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Yeah that's definitely a possible medical condition, e.g. in psychosis or after having ECT. Don't think it's the best explanation for Alzheimer's though, where the loss of brain volume is so apparent.

Alright, I remember the meta algorithm from your book but can't recall if you adress this criticism: If there's no need for a meta algorithm in biological evolution, why must there be one for the evolution of ideas?

Wait, do you view the pruning as separate from the mere competition of ideas, or simply its hardware consequences?

One of my previous comments notwithstanding, don’t be shy to mark ideas as criticisms whenever you point out a shortcoming. Otherwise, you won’t know later on which ideas you can adopt. In the context of Alzheimer’s, this sounds like a criticism.

In Darwinian evolution, competition and pruning are the same phenomena.

That doesn’t sound right. Not all competition is necessarily deleterious.

Wait, do you view the pruning as separate from the mere competition of ideas…?

Yes. When I say ‘pruning’, I’m referring to a specific mechanism of a meta algorithm in the mind. For more details, see my book A Window on Intelligence, I think chapter 5. There is no such meta algorithm in biological evolution.

One of my previous comments notwithstanding, don’t be shy to mark ideas as criticisms whenever you point out a shortcoming. In the context of Alzheimer’s, this sounds like a criticism.

I still see epistemology as distinct, and I'll try to make my case for it. Epistemology explains how humans create explanatory knowledge — unlike biological evolution, which also produces knowledge, but not explanations. Explanatory knowledge is special because it allows us to understand the world. Deutsch even suggests that this kind of knowledge tends toward convergence — a unified theory of everything — implying a deep connection between reality and its capacity to be explained.

Economics, on the other hand, isn’t distinct in the same way. It deals with trade-offs and scarcity — principles already fundamental to biology. Life itself is about managing limited resources and the trade-offs that come with them. Evolution, in turn, discovered increasingly effective strategies for doing so — including cooperation, exchange, and other relationships between and across lifeforms that facilitate these trades.

In that same vein, why couldn't we class biology (evolution) under epistemology?

Yes, but that inhirent in biology (evolution) right? I see it as part of the evolutionary strand for this reason.

I currently see Constructor Theory as a meta-theory. A different mode of explanation. But it raises an interesting question: does CT actually qualify as a deeper theory than the four strands? Even if we were to express all four strands in constructor-theoretic terms, that alone wouldn’t make it explain more or have greater reach. So when would it truly deserve to be considered a strand/theory of everything?

Economics as a fundamental study of trade-offs.

My point is rather that it's not so clean a line between explicit and inexplicit. You're a doctor, so imagine the steps being something like:

1. Extensive description of patient's symptoms, test results, conclusion, etc, in English.
2. Same as above but mostly made out of quick notes by attending doctors and nurses.
3. Only a collection of test names and test results. Test results accompanied by Chinese.
4. Just a collection of numbers coming out of tests, without saying which test.

Arguably all the information is always there, and can be read off, but with increasing difficulty, requiring you to learn another language, or do a series of deductions.

Haha not a programmer so understood maybe half of it, but I think I see what you mean. There'll always be inexplicit parts to every explanation. My concept of explanations is that there must be at least some explicit part for it to be called an explanation. That's why genes aren't explanations.

Yeah that's definitely a possible medical condition, e.g. in psychosis or after having ECT. Don't think it's the best explanation for Alzheimer's though, where the loss of brain volume is so apparent.

Wait, do you view the pruning as separate from the mere competition of ideas, or simply its hardware consequences? In Darwinian evolution, competition and pruning are the same phenomena. Would expect the same for the mind.

That’s a valid point but doesn’t belong here. I have instead edited a related idea.

How Does Veritula Work?

Veritula (Latin for ‘a bit of truth’) can help you live a life guided exclusively by reason.

To reason, within any epistemology, means to follow and apply that epistemology. Unreason, or whim, is an undue departure from it. Epistemology is the study of knowledge – basically, the study of what helps knowledge grow, what hinders its growth, and related questions.

Veritula follows, and helps you apply, Karl Popper’s epistemology, Critical Rationalism. It’s a continuation of the Athenian tradition of criticism and the only known epistemology without major flaws.¹

Critical Rationalism says that ideas are assumed true until refuted. This approach leaves us free to make bold guesses and use the full arsenal at our disposal to criticize these guesses in order to solve problems, correct errors, and seek truth. It’s a creative and critical approach. Critical Rationalism is a fallibilist philosophy: it states that there is no criterion of truth to determine with certainty whether some idea is true or false. We all make mistakes, and by an effort, we can correct them to get a little closer to the truth. Rejecting all forms of mysticism and the supernatural, Veritula recognizes that progress is both possible and desirable, and that rational means are the only way to make progress.

Veritula is a programmatic implementation of Popper’s epistemology.

Veritula provides an objective, partly automated way to tentatively determine whether a given idea is problematic. It does not tell you what to think – it teaches you how to think.

Consider an idea I:

              I

Since it has no criticisms, we tentatively consider I unproblematic. It is rational to adopt it and act in accordance with it. Conversely, it would generally be irrational to reject it, consider it problematic, or act counter to it.

Next, someone submits a criticism C1:

              I
              |
              C1

The idea I is now considered problematic so long as criticism C1 is not addressed. How do you address it? You can revise I so that C1 doesn’t apply anymore, which restores the previous state with just the standalone I (now called I2 to indicate the revision):

                   Revise
              I ------------> I2
              |
              C1

To track changes, Veritula offers beautiful diffing and version control for ideas.

If you cannot think of a way to revise I, you can counter-criticize C1, thereby neutralizing it with a new criticism, C2:

              I
              |
              C1
              |
              C2

Now, I is considered unproblematic again, since C1 is problematic and thus can’t be a decisive criticism anymore.

If you can think of neither a revision of I nor counter-criticism to C1, your only option is to accept that I has been (tentatively) defeated. You should therefore abandon it, which means: stop acting in accordance with it, considering it to be unproblematic, etc.

Since there can be many criticisms (which are also just ideas) and deeply nested counter-criticisms, the result is a tree structure. For example, as a discussion progresses, one of its trees might look like this:

              I
           /  |  \
         C11 C12 C13
         / \       \
       C21 C22     C23
                   / \
                 C31 C32

In this tree, I is considered problematic. Although C11 has been neutralized by C21 and C22, C12 still needs to be addressed. In addition, C23 would have neutralized C13, but C31 and C32 make C23 problematic, so C13 makes I problematic as well.

You don’t need to keep track of these relationships manually. Veritula marks ideas accordingly, automatically.

Because decision-making is a special case of, ie follows the same logic as, truth-seeking, such trees can be used for decision-making, too. When you’re planning your next move but can’t decide on a city, say, Veritula helps you criticize your ideas and make a rational decision – meaning a decision you’ll be happy with. Again, it’s rational to act in accordance with ideas that have no pending criticisms.

All ideas, including criticisms, should be formulated as concisely as possible, and separate ideas should be submitted separately, even if they’re related. Otherwise, you run the risk of receiving ‘bulk’ criticisms, where a single criticism seems to apply to more content than it actually does.

Again, criticisms are also just ideas, so the same is true for criticisms. Submitting each criticism separately has the benefit of requiring the proponent of an idea to address each criticism individually, not in bulk. If he fails to address even a single criticism, the idea remains problematic and should be rejected.

The more you discuss a given topic, the deeper and wider the tree grows. Some criticisms can apply to multiple ideas in the tree, but that needs to be made explicit by submitting them repeatedly.

Comments that aren’t criticisms – eg follow-up questions or otherwise neutral comments – are considered ancillary ideas. Unlike criticisms, ancillary ideas do not invert their respective parents’ statuses. They are neutral.

One of the main benefits of Veritula is that the status of any idea in a discussion can be seen at a glance. If you are new to a much-discussed topic, adopt the displayed status of the ideas involved: if they are marked problematic, reject them; if they are not, adopt them.

Therefore, Veritula acts as a dictionary for ideas.

One of the problems of our age is that people have same discussions over and over again. Part of the reason is widespread irrationality, expressed in the unwillingness to change one’s mind; another is that it’s simply difficult to remember or know what’s true and what isn’t. Discussion trees can get complex, so people shouldn’t blindly trust their judgment of whether some idea is true or problematic, whether nested criticisms have been neutralized or not. Going off of memory is too error prone.

Veritula solves this problem: it makes discussion trees explicit so you don’t have to remember each idea and its relation to other ideas. Veritula therefore also enables you to hold irrational people accountable: if an idea has pending criticisms, the rational approach is to either abandon it or to save it by revising it or addressing all pending criticisms.

Many people don’t like to concede an argument. But with Veritula, no concessions are necessary. The site just shows you who’s right.

Using Veritula, we may discover a bit of truth.

It might be worth stating that the underlying philosophy of Veritula, in conjunction with fallibilism, says that progress is both possible and desirable, and that rational means are the only way to make progress. This means an end to mysticism and the supernatural.

The pruning mechanism is part of it, but there’s more. Again, there’s also competition between ideas and even predatory behavior that can result in the elimination of ideas. All such phenomena taken together constitute natural selection in the mind.

… Rat Festers cite Popper and Deutsch as if they are infallible.

Shouldn’t it be ‘as if they were infallible’?

Fixed as of 2025-10-08.

Hardly anyone reads those, and many of those who do forget.

There could be an explanation somewhere stating that emoji reactions do not have epistemological relevance.

Those run the risk of turning Veritula into yet another social network like Reddit or messenger like Telegram.