Search Ideas

Users can now pick a custom @username.

I just changed mine to @dennis.hackethal. (Period instead of hyphen.) Old profile links are automatically redirected. Old @mentions are automatically updated.

@usernames used to be assigned automatically based on a user’s first and last name. Now, users have more choice.

To change your @username, go to Settings.

I did some e-sleuthing around this thought and found On Creativity - The joys of 5 minute timers by Neel Nanda. …

My favourite part of the article is this:

I noticed a slight inconsistency here. You give exact links for each quote (by “exact” I mean links to highlighted passages) except this one, where you link to the article as a whole. If you turn the word “part” into a link to the passage, you’ll have perfect quoting consistency.

Here’s the exact link: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/FHiM34PmrN224pqTz/on-creativity-the-joys-of-5-minute-timers#:~:text=Set%20a%205%20minute%20timer%2C%20and,5%20minute%20brainstorm%20for%20anything%20left.

It’s nice that you give exact links. Makes verification easier for readers.

There is, in the comments.

But there’s no indication that the current version has been superseded.

…the site should let [visitors] know if there is a superseding revised version of [an idea].

There are arrow buttons linking to the previous and next version, and the UI says which version you’re currently looking at.

I first want to see some more people posting to their profiles so there’ll be enough ideas to show in that tab.

Valid, done.

Both ideas are about working toward a universal theory of creation by studying parallels between mind and economy.

Somebody on Twitter wrote, addressing old-school programmers in the context of vibe coding, “Your once exclusive access just got democratized.”

I wonder if that’s the same or at least analogous to minds error correcting some skill to the point they automatize it.

In both cases, access to knowledge becomes cheap and fast.

Let me know what you think about all this.

One of my colleagues at Apple was an incredibly competent veteran engineer whom I respected a lot. One of the things he taught me was to not always go with my first instinct, but to come up with several solutions to a problem and seeing which one is best. (Looking back and putting it in Veritula terms, I’d rephrase it as: which one survives all criticism. I think in practice, that’s what he did, too.) So your post resonates with me.

Many of my choices are kind of uncreative—I simply do the first thing that pops into my mind …

This approach isn’t necessarily bad, though. I think it depends on whether you already have a considered opinion on a matter. Sometimes, you might do the first thing that pops into your mind because it’s the result of many rounds of previous error correction from similar situations, and you’ve automatized the solution. Then I think it’s fine.

But don't let impatience cause you to reduce the number of minutes you go with—the best ideas often come when we are getting bored or feeling a little friction.

That sounds like it could be a bit self-coercive at times.

Some of those ideas would suck, but some of them would probably be a lot more useful and interesting than whatever I would’ve done otherwise that week if I didn’t spend 5 minutes exclusively thinking about it.

Should it say ‘hadn’t spent’ rather than “didn’t spend”? Or ‘would do … if I didn’t’.

I also found Nate Soares blogposts talking about using this approach (I’m guessing the Neel Nanda article was at least partly inspired by Nate Soares):

In 'Obvious advice', Nate Soares writes:

You have two consecutive colons there. Maybe you meant to merge those two parts?

Fixed as of 9ea99f9.

Should be fixed as of 9ea99f9 but let me know if you’re still having issues.

Done as of af4e814. There’s now a default wall tab and an activity tab. The wall only shows posts made specifically to the profile. That means posts by the user and others to that profile, and the user’s reposts from anywhere. Version chains are collapsed into the most recent version.

Using https://haptics.lochie.me/ by lochie, mobile devices now give haptic error feedback when exceeding the limit.

I love obsessing over small details like this one.

Nice bio:

A life aimed at infinity 🦉 🐚 🕯️ 🚀

I’m guessing:

🦉 = wisdom
🕯️ = enlightenment
🚀 = progress

But I wonder what the seashell means… 🤔

… the posts are lost amongst the other user activity.

To be clear, when you say “posts”, you mean specifically ideas the user posted only to their profile, outside of discussions?

What about reposts from discussions?

Can there be such a thing as too much fun?
Can there be such a thing as too much profit?

In both cases, I think ‘no’. And I wonder if the fear of ‘too much’ fun and ‘too much’ profit is fundamentally the same thing.

Like, when parents worry that their kids are having too much fun, and when socialists are suspicious of companies turning a profit… is that an expression of the same fear?

Maybe the role of profit in the economy is the same as that of fun in a single mind: it signals successful discovery of common preferences.

One small improvement I’m especially proud of is the new character counter for the user bio. When the bio gets too long, the counter turns red and wiggles (bottom right):

How Does Veritula Work?

Veritula (Latin for ‘a bit of truth’) can help you live a life guided exclusively by reason.

To reason, within any well-defined epistemology, means to follow and apply that epistemology. Unreason, or whim, is an undue departure from it. Epistemology is the study of knowledge – basically, the study of what helps knowledge grow, what hinders its growth, and related questions.

Veritula follows, and helps you apply, Karl Popper’s epistemology, Critical Rationalism. It’s a continuation of the Athenian tradition of criticism and the only known epistemology without major flaws.¹

Critical Rationalism says that ideas are assumed true until refuted. This approach leaves us free to make bold guesses and use the full arsenal at our disposal to criticize these guesses in order to solve problems, correct errors, and seek truth. It’s a creative and critical approach. Critical Rationalism is a fallibilist philosophy: there is no criterion of truth to determine with certainty whether some idea is true or false. We all make mistakes, and by an effort, we can correct them to get a little closer to the truth. Rejecting all forms of mysticism and the supernatural, Veritula recognizes that progress is both possible and desirable, and that rational means are the only way to make ongoing progress.

Veritula is a programmatic implementation of Popper’s epistemology.

Veritula provides an objective, partly automated way to tentatively determine whether a given idea is problematic. It does not tell you what to think – it teaches you how to think.

On Veritula, ideas are discrete and immutable. Consider an idea I:

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              I

Since it has no criticisms, we tentatively consider I unproblematic. It is rational to adopt it and act in accordance with it. Conversely, it would be irrational to reject it, consider it problematic, or act counter to it. (See #2281 for more details on rational decision-making.)

Next, someone submits a criticism C1:

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              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):

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                   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 with a new criticism, C2:

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              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:

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              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.

You don’t need to keep track of these relationships manually. Veritula automatically marks ideas accordingly.

Since decision-making follows the same logic as truth-seeking, you can use these trees to make decisions, too. Veritula implements unanimous consent as defined by Taking Children Seriously, a parenting philosophy that builds on Popper’s epistemology. When you’re planning your next move but can’t decide on a city, say, Veritula helps you criticize your ideas and make a rational decision – meaning a decision you’ll be happy with. 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.

Comments that aren’t criticisms – eg follow-up questions or otherwise neutral comments – are considered ancillary ideas. Unlike criticisms, ancillary ideas 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, 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 people have same discussions over and over again. 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.

This was a big week for Veritula. Users can now:

• ✍️ Post ideas to their own profile, and others’ profiles, outside of discussions. (Beta)
• 🔄 Repost ideas.
• 🙋‍♂️ Set a profile description under Settings. Tell others about yourself!
• 💻 Embed discussions on third-party sites. Similar feature to Disqus and Giscus. Ideal for comments on blogs, say. See the embed code under Settings. (Early beta)
• 🌉 Show images while preserving viewers’ privacy.¹

This was a big week for Veritula. Users can now:

• ✍️ Post ideas to their own profile, and others’ profiles, outside of discussions. (Beta)
• 🔄 Repost ideas.
• 🙋‍♂️ Set a profile description under Settings. Tell others about yourself!
• 💻 Embed discussions on third-party sites. Similar feature to Disqus and Giscus. Ideal for comments on blogs, say. See the embed code under Settings. (Early beta)
• 🌉 Show images while preserving viewers’ privacy.¹

Embed discussions on third-party sites.

Dirk is already rocking an embedded discussion on his blog: https://www.dirkswebsite.nl/blog/bedrock/