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I see the value in having quiet areas to think, I agree that it is important, but I at times find the quiet distracting. I sometimes work better in environments that have some level of noise, nothing like a club, more like a somewhat crowded cafe. So are you talking about “quieter” environments such as a cafe, or are you talking about complete silence in your observation?
https://veritula.com/activities/1808
Since the discussions starts with an idea, there should be a reply button.
When there are two links next to each other, like when it says “Dennis Hackethal revised” in the activity feed, the user needs some way to see that they’re two links and not just one. Underline on hover shows them that.
If I understand Veritula correctly, we first start with an idea. We accept that idea as true until it is criticized. The idea is considered problematic until all criticism is resolved. Since the goal is to live a rational life, we would seek to resolve the problems within the idea before we act on it. We don't submit bulk ideas or criticisms. Ideas (including criticisms), even if related, should generally be submitted separately. Also, avoid duplicate ideas.
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.
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
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.
What Does “Battle Tested” Mean?
One of @edwin-de-wit’s ideas recently got the blue label that says “battle tested” – well done, Edwin! – so he asked me what it means.
It means that the idea has at least three criticisms, all of which have been addressed.
The label is awarded automatically. It’s a tentative indicator of quality. Battle-tested ideas generally contain more knowledge than non-battle-tested ones.
When there are two conflicting ideas, each with no pending criticisms, go with the (more) battle-tested one. This methodology maps onto Popper’s notion of a critical preference.
The label is not an indicator of an idea’s future success, nor should it be considered a justification of an idea.
You can see all battle-tested ideas currently on Veritula on this page. Those are all the best, most knowledge-dense ideas on this site.
How Does Veritula Work?
Veritula (Latin for ‘a bit of truth’) provides an objective, partly automated way to tentatively determine whether a given idea is problematic.
It follows Karl Popper’s epistemology, which says that ideas are assumed true until refuted. This approach leaves us free to make bold conjectures and use the full arsenal at our disposal to criticize these conjectures in order to correct errors and seek truth. It’s a creative and critical approach.
Veritula is a programmatic implementation of Popper’s epistemology.
Consider an idea I:
I
Since it has no criticisms, I is considered unproblematic. It is rational to adopt it, tentatively consider it unproblematic, and act in accordance with it. Conversely, it would generally be irrational to reject it, consider it problematic, or act counter to it.
Next, someone submits a criticism C1:
I
|
C1
The idea I is now considered problematic so long as criticism C1 is not addressed. How do you address it? You can revise I so that C1 doesn’t apply anymore, which restores the previous state with just the standalone I (now called I2 to indicate the revision):
Revise
I ------------> I2
|
C1
To track changes, Veritula offers beautiful diffing and version control for ideas.
If you cannot think of a way to revise I, you can counter-criticize C1, thereby neutralizing it:
I
|
C1
|
C2
Now, I is considered unproblematic again, since C1 is problematic and thus can’t be a decisive criticism anymore.
If you can think of neither a revision of I nor counter-criticism to C1, your only option is to accept that I has been (tentatively) defeated. You should therefore abandon it, which means: stop acting in accordance with it, considering it to be unproblematic, etc.
Since there can be many criticisms (which are also just ideas) and deeply nested counter-criticisms, the result is a tree structure. For example, as a discussion progresses, one of its trees might look like this:
I
/ | \
C11 C12 C13
/ \ \
C21 C22 C23
/ \
C31 C32
In this tree, I is considered problematic. Although C11 has been neutralized by C21 and C22, C12 still needs to be addressed. In addition, C23 would have neutralized C13, but C31 and C32 make C23 problematic, so C13 makes I problematic as well.
But you don’t need to keep track of these relationships manually. Veritula marks ideas accordingly, automatically.
Because decision-making is a special case of, ie follows the same logic as, truth-seeking, such trees can be used for decision-making, too. When you’re planning your next move but can’t decide on a city, say, Veritula helps you criticize your ideas and make a decision. Again, it’s rational to act in accordance with ideas that have no pending criticisms.
All ideas, including criticisms, should be formulated as concisely as possible, and separate ideas should be submitted separately, even if they’re related. Otherwise, you run the risk of receiving ‘bulk’ criticisms, where a single criticism seems to apply to more content than it actually does.
Again, criticisms are also just ideas, so the same is true for criticisms. Submitting each criticism separately has the benefit of requiring the proponent of an idea to address each criticism individually, not in bulk. If he fails to address even a single criticism, the idea remains problematic and should be rejected.
The more you discuss a given topic, the deeper and wider the tree grows. Some criticisms can apply to multiple ideas in the tree, but that needs to be made explicit by submitting them repeatedly.
Ideas that are neither criticisms nor top-level conjectures – eg follow-up questions or neutral comments – are considered ancillary ideas. Unlike criticisms, they do not invert their respective parents’ statuses. They are neutral.
One of the main benefits of Veritula is that the status of any idea in a discussion can be seen at a glance. If you are new to a much-discussed topic, the rational course of action is to adopt the displayed status of the ideas involved: if they are marked problematic, reject them; if they are not, adopt them.
Therefore, Veritula acts as a dictionary for ideas.
One of the problems of our age is that the same discussions are had over and over again, sometimes by the same people. Part of the reason is widespread irrationality, expressed in the unwillingness to change one’s mind; another is that it’s simply difficult to remember or know what’s true and what isn’t. Discussion trees can get complex, so people shouldn’t blindly trust their judgment of whether some idea is true or problematic, whether nested criticisms have been neutralized or not. Going off of memory is too error prone.
Veritula solves this problem: it makes discussion trees explicit so you don’t have to remember each idea and its relation to other ideas. Veritula therefore also enables you to hold irrational people accountable: if an idea has pending criticisms, the rational approach is to either abandon it or to save it by revising it or addressing all pending criticisms.
Many people don’t like to concede an argument. But with Veritula, no concessions are necessary. The site just shows you who’s right.
Using Veritula, we may discover a bit of truth.
Limitations of Veritula
Veritula can help you discover a bit of truth.
It’s not guaranteed to do so. It doesn’t give you a formula for truth-seeking. There’s no guarantee that an idea with no pending criticisms won’t get a new criticism tomorrow. All ideas are tentative in nature. That’s not a limitation of Veritula per se but of epistemology generally (Karl Popper).
There are currently no safeguards against bad actors. For example, people can keep submitting arbitrary criticisms in rapid succession just to ‘save’ their pet ideas. There could be safeguards such as rate-limiting criticisms, but that encourages brigading, making sock-puppets, etc. That said, I think these problems are soluble.
Opposing viewpoints should be defined clearly and openly. Not doing so hinders truth-seeking and rationality (Ayn Rand).
Personal attacks poison rational discussions because they turn an open, objective, impartial truth-seeking process into a defensive mess. It shifts the topic of the discussion from the ideas themselves to the participants in a bad way. People are actually open to harsh criticism as long as their interlocutor shows concern for how it lands (Chris Voss). I may use ‘AI’ at some point to analyze the tone of an idea upon submission.
Veritula works best for conscientious people with an open mind – people who aren’t interested in defending their ideas but in correcting errors. That’s one of the reasons discussions shouldn’t get personal. Veritula can work to resolve conflicts between adversaries, but I think that’s much harder. Any situation where people argue to be right rather than to find truth is challenging. In those cases, it’s best if an independent third party uses Veritula on their behalf to adjudicate the conflict objectively.
Veritula only works for explicit ideas. If you have an inexplicit criticism of an idea, say, then Veritula can’t help with that until you’re able to write the criticism down, at which point it’s explicit. (The distinction between explicit vs inexplicit ideas goes back to David Deutsch. ‘Inexplicit’ means ‘not expressed in words or symbols’.)
How Does Veritula Work?
Veritula (Latin for ‘a bit of truth’) provides an objective, partly automated way to tentatively determine whether a given idea is problematic.
It follows Karl Popper’s epistemology, which says that ideas are assumed true until refuted. This approach leaves us free to make bold conjectures and use the full arsenal at our disposal to criticize these conjectures in order to correct errors and seek truth. It’s a creative and critical approach.
Veritula is a programmatic implementation of Popper’s epistemology.
Consider an idea I:
I
Since it has no criticisms, I is considered unproblematic. It is rational to adopt it, tentatively consider it unproblematic, and act in accordance with it. Conversely, it would generally be irrational to reject it, consider it problematic, or act counter to it.
Next, someone submits a criticism C1:
I
|
C1
The idea I is now considered problematic so long as criticism C1 is not addressed. How do you address it? You can revise I so that C1 doesn’t apply anymore, which restores the previous state with just the standalone I (now called I2 to indicate the revision):
Revise
I ------------> I2
|
C1
To track changes, Veritula offers beautiful diffing and version control for ideas.
If you cannot think of a way to revise I, you can counter-criticize C1, thereby neutralizing it:
I
|
C1
|
C2
Now, I is considered unproblematic again, since C1 is problematic and thus can’t be a decisive criticism anymore.
If you can think of neither a revision of I nor counter-criticism to C1, your only option is to accept that I has been (tentatively) defeated. You should therefore abandon it, which means: stop acting in accordance with it, considering it to be unproblematic, etc.
Since there can be many criticisms (which are also just ideas) and deeply nested counter-criticisms, the result is a tree structure. For example, as a discussion progresses, one of its trees might look like this:
I
/ | \
C11 C12 C13
/ \ \
C21 C22 C23
/ \
C31 C32
In this tree, I is considered problematic. Although C11 has been neutralized by C21 and C22, C12 still needs to be addressed. In addition, C23 would have neutralized C13, but C31 and C32 make C23 problematic, so C13 makes I problematic as well.
But you don’t need to keep track of these relationships manually. Veritula marks ideas accordingly, automatically.
Because decision-making is a special case of, ie follows the same logic as, truth-seeking, such trees can be used for decision-making, too. When you’re planning your next move but can’t decide on a city, say, Veritula helps you criticize your ideas and make a decision. Again, it’s rational to act in accordance with ideas that have no outstanding criticisms.
All ideas, including criticisms, should be formulated as concisely as possible, and separate ideas should be submitted separately, even if they’re related. Otherwise, you run the risk of receiving ‘bulk’ criticisms, where a single criticism seems to apply to more content than it actually does.
Again, criticisms are also just ideas, so the same is true for criticisms. Submitting each criticism separately has the benefit of requiring the proponent of an idea to address each criticism individually, not in bulk. If he fails to address even a single criticism, the idea remains problematic and should be rejected.
The more you discuss a given topic, the deeper and wider the tree grows. Some criticisms can apply to multiple ideas in the tree, but that needs to be made explicit by submitting them repeatedly.
Ideas that are neither criticisms nor top-level conjectures – eg follow-up questions or neutral comments – are considered ancillary ideas. Unlike criticisms, they do not invert their respective parents’ statuses. They are neutral.
One of the main benefits of Veritula is that the status of any idea in a discussion can be seen at a glance. If you are new to a much-discussed topic, the rational course of action is to adopt the displayed status of the ideas involved: if they are marked problematic, reject them; if they are not, adopt them.
Therefore, Veritula acts as a dictionary for ideas.
One of the problems of our age is that the same discussions are had over and over again, sometimes by the same people. Part of the reason is widespread irrationality, expressed in the unwillingness to change one’s mind; another is that it’s simply difficult to remember or know what’s true and what isn’t. Discussion trees can get complex, so people shouldn’t blindly trust their judgment of whether some idea is true or problematic, whether nested criticisms have been neutralized or not. Going off of memory is too error prone.
Veritula solves this problem: it makes discussion trees explicit so you don’t have to remember each idea and its relation to other ideas. Veritula therefore also enables you to hold irrational people accountable: if an idea has outstanding criticisms, the rational approach is to either abandon it or to save it by revising it or addressing all outstanding criticisms.
Many people don’t like to concede an argument. But with Veritula, no concessions are necessary. The site just shows you who’s right.
Using Veritula, we may discover a bit of truth.
How Does Veritula Work?
Veritula (Latin for ‘a bit of truth’) provides an objective, partly automated way to tentatively determine whether a given idea is problematic.
It follows Karl Popper’s epistemology, which says that ideas are assumed true until refuted. This approach leaves us free to make bold conjectures and use the full arsenal at our disposal to criticize these conjectures in order to correct errors and seek truth. It’s a creative and critical approach.
Veritula is a programmatic implementation of Popper’s epistemology.
Consider an idea I:
I
Since it has no criticisms, I is considered unproblematic. It is rational to adopt it, tentatively consider it unproblematic, and act in accordance with it. Conversely, it would generally be irrational to reject it, consider it problematic, or act counter to it.
Next, someone submits a criticism C1:
I
|
C1
The idea I is now considered problematic so long as criticism C1 is not addressed. How do you address it? You can revise I so that C1 doesn’t apply anymore, which restores the previous state with just the standalone I (now called I2 to indicate the revision):
Revise
I ------------> I2
|
C1
To track changes, Veritula offers beautiful diffing and version control for ideas.
If you cannot think of a way to revise I, you can counter-criticize C1, thereby neutralizing it:
I
|
C1
|
C2
Now, I is considered unproblematic again, since C1 is problematic and thus can’t be a decisive criticism anymore.
If you can think of neither a revision of I nor counter-criticism to C1, your only option is to accept that I has been (tentatively) defeated. You should therefore abandon it, which means: stop acting in accordance with it, considering it to be unproblematic, etc.
Since there can be many criticisms (which are also just ideas) and deeply nested counter-criticisms, the result is a tree structure. For example, as a discussion progresses, one of its tree might look like this:
I
/ | \
C11 C12 C13
/ \ \
C21 C22 C23
/ \
C31 C32
In this tree, I is considered problematic. Although C11 has been neutralized by C21 and C22, C12 still needs to be addressed. In addition, C23 would have neutralized C13, but C31 and C32 make C23 problematic, so C13 makes I problematic as well.
But you don’t need to keep track of these relationships manually. Veritula marks ideas accordingly, automatically.
Because decision-making is a special case of, ie follows the same logic as, truth-seeking, such trees can be used for decision-making, too. When you’re planning your next move but can’t decide on a city, say, Veritula helps you criticize your ideas and make a decision. Again, it’s rational to act in accordance with ideas that have no outstanding criticisms.
All ideas, including criticisms, should be formulated as concisely as possible, and separate ideas should be submitted separately, even if they’re related. Otherwise, you run the risk of receiving ‘bulk’ criticisms, where a single criticism seems to apply to more content than it actually does.
Again, criticisms are also just ideas, so the same is true for criticisms. Submitting each criticism separately has the benefit of requiring the proponent of an idea to address each criticism individually, not in bulk. If he fails to address even a single criticism, the idea remains problematic and should be rejected.
The more you discuss a given topic, the deeper and wider the tree grows. Some criticisms can apply to multiple ideas in the tree, but that needs to be made explicit by submitting them repeatedly.
Ideas that are neither criticisms nor top-level conjectures – eg follow-up questions or neutral comments – are considered ancillary ideas. Unlike criticisms, they do not invert their respective parents’ statuses. They are neutral.
One of the main benefits of Veritula is that the status of any idea in a discussion can be seen at a glance. If you are new to a much-discussed topic, the rational course of action is to adopt the displayed status of the ideas involved: if they are marked problematic, reject them; if they are not, adopt them.
Therefore, Veritula acts as a dictionary for ideas.
One of the problems of our age is that the same discussions are had over and over again, sometimes by the same people. Part of the reason is widespread irrationality, expressed in the unwillingness to change one’s mind; another is that it’s simply difficult to remember or know what’s true and what isn’t. Discussion trees can get complex, so people shouldn’t blindly trust their judgment of whether some idea is true or problematic, whether nested criticisms have been neutralized or not. Going off of memory is too error prone.
Veritula solves this problem: it makes discussion trees explicit so you don’t have to remember each idea and its relation to other ideas. Veritula therefore also enables you to hold irrational people accountable: if an idea has outstanding criticisms, the rational approach is to either abandon it or to save it by revising it or addressing all outstanding criticisms.
Many people don’t like to concede an argument. But with Veritula, no concessions are necessary. The site just shows you who’s right.
Using Veritula, we may discover a bit of truth.
The idea is considered false until all criticism is resolved.
It’s not necessarily considered false. It depends on the criticism.
A criticism pointing out a typo doesn’t necessarily make an idea false.
A criticism pointing out that an idea is arbitrary doesn’t necessarily make it false. For example, if an idea says ‘the laws of physics did it’ in response to a physics problem, that idea will be criticized as arbitrary even though it’s true.
Refutations mean an idea is false. A refutation explains why an idea must be false/cannot be true. Not all criticisms are refutations.
I suggest you revise #1935 to say that ideas with outstanding criticisms are considered problematic.
Fair enough. I’ve marked your idea as a criticism since I was wrong when I wrote “I don’t think you made this change on purpose. I’m guessing it was an error.”
I started with looking it up, whether to include the ‘s’ in ‘criticism’ to find that it didn’t matter much.
I started with looking it up, whether to include the ‘s’ in ‘criticism’ to find that it didn’t matter much.
… we wouldn't act in accordance with an idea that has outstanding criticism.
In #1926, I suggested changing it to “we wouldn't act in accordance with an idea that has outstanding criticisms”, plural. You changed it to singular “criticism”.
You presumably typed this passage manually instead of copy/pasting. I believe you previously stated a preference for manual typing so as to better process what you type.
I don’t think you made this change on purpose. I’m guessing it was an error.
If you’re going to type manually, you should double check to make sure it’s exactly the same, eg using cmd + f.
Or you could type it manually, then erase, then paste. Manual typing is error prone. Just copy/paste. Or maybe you did copy/paste but you didn’t include the ‘s’ in the selection. Either way, there are errors for you to correct here.
I’m not marking this a criticism because I think your change it still grammatically correct. I’m pointing out a potential source of future errors.
Can you give an example of a flawed idea you think is true and want to act on?
PS: You forgot to @mention me. Again, if you want me to get notified, check the section that says ‘Replying to’ above the textarea when you write the comment. If it doesn’t list me, @mention me.
Say you have an idea, that you take to be true, but at the same time, you understand that that idea has flaws, you haven't come up with a better idea yet, so you act based on this idea.
I guess that's where figuring that out before acting comes in.
If I understand Veritula correctly, we first start with an idea. We accept that idea as true until it is criticized. The idea is considered false until all criticism is resolved. Since the goal is to live a rational life, we wouldn't act in accordance with an idea that has outstanding criticism. We don't submit bulk ideas or criticisms. Ideas (including criticisms), even if related, should generally be submitted separately. Also, avoid duplicate ideas.
If I understand Veritula correctly, we first start with an idea. We accept that idea as true until it is criticized. The idea is considered false until all criticism is resolved. Since the goal is to live a rational life, we wouldn't act in accordance with that idea. We don't submit bulk ideas or criticisms. Ideas (including criticisms), even if related, should generally be submitted separately. Also, avoid duplicate ideas.
If I understand Veritula correctly, we first start with an idea. We accept that idea as true until it receives criticism. When it has received criticism and until all outstanding criticism is resolved, that idea is seen as false. Since the goal is to live a rational life, we wouldn't act in accordance with that idea. We don't submit bulk ideas or criticisms. Ideas (including criticisms), even if related, should generally be submitted separately. Also, avoid duplicate ideas.
Add hover effects to schemed buttons so there’s consistency with the existing hover effects for links.
I tried removing hover effects on links in dev and the user experience suffered as a result.
Especially for smaller links, like the hash links in idea headers, it’s nice getting that visual feedback that you are in fact hovering over the link and your click won’t miss it.