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I've been thinking of death as the loss of an instance of an idea from the soup. Part of what I'm curious about here is the epistemic difference between deaths of instances, and deaths of the whole lineage (which seems like a "refutation" in a different, more meaningful sense). See #5167.

By "weight" I meant that there being fewer instances of an idea (or less causal power, as you propose), doesn't actually criticize anything (content-wise), until the idea drops to zero (at which point, that idea is gone, and the knowledge content in the system has meaningfully changed -- epistemically changed...). Extinction (death of all instances -- and alleles..?) does seem like a refutation of the idea/gene.

This is the same as in an economy, seems to me. Maybe part of what can be clarified in this discussion will be these different modes of criticism. Please see #5133 and related.

Does not happen? With unlimited resources, why can't it? Competition will not always prevent it, will it?

But couldn't scarcity of resources be part of the underlying mechanism? We wouldn't want to say, "assume no speed limit to mass, because we want the underlying necessity of the mechanism of gravity." But the scarcity of speed is integral to the mechanism.

no scarcity for idea resources

"Idea resources" are computational resources, which are always scarce. Even with universality (modulo resources), the limits of the resources must have some effects on the evolution, I would think. Some developmental paths cannot be taken.

I don't think so; just having a Wall of posts on my profile is fine, no funny business. Here I was only hoping to delete an accidental mis-post. Maybe allowing deletion of exact duplicates with no parents is reasonable? But this is just a cleanliness/organizational thing, and kind of a fluke, probably not an issue worth spending much time on. (But I stand by #5143, and regardless of the size of the revision. Seems cleaner to me to only show the latest version, no diff.)

Did you know you can type em dashes (on Mac) by hitting alt + shift + hyphen?

Greater causal power, of which differential survival is a subset.

Discussions have an ‘Archive’ button for top-level posts. It looks like a box you’d put on a shelf in an archive.

Top-level profile posts could have such a button, too. And I could add an ‘Archived’ tab.

Would that help you achieve what you’re looking for?

… OP only generally responds to the latest version of a criticism …

I’m not sure that’s generally true. But regardless, OP should address all pending versions of a criticism.

I’m open to letting people contact me for serious cases (like accidentally posting their password or credit-card details). And then I can delete that content manually in the database.

Aside from that, we’d need to identify a case where simply criticizing a post isn’t enough. The criticism can state the reasons one would otherwise have for deleting a post.

Another problem with letting people delete posts is that others may have written a comment in the meantime, which they then can’t submit.

It can still mess up the continuity of discussions when the post to be deleted has parents.

Another choice: criticize one for being a duplicate. In the criticism, link to the original and instruct people to ignore the duplicate.

It does, but it has no universal way to semantically check why a criticism was generated this way. All it knows is that the criticism was generated as part of a superseding revision, but it doesn’t know the meaning of the contents of that revision.

But the system does have a way to identify automatically generated criticisms.

Yep. Was going to say this, too. The system has no semantic way to check the content of a criticism. So it has to assume that every unaddressed criticism is substantive.

The criticism "this is replicating less" should be generalized to "this allele/information has less causal power than an alternative." That has tremendous weight.

There is a natural preference for the one with more causal power, it is naturally selected over alternatives.

However, it is not clear to me how you are "weighing" these criticisms. So maybe my weighing isn't relevant to your weighing.

But sometimes revisions can be substantive, and OP could defend against one version, and in that case it should count toward the battle-tested badge!

But sometimes revisions can be substantive, and OP could defend against one version, and in that case it should count to the battle-tested badge!

I question whether previous versions of a criticism should contribute to the battle-tested count, as they do currently. Someone can make a spelling correction to the criticism, which creates the "supersedes" criticism of that previous version of the criticism, and that then contributes to the battle-tested count. This seems wrong, since that counter-criticism is not substantive, and even if it were, OP only generally responds to the latest version of a criticism (may not even have known about previous versions; all of this happened in: https://veritula.com/ideas/5089-knowledge-growth-such-as-in-genes-in-the-biospher).

Okay to allow for posts that have no comments or criticisms? Or only for posts on one's profile (perhaps also meeting that criterion)?

Deleting posts can really mess up the continuity of discussions, and allow for dishonesty.

No way to delete posts. Posted same thing twice by mistake (unexpected Chrome behavior). Choices are to leave the duplicate, which seems inelegant, or to revise it into another whole post, which I did, but that contributed to the issue in #5143 (creates an unclear green and red update post).

The term "death" is being used too vaguely. (Or else I am misunderstanding.) Do you think that a gene replicating and then dying (while its offspring survives) is "death?" A "refutation?"

Or do you mean "total elimination of the allele" as "death" or "refutation?"

My profile shows my revision to #5126 under Wall and under Activity, but not the post itself under the Wall. The revision is a jumble of red and green highlighted text (in this case, because the revision was significant), hard to read. Wall should only show latest versions of posts, not edits to them. Edits should go under Activity. And/or have the previous post versions viewable with the little arrows, as usual (and as done in the idea-focused view, after you click on the idea itself). Always show latest versions of ideas on the Wall so it's clear and easy to read.