Search Ideas

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.

No because 1) there’s always a finite amount of deeply nested criticisms, and 2) the discussion graph is acyclic.

should_adopt? and pending_criticisms are implemented in terms of each other. Doesn’t that cause an infinite regress?

Recursive Epistemology

Veritula implements a recursive epistemology. For a criticism to be pending, it can’t have any pending criticisms itself, and so on, in a deeply nested fashion.

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def should_adopt? idea
  pending_criticisms(idea).none?
end

def pending_criticisms idea
  criticisms(idea).filter { |c| should_adopt?(c) }
end

def criticisms idea
  children(idea).filter(&:criticism?)
end

This approach is different from non-recursive epistemologies, which handle criticisms differently. For example, they might not consider deeply nested criticisms when determining whether an idea is currently criticized.

Assuming Sam did mean to criticize my opposition to assigning strengths to criticisms:

The issue isn’t that we don’t have a way to fix the hole. (We often do.)
The issue is that we have no rigorous way to tell how big the hole is. So, rather than evade criticisms by saying ‘but it’s only a small hole’, I’m saying we should always either fix holes in the boat, no matter their size, or choose a different boat.

Unclear what the boat stands for.

Sam criticized my idea, so presumably he means for the boat to represent #4711. But the way his criticism is phrased, it sounds more like the boat represents the methodology of assigning strengths to criticisms.

To be clear, the boat represents the idea that we should judge criticisms by their strength?

Logically, yes. But in practice, it won’t be the same.

For example:

Idea A: ‘Newtonian gravity is true.’ → Has pending criticisms (some predictions don’t match observation).
Idea B: ‘Newtonian gravity is not true.’ → Also has pending criticisms: ‘Not helpful’; ‘Doesn’t tell us how gravity works’; etc.

Related: https://www.daviddeutsch.org.uk/2014/08/simple-refutation-of-the-bayesian-philosophy-of-science/

Maybe I’m misunderstanding you, but if somebody suggests some system they can’t put into practice, then the system is no good.

This sounds like a version of #2195, see criticism #2198.

Then the idea ‘I could either address that pending criticism or, if I fail to do that, look into all the other pending criticisms’ would have no pending criticisms.

Now also available on PhilPapers: https://philpapers.org/archive/HACTSO-6.pdf

I’ve formalized some of these ideas in my first paper, ‘The Structure of Rational Thought’.

https://www.academia.edu/170297518/The_Structure_of_Rational_Thought

I usually get conspiracy vibes from anti-fluoride sources, but I haven’t looked into it much.

Possibly related: https://blog.dennishackethal.com/posts/what-is-the-difference-between-a-person-and-a-re

Indeed. And this is one of the reasons the cynics are wrong. They think true ideas couldn’t be improved further. This worries them because they want unbounded progress. So they conclude our ideas can never be 100% true. Not only is that motivated reasoning but, as you’ve just said, true ideas can still be improved anyway.

Like, the criticism flag isn’t just for factual errors, if that’s what you mean.