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Understanding in the Age of AI:
https://libertythroughreason.com/understanding-in-the-age-of-ai/

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.

Tyler suggested (#3904) we use the chart type from Kialo:

Could be a useful visualization in addition to trees.

Each top-level idea would be the center node. Then red segments around it for pending criticisms. Gray for non-pending criticisms and neutral comments.

Unlike Kialo, though, each segment would have the same size as the other segments on its circle.

Offer easy way to link to latest version of an idea. The ability already exists – an idea link + /latest will always go to the latest version – but isn’t directly exposed in the form of a link or button yet.

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:

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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):

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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.

My talk about hard to vary at Conjecture Con 2026 is now online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LfEPLmjxNk

We now have refute.us, which I plan to integrate with V eventually.

Archiving #3904 for now.

Apparently Scribd profiles are public? 🤷‍♂️ https://www.scribd.com/user/430906064/Dennis-Hackethal

The poster I presented at Conjecture Con about animals:

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