙋‍♂️ Set a profile description under Settings. Tell others about yourself!
• 💻 Embed discussions on third-party sites. Similar feature to Disqus and Giscus. Ideal for comments on blogs, say. See the embed code under Settings. (Early beta)

If I mute a discussion, does that stop me from getting notifications from the people I follow, when they interact with that discussion?

Yes.

As a rule of thumb, specificity beats generality. For example, if you follow someone but mute a discussion, you won’t be notified of their posts in that discussion. But if you then subscribe to a specific thread in that muted discussion, you will get their notifications for that thread.

There are exceptions. If you mute someone, you’ll never be notified of their actions.

Try appending /latest to the link. I still need to expose this feature somehow, but you can use that in the meantime.

Example: https://veritula.com/ideas/4434-5-minute-creativity-tl-dr-when-making-a/latest