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#2325 serves as an example. I had submitted a criticism which is now outdated and remains counter-criticized. It’s actually better that way because it shows that an error has been corrected, and makes it less likely for others to submit a duplicate criticism.

In your revision, you asked me to let you know if you are doing things incorrectly.

You can revise ideas the way you did, it’s not wrong per se, but revisions are better for incremental changes. They’re not really meant for taking back criticisms or indicating agreement. If a criticism of yours is successfully counter-criticized and you would like to abandon it, I would just leave it counter-criticized and not revise it further.

If you are looking for a way to indicate agreement (with a counter-criticism, say), it’s something Dirk and I have been discussing offline, see #2169. I hope to implement something to that effect soon.

I’m happy to have you and for your contributions, but I have to ask: do you see yourself building a Veritula competitor at some point in the future?

Erik has since fixed this typo.

Most people (except in Alzheimer's, etc.) don't run out of memory in the brain. The reason most people don’t (permanently) run out memory (of either kind) isn’t that memory isn’t scarce, but that there’s a pruning mechanism in the mind. And there’s competition.

Thanks for clarifying

I think correspondence is to epistemology as adaptation is to evolution. Knowledge that corresponds more to reality tends to be more useful (and/or has more reach), similar to biological adaptation.

This may make it harder for me to discuss sensitive topics (e.g. navigating personal relationships, health issues, etc.) since it may reveal things to people who know me personally, things that I may wish to keep to myself, that I would only discuss online behind a pseudonym.

Using my true name here causes me to take more care in what I write. I’m not hiding behind an identity I can discard.

People often say there are safety issues involved in using your true name online.

@dennis-hackethal Please share your reasoning for your request that Veritula users use their true names.

I’m curious btw, how did you hear about Veritula?

I believe I came across it while exploring your blog. My ‘Popperian Wikipedia’ idea was particularly sharp in my mind in that moment, so I was very excited to see how you had set things up here. I think a tremendous amount of it is transferable.

My vision is for an online encyclopedia that contains complete articles describing the totality of a perspective, with articles for alternate explanations readily available. I see many problems with this idea but I think it is worth exploring.

Would it be possible / worth it to produce a competitor to Wikipedia based on Popperian epistemology?

Yes, sure.

The idea of having a Wikipedia equivalent that presents high quality competing articles detailing different alternative explanations for things (with some sort of versioning and methods of criticism) excites me greatly.

Me, too. I think Veritula’s design allows for this pretty naturally since the topic of a discussion can be general enough for various competing ideas to be posted in the discussion.

We ‘just’ need to get more users. As I wrote in #628, posting a breaking news story could work. If users submit ideas on events as they unfold and then criticize those ideas, visitors see what’s happening at a glance. It could be easier for them to know which ideas they can adopt than on conventional news channels or even Wikipedia, IMO.

There are also ‘timeless’ debates that have been going on for decades where Veritula can offer clarity. Like on the abortion debate. People shouldn’t have to keep debating that over and over when it’s a matter where objective truth can be found and then acted on.

I have thought of producing something like this myself, which was part of what drew me to Veritula.

I’m curious btw, how did you hear about Veritula?

And now you say the meta algoritm/pruning is not needed for the evolution of ideas?

Right. Pruning helps it along but isn’t strictly required. You may be misunderstanding natural selection. It is merely “the non-random differential reproduction of genes.” (From The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins.) More generally, it’s the non-random differential reproduction of replicators, including ideas.

In other words, selection in and of itself doesn’t even imply that any individual replicator dies (though in practice, they usually do). It just means there’s a difference in the rate of reproduction between different replicators. That difference arises without any pruning.

And you equated pruning with the meta algorithm.

I did not equate them. I said in #2263 that the meta algorithm does the pruning: “When I say ‘pruning’, I’m referring to a specific mechanism of a meta algorithm in the mind.”

Would it be possible / worth it to produce a competitor to Wikipedia based on Popperian epistemology? Larry Sanger (a founder of Wikipedia) has said that he now thinks Wikipedia should have competing articles on the same topic to allow for the fact that people disagree.

The idea of having a Wikipedia equivalent that presents high quality competing articles detailing different alternative explanations for things (with some sort of versioning and methods of criticism) excites me greatly.

I have thought of producing something like this myself, which was part of what drew me to Veritula.

Please see #2298 for a link to an article outlining various other reasons for getting sunlight. Vitamin D is not the only reason to get sunlight (or some artificial equivalent).

Thank you for sharing. Skimming his content, I’m not finding any criticisms of the biological explanations I currently hold that reject polyunsaturated fats. I will dig deeper later on.

I haven’t yet found good criticisms of Ray Peat’s ideas regarding unsaturated fats, so those are the ideas I am currently living by.

Welcome to Veritula, Benjamin. Yes, the number may need to go up in the future.

Are you thinking of sun exposure to get enough vitamin D?

To be sure, I’m not a doctor, but because I have very fair skin, every dermatologist I’ve ever talked to has advised me to avoid the sun and instead take vitamin D supplements.

I want to live in places that are mostly sunny, most of the time. This is for health reasons.