Search Ideas

Fixed as of c36fa5c, version 1.5.2.

Fixed as of ed8868b, version 1.3.1.

Understanding in the Age of AI:

libertythroughreason.com

Understanding in the Age of AI

Why serious epistemologists must be programmers, and whether vibe coding with AI counts as understanding. Takeaways from my Conjecture Con 2026 talk.

Rational Decision-Making

It’s rational to adopt only those ideas which, as written, don’t have pending criticisms, and to reject ideas that do.

If an idea, as written, has no pending criticisms, it’s rational to adopt it and irrational to reject it. What reason could you have to reject it? If it has no pending criticisms, then either no reasons to reject it (ie, criticisms) have been suggested or all suggested reasons have been addressed already.

If an idea, as written, does have pending criticisms, it’s irrational to adopt it and rational to reject it – by reference to those criticisms. What reason could you have to ignore the pending criticisms and adopt it anyway? After all, the previous paragraph applies to pending criticisms, too.

See also:

• More details and reasoning
• Computational implementation

A sticky button can't work here: the main content area has to be a horizontal scroll container so deeply nested trees can grow sideways, and that stops position: sticky from sticking. The workarounds (reworking the global layout, or JavaScript positioning that jitters on mobile) are too risky for such a small benefit.

Done as of c00ed18.

This says nothing about the yellow color of the criticisms pills, which I think Tyler is saying are too harsh on the eyes.

That doesn’t mean the pill has to stay yellow. Too harsh.

And dimmer red for refuted criticisms, brighter red for pending ones! Default gray for comments.

Would get alternating dim and bright depending on insertion order. Confusing!

And dimmer red for refuted criticisms, brighter red for pending ones! Default gray for comments.

It’s more in line with refute.us if non-pending criticisms are neutralized, ie gray as well.

And dimmer red for refuted criticisms, brighter red for pending ones! Default gray for comments.

Tried it – unfortunately, there aren’t enough shades of red to easily tell the difference.

Not red anymore. Gray as of 5b3358f.

Best to put additional information in a revision of the target idea, not as a comment. Comments aren’t for chronological addition of information like on X or Reddit.

I have yet to want to open the criticized idea in a new tab

I do that on occasion and like being able to do it. Other users may, too.

Fixed as of d633dc3.

Fixed as of 76299a2, see eg https://veritula.com/ideas/3951-done-as-of-cc1ab95-ruby-example-ruby-def/revisions/2. (Click on “Expand unchanged parts”.)

Done as of 65dba4b.

Ruby example:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11

def criticized? idea
  pending_criticisms(idea).any?
end

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

def criticisms idea
  children(idea).filter(&:criticism?)
end

JS example (h/t ChatGPT):

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11

function criticized(idea) {
  return pendingCriticisms(idea).length > 0;
}

function pendingCriticisms(idea) {
  return criticisms(idea).filter(c => pendingCriticisms(c).length === 0);
}

function criticisms(idea) {
  return children(idea).filter(c => c.isCriticism);
}

Fixed as of 7134d27.

Fixed as of b2a2a32 at the latest.

The argument is that we have no reason not to adopt an idea with no pending criticism. In other words, we should adopt unproblematic ideas.

A criticism can itself be such an unproblematic idea. Meaning we should adopt pending criticisms. We can’t consistently adopt an idea and its pending criticisms. So from the adoption of a pending criticism logically follows the rejection of its target idea.

The relevant systems have a shared evolutionary history, with substantial continuity in sensory, affective, nociceptive and learning mechanisms.

That isn’t learning in the relevant sense that has to do with consciousness. DD explains some of that here.

The relevant systems have a shared evolutionary history, with substantial continuity in sensory, affective, nociceptive and learning mechanisms.

Unnecessarily complex language like this makes ideas harder to criticize. Just write ‘they sense things, feel pain, and change behavior.’

Neural continuity therefore seems evidentially relevant even if it cannot by itself prove sentience.

No, the substrate independence of computation rules that out. Neurons don’t matter for our purposes here, at all.

A change in that inherited system may indeed have produced the qualitative leap to universal creativity. Since universality is necessarily all-or-nothing in the relevant sense, that leap is unsurprising. But it does not follow that every other aspect of mental life (including pain or other phenomenal experience) must have appeared in the same leap, or even require a comparable leap at all.

It’s a guess. No other explanation is known. If you have a different guess, propose it here.

The relevant systems have a shared evolutionary history…

So do laptops and their hardware, only with memetic evolutionary history. So what?