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Only temporarily at best, since ‘nuh-uh’ would be criticized for lacking substance right away.

What counts as ‘addressing’ a criticism? If I write ‘nuh-uh’ as a counter-criticism, does that neutralize the original?

Pasting #2079 here as it’s since been hidden in a resolved child thread and should have applied directly to #2074 in the first place.

My current view is that the only meaningful dichotomy is good vs. bad.

You say yourself in #2071 that one should “always avoid positive arguments.” Calling a theory “good” would be a positive argument.

As I say in #2065, Popperian epistemology has no room for ‘good’ or any other justification. I’m not aware that anyone has successfully proposed a way to measure the ‘hard-to-varyiness’ of theories anyway. We can criticize theories for being arbitrary (which is another word for ‘easy to vary’). That’d be fine. But Popper wouldn’t give them points for not being arbitrary. And arbitrariness isn’t the only type of criticism a theory might receive anyway.

If we follow Popper and get rid of justification, we can’t use ‘good vs bad’ because we can’t use ‘good’. The only dichotomy left standing is ‘has some bad’ vs ‘has no bad’. Another word for ‘pointing out some bad’ is ‘criticism’. So this dichotomy can be rephrased as: ‘has pending criticisms’ vs ‘has no pending criticisms’, or ‘has reasons to be rejected’ vs ‘has no reasons to be rejected’. Note that there’s a difference: if you think some idea is bad, you submit a criticism. If you think it’s good, you can still submit a criticism because it might not yet be as good as you want it to be. So regardless of how good a theory might be, it can still have pending criticisms, and thus reasons to reject it. Think of Newtonian physics, which (I’m told) is a superb theory, but it’s false and (as I understand it) has plenty of pending criticisms.

‘Has pending criticisms’ vs ‘has no pending criticisms’ is directly comparable whereas ‘good’ and ‘bad’ aren’t directly comparable. And ‘has n pending criticisms’ vs ‘has m’ or ‘has 0 pending criticisms’ are even numerically comparable.

Veritula does not implement Deutsch’s epistemology of good vs bad explanations. It implements Popper’s epistemology and TCS’s notion of unanimous consent.

(As an aside, I’m not sure how I could implement Deutsch’s epistemology even if I wanted to. Would I give each idea a slider where people can say how ‘good’ the idea is? What values would I give the slider? Would the worst value be -1,000 and the best +1,000? How would users know to assign 500 vs 550? Would a ‘weak’ criticism get a score of 500 and a ‘strong’ one 1,000? What if tomorrow somebody finds an even ‘stronger’ one, does that mean I’d need to extend the slider beyond 1,000? Do I include arbitrary decimal/real numbers? Is an idea’s score reduced by the sum of its criticisms’ scores? If an idea has score 0, what does that mean – undecided? If it has -500, does that mean I should reject it ‘more strongly’ than if it had only -100? And so on. Deutsch says you haven’t understood something if you can’t program it, and I don’t think he could program his epistemology.)

I think part of the problem is that I don’t have a dedicated final place where everything lives.

Yeah, it would be difficult getting a place ready only to leave it again soon. Your subconscious might be asking, ‘What’s the point?’

Maybe another way to state the same thing is that every object in a space should have a purpose. And that, once a purpose is defined for an object, the proper place for it falls out naturally from its purpose.

You (presumably) buy something to put in your home in order to solve some problem you couldn’t solve without it.

I noticed today that things in my shared spaces have better defined homes than the things in my private spaces, in the sense of #2840. ‘Relationship maintenance’ may only be a trivial factor compared to what I describe in #2840.

I’ll test giving everything in my private spaces a dedicated home. From there it should be easier to understand how important ‘relationship maintenance’ is as a factor in my unconscious and inexplicit motivations for tidying up.

#3014 fixes this. Implemented as of c3247d5.

For all ideas, the total number of pending criticisms (if any) should always be shown, even if they are not all being rendered. For filtered parents, I could put an asterisk behind the count. On hover, explain that some pending criticisms may be hidden due to filtering.

A Society Guided by Reason

The same logic explained in #2281 and #2844 applies to ideas across people as well. A free market or free society, by definition, is one where all interactions are based on unanimous consent.

One difference between the market and individuals is freedom of association. For example, when people disagree, they can just go their separate ways. But a single man cannot do that when parts of him disagree; a single man cannot dissociate from himself.

This difference does not change the overall desirability of unanimous consent both within and across minds. It’s an ‘implementation detail’.

As with #2098, implementing an accurate count of the number of shown criticisms gets very tricky once the user starts submitting new criticisms on filtered parents.

For filtered parents, I could put an asterisk behind the count. On hover, explain that the total number of pending criticisms may be greater on the unfiltered view.

For filtered parents, I could put an asterisk behind the count. On hover, explain that some pending criticisms may be hidden due to filtering.

For filtered parents, I could put an asterisk behind the count. On hover, explain that the total number of pending criticisms may be greater on the unfiltered view.

Still, the count is valuable in that it shows how many criticisms need to be addressed to restore an idea.

I could get rid of the count everywhere, even on unfiltered views. That would have the added benefit that users wouldn’t prefer one problematic idea over another just because it has fewer pending criticisms.

I could get rid of the count everywhere, even on unfiltered views.

The displayed criticism count for a filtered parent can differ from the number of displayed criticisms.

But users are expecting a count.

For any filtered parent, the criticism badge could be shown without a count.

For any filtered parent, the criticism badge could be shown without any count.

I have this working to the point that it shows n / m, but getting the counter to update properly when new criticisms are posted on filtered parents is surprisingly difficult – so difficult the juice may not be worth the squeeze.

Part of creating a living space that accommodates this would be making sure I have good furniture and that it is arranged well. I believe my current furniture is not sufficient.

I'm going to do some research on this. It might pay to make a quick 3d model of the spaces I wish to improve, so that I have something semi-tangible to play with before I start spending money on furniture.

I am realising that having a good taste for where things should live is a skill. For some things it is obvious, but some things require more knowledge and consideration to place appropriately.

It might pay to make sure I have excess spots that could be “homes” for things, in case I need to make significant changes to where things live, or in case I get more things. Thankfully IKEA is opening in Auckland in a few weeks 😁.

Extreme examples of solutions to this in professional contexts are shadow boards and shadow foam cutouts. Here, the users create a very clear visual correspondence between what an object is and where it belongs when not in use. I don’t expect the solution to my problem will involved drawing lines on walls or furniture, or creating foam cutouts, but there might be a hint of a solution in this.