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Fallibilism is the idea that all of our knowledge is tentatively true, and nothing is obviously true but depends on what one understands about reality. This means that we can't be certain about anything, because we don't have a criterion of truth. Knowledge grows by addressing problems in our knowledge. We solve problems by guessing solutions and testing them. This also means we should always be careful not to destroy or even slow down the things and ideas that correct errors and thereby create knowledge. Some of those ideas are freedom, privacy, and free markets. We are also never the passive recipients of our knowledge; we are the creators.

This view is mainly influenced by Popper, and errors are my own.

Fallibilism is the idea that all of our knowledge is tentatively true, and that nothing is obviously true but depends on what one understands about reality. This means that we can't be certain about anything, because we don't have a criterion of truth. Knowledge grows by addressing problems in our knowledge. We solve problems by guessing solutions and testing them. This also means we should always be careful not to destroy or even slow down the things and ideas that correct errors and thereby create knowledge. Some of which are freedom, privacy, and free markets. We are also never the passive recipients of our knowledge; we are the creators.

This view is mainly influenced by Popper, and errors are my own.

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If you're not certain which part of your knowledge is true, then there is no difference between what I said and what you said. Because you knew some part of your knowledge was true, but it turned out not to be after further inquiry.

Now you’re using the word ‘certain’ with two different meanings, which is confusing. You could replace the second instance, “a certain”, with ‘some’ or just ‘a’.

If you're not certain which part of your knowledge is true, then there is no difference between what I said and what you said. Because you knew a certain part of your knowledge was true, but it turned out not to be after further inquiry.

Still, I don’t see why you’d use quotation marks for that. They don’t seem to be scare quotes, and they’re not a literal quote either.

I meant to refer to anything that you know to be true.

Building on #2588, I recommend changing the opening lines of #2539 to something like ‘Fallibilism is the view that there is no criterion to say with certainty what’s true and what’s false. As a result, we inevitably make mistakes.’ And then adjust the rest accordingly.

In that case, I would agree with the second part of #2544 – just because something solves a problem doesn’t mean it’s guaranteed to be true, yes – but the first part is still wrong, IMO: “So there is no way to tell the truth of our knowledge.” There is, just not infallibly.

It certainly (pun intended) does not follow that all our knowledge contains errors, as you originally wrote.

To rephrase what you said, you can tell fallibly that some knowledge is true, and what I said was "[i]t may solve a problem, but that doesn't guarantee that it’s true."

… us[ing] terms like ‘good’ and ‘hard to vary’ in the sense of ‘not bad’ and ‘not easy to vary’ … eliminates the problem of gradation and positive argument, while preserving a shared and otherwise useful set of terminology.

Remembering and using the new meaning would take practice and effort. Why not just go with ‘has pending criticisms’ and ‘has no pending criticisms’ (or ‘problematic’ and ‘unproblematic’ for short)?

[We should continue] to use terms like ‘good’ and ‘hard to vary’ in the sense of ‘not bad’ and ‘not easy to vary’.

There are risks to changing the meaning of established, recognized terms. It could confuse newcomers to this forum who are familiar with Deutsch’s terminology.

I think so, yeah. But it’s been years since I watched DD’s talk on propositions. I’d have to re-watch it to give you a more competent answer.

Yes. But again, because it solves certain problems with existing money. There could similarly be good and bad explanations why certain religions would spread in the future.

I agree that it would be optimal if Zcash and Bitcoin had such price floors. But couldn't it still be the best alternative in certain jurisdictions, e.g. where it's impossible/impractical to own gold, and the local currency gets inflated away?

It is one thing to explain why a particular god spread more than others in the past, but it is another thing to claim that your specific god of choice will spread more than others in the future.

Your claim is that Zcash is the next money, which is analogous to claiming your niche god of choice is under-appreciated and will be the next big one.

It is one thing to retroactively explain why a particular god spread more than others in the past, but it is another thing to claim that your specific god of choice will spread more than others in the future.

Your claim is that Zcash is the next money, which is analogous to claiming your niche god of choice is under-appreciated and will be the next big one.

It is one thing to retroactively explain why a particular good spread more than others in the past, but it is another thing to claim that your specific god of choice will spread more than others in the future.

Your claim is that Zcash is the next money, which is analogous to claiming your niche god of choice is under-appreciated and will be the next big one.

I don’t deny that Zcash might be decentralised and private.

For Zcash to become the next money, it is not sufficient for it to just be durable, fungible, private, decentralised, etc.

As long as it doesn’t have any underlying value, it will not be suitable as money.

You are using secondary attributes of good money as positive justifications for Zcash as good money, but you are failing to answer the criticism that Zcash has no underlying value.

Money needs to be a medium of exchange, a unit of account, and a store of value.

Features that support a price floor create the conditions where one can expect that their wealth won’t completely evaporate for one reason or another. Something that has no features supporting a price floor is not good money.

If gold no longer has features supporting a price floor at some point in the future (as you claim might happen), then gold would also not be good money in that future.

Zcash has nothing going for it that makes it a store of value. To the degree that it is ‘worth’ anything in the future, it is because of the dynamics I refer to in #2497.

Fixed as of f7833c6.

Bug: tooltips sometimes don’t disappear. They should disappear when the user stops hovering over the element that triggered the tooltip.

In a way, reactions might have epistemological relevance.

If an idea has pending criticisms, it can still have parts worth saving in a revision. Reactions based on paragraphs (#2458) could point out those parts.