Search Ideas

Reiterating/refining #3904: There should be a graphical indication for pending criticisms. The dropdown line should be red if the comment it leads to is a pending criticism.

Reiterating/refining #3904: I think the yellow "Criticism of" bubbles can and should be replaced by a graphical indication that is much easier on the eyes. The dropdown line can be made red if the comment it leads to is a criticism, and the bubble on the criticism can be eliminated. Reading the yellow bubble to get the idea # it is referring to, then searching the ideas above for the matching # is inelegant (even if it is usually the one right above).

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.

Reiterating/refining #3904: I think the yellow "Criticism of" bubbles can and should be replaced by a graphical indication that is much easier on the eyes. The dropdown line can be made red if the comment it leads to is a criticism, and the bubble on the criticism can be eliminated. Reading the yellow bubble to get the idea # it is referring to, then searching the ideas above for the matching # is inelegant (even if it is usually the one right above).

And dimmer red for refuted criticisms, brighter red for pending ones! Default gray for comments.

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.

Would avoid putting it in a tooltip. Best to keep it for accessibility. Communicating only with lines and colors is too little information.

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”.)

Fixed as of 76299a2.

Done as of 65dba4b.

Ruby example:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11

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):

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11

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.

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.

(Generated with Claude.)

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.

The relevant systems have a shared evolutionary history, with substantial continuity in sensory, affective, nociceptive and learning mechanisms.

That isn’t learning in the relevant sense that has to do with consciousness. DD explains some of that here.

The relevant systems have a shared evolutionary history, with substantial continuity in sensory, affective, nociceptive and learning mechanisms.

Unnecessarily complex language like this makes ideas harder to criticize. Just write ‘they sense things, feel pain, and change behavior.’

Neural continuity therefore seems evidentially relevant even if it cannot by itself prove sentience.

No, the substrate independence of computation rules that out. Neurons don’t matter for our purposes here, at all.

A change in that inherited system may indeed have produced the qualitative leap to universal creativity. Since universality is necessarily all-or-nothing in the relevant sense, that leap is unsurprising. But it does not follow that every other aspect of mental life (including pain or other phenomenal experience) must have appeared in the same leap, or even require a comparable leap at all.

It’s a guess. No other explanation is known. If you have a different guess, propose it here.

The relevant systems have a shared evolutionary history…

So do laptops and their hardware, only with memetic evolutionary history. So what?

For any finite sequence of behavior, it seems possible in principle to posit a sufficiently elaborate fixed program that produces it. The same would apply to human behavior.

I disagree. Human behavior is so far off the mark I can’t explain it in terms of preprogramming only. I don’t know how to explain poems and rocket ships. Biological evolution had no reason to create any of the knowledge needed to make rocket ships, so preprogramming doesn’t make sense as an explanation.

If monkeys suddenly started making rocket ships one day, I would have trouble explaining that, for the same reason.

Ultimately the criterion will depend on an explanation of how the underlying program works. There can’t be a purely behavioral criterion, as DD argues in BoI ch. 7 (IIRC). But until we have that, some behavior is so blatantly robotic, like a Roomba, that I think we can reasonably conclude it has nothing to do with consciousness.

Explanations of animal behavior can be phrased fully in terms of unconscious, purely dogmatic information processing. We can write the programs and simulate animals on a computer. We don’t need consciousness for any of it. But we can’t write the program that would simulate a person on a computer. That program would result in consciousness. There’s an asymmetry there.

Can I prove that dogmatic programs don’t give rise to consciousness? No. But I think that’s the wrong epistemological standard. I can’t prove that rocks aren’t conscious either. What I do know is that I don’t invoke the concept of consciousness when explaining rocks (whatever little there is to explain about them).

I usually find that terms like “phenomenal experience” and “cognition” are confusing and make discussions harder. Ultimately, there’s one type of consciousness and one type of information processing that gives rise to it. I don’t think distinctions between different types of ‘cognition’ or ‘experience’ are worth drawing, if they even exist in reality at all.