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The rules aren’t clear about whether changes can apply retroactively.

If actual notice is the intended threshold, should an occurrence count only after the person has been shown the particular idea and its pending criticism?

I think that’s included (#5508), but it’s probably better in any case to refer to some standard of reasonableness: given the user’s and the mod’s actions, would an otherwise reasonable person agree that the user should have acted differently.

There’s a risk in being more specific about these conditions because it encourages trolls and other bad actors to look for loopholes. Whereas a standard of reasonableness encourages people to be good actors instead.

The proposal itself only says “when they should know better”.

It doesn’t only say that. It also says “If it happens twice, it may warrant a warning.” Meaning by that time, a mod will have talked to them. And: “They could run a bounty that will charge their card a small but non-negligible amount if they don’t address a criticism.” They wouldn’t know to run a bounty unless a mod told them to.

What must someone have been told and understood before they count as someone who “should know better”?

I don’t know if this can be fully defined ahead of time. Someone new to V would naturally be given more leeway. Over time, if they need to be told again and again but make no or little progress, and if they conveniently keep forgetting how V works to save their pet ideas, then it wouldn’t be unreasonable for a mod to conclude they’re not all that interested in rationality. I don’t know if the specific circumstances under which that might happen can be predicted.

But as a hypothetical example: a member of V is pointed repeatedly to the state of the discussion around HTV, say. Then they go on X to talk about how great HTV is. When asked about this, they ‘forgot’ HTV had pending criticisms. They promise to look into it. But they ‘forget’ again and the same behavior repeats. That’s basically lying at that point.

If it happens repeatedly, mods could ask for some evidence that the person has at least tried to make the criticism explicit. If the person can’t even remember the previous outcome of a discussion, then clearly they have not. Or they could show some public record of them acting the way #5482 asks them to: that they’ve linked to the objective state of the discussion while voicing personal disagreement.

But then anybody could claim to have an inexplicit criticism just to avoid the rule. How would the mods know which cases are genuine?

This proposal would count that person as rejecting an idea without pending criticisms.

Only superficially, since a mod could just ask them about it. They can then voice that they have an inexplicit criticism.

I reply:

The purpose of demarcation was to delineate science from non-science. That’s different from a criterion of rationality.

For such a criterion, Popper proposes measures of corroboration and verisimilitude. And he get pretty technical in defining those.

Neil Hudson says Popper’s criterion of demarcation doesn’t give us a way to form rational preferences. He implies: so why should HTV?

Neil Hudson asks:

A fallible procedure can still be making the stronger claim that every admissible pair is algorithmically rankable. Why should HTV- or rationality generally - be required to supply that [such an algorithmic ranking]?

I reply:

The task would actually be *harder* to program if we constrained it to work only for some ideas and not others.

I reply:

Rational decision-making (involving HTV or not) is a computational task. We can’t claim to have understood such a task unless we’ve programmed it.

I reply:

Because it’s better for error correction. If you want your life to be a beginning of infinity, if you want to make sustained progress, you need to be rational. To be rational, you need to be able to tell when you’re being irrational. So you need a criterion of rationality. The more inputs it works for, the better. Universal is best.

Neil Hudson asks, “Why should HTV- or rationality generally - be required to supply” an algorithmic ranking?

Like most people, he’s confused about the purpose of HTV. My blog post linked in #3069 already explains.

Neil Hudson says, in short, that there’s a difference between a constraint on criticism and a ranking procedure. He says HTV is meant as a constraint, not a ranking procedure.

That’s why I said it’s fine to prompt the user for creative input if necessary, within reason. #5439

That’s why I said it’s fine to prompt the user for creative input if necessary, within reason.

Neil replies:

Programming syntactic variations is easy. The problem is conjecturing which variations are explanatorily relevant given the problem and our background explanatory knowledge. The epistemological work includes conjecturing the relevant search space itself. Otherwise I can generate billions of mutations without discovering whether changing some feature destroys the explanation or merely changes its wording.

This new proposal would punish irrationality itself…

The purpose of the rule wouldn’t be to punish anyone but to protect our time, associate with good people, and keep our ability to make progress.

#4460 says moderation aims to preserve productive, truth-seeking discussion. Being free to avoid someone does not show that excluding them helps that goal. A valuable contributor might advocate elsewhere an idea that has pending criticisms on Veritula, without affecting Veritula or its members. Banning them would sacrifice useful contributions without protecting any discussion. Off-platform conduct should count only when it burdens Veritula or its members.

The proposal does not say whether conduct from before the rule is adopted can count as an offence for existing members. Without a prospective effective date, members could be warned or banned for conduct that was not covered by this rule when it occurred.

The proposal should require the statement and claimed match to be recorded and open to criticism before they can support a warning.

#5471 and #5472 defend this proposal as applying when someone participated in the relevant discussion or was directly shown the relevant ideas and then repeatedly ignored them. The proposal itself only says “when they should know better”. That could cover much more. If actual notice is the intended threshold, should an occurrence count only after the person has been shown the particular idea and its pending criticism?