Benjamin Davies
@benjamin-davies·Member since October 2025·Ideas
Activity
I think this is partly to do with the fact that Veritula has no clear way of indicating when a resolution has been reached or a problem has been solved.
For example, I am currently applying #2840, and it is working well. There is no obvious thing I should be doing in Veritula to note that. I would probably only bring it up again if it didn’t solve the problem in the end.
I noticed that you’ve started a bunch of discussions but I don’t believe you’ve reached a resolution on any of them.
I think this is partly to do with the fact that Veritula has no clear way of indicating when a resolution has been reached or a problem has been solved.
For example, I am currently applying #2840, and it is working well. There is no obvious thing I should be doing in Veritula to note that. I would probably only bring it up again if it didn’t solve the problem in the end.
#2902·Dennis HackethalOP, 3 months agoWould you like to try formulating an explicit methodology for using Veritula?
I noticed that you’ve started a bunch of discussions but I don’t believe you’ve reached a resolution on any of them.
I think this is partly to do with the fact that Veritula has no clear way of indicating when a resolution has been reached or a problem has been solved.
For example, I am currently applying #2840, and it is working well. There is no obvious thing I should be doing in Veritula to note that. I would probably only bring it up again if it didn’t solve the problem in the end.
#2908·Dennis HackethalOP, 3 months agoThis change is on purpose. The zoom feature was buggy. After zooming out far enough, the navbar and footer got cut off on the right. So I replaced it with proper scrolling.
Would you say zooming was indispensable or just nice to have?
It means that I have to scroll sideways to see the end of each line in a paragraph, which makes it more difficult to read ideas. It feels quite bad to use, compared to using Veritula on my computer, where the entire width of a paragraph is visible at all times.
A solution might be to adjust the mobile site dynamically to fit the user’s phone width.
Reflecting on one's past thought and action seems to be a key component of living a life 100% guided by reason. Thinking about this has inspired me to make an effort to search for methods and tools that help systematise, formalise and improve the quality self-reflection.
Reflecting on one's past thought and action seems to be a key component of living a life 100% guided by reason. Thinking about this has inspired me to make an effort to search for methods and tools that help systematise, formalise and improve the quality of my self-reflection.
#2897·Benjamin Davies, 3 months agoReflecting on one's past thought and action seems to be a key component of living a life 100% guided by reason. Thinking about this has inspired me to make an effort to search for methods and tools that help systematise, formalise and improve the quality self-reflection.
I already have a loose journalling habit, but it is completely free of schedule, structure or method.
Reflecting on one's past thought and action seems to be a key component of living a life 100% guided by reason. Thinking about this has inspired me to make an effort to search for methods and tools that help systematise, formalise and improve the quality self-reflection.
revising to account for criticisms
The Open Society
This is the political philosophy of Critical Rationalism, detailed by Karl Popper in The Open Society and Its Enemies. An open society is one in which each individual is largely enabled to make their own personal decisions, as opposed to a tribal or collectivist society. It replaces the justificationist political question, "Who should rule?", with the fallibilist question: "How can we structure our institutions so that we can remove bad rulers and bad policies without violence?". In this view, democracy is not "rule by the people" (an essentialist definition) but is valued as the only known institutional mechanism for error-correction and leadership change without bloodshed.
The Open Society
The concept of an 'Open Society' is central to the political philosophy of Critical Rationalism, detailed by Karl Popper in The Open Society and Its Enemies. An open society is characterized by individualism, where personal choice and responsibility are paramount, in contrast to a closed society (e.g., tribal or collectivist) which demands the subordination of the individual to the group. It replaces the justificationist political question, "Who should rule?", with the fallibilist question: "How can we structure our institutions so that we can remove bad rulers and bad policies without violence?". In this view, democracy is not "rule by the people" (an essentialist definition) but is valued as the only known institutional mechanism for error-correction and leadership change without bloodshed.
#2892·Dennis HackethalOP, 3 months agoThe purpose of the reaction would be to record a kind of agreement or acknowledgment.
That way, Veritula could show ‘pending’ criticisms to users, say – ‘pending’ in the sense that they haven’t responded to those criticisms. So in addition to revising or counter-criticizing, they get a chance to accept a criticism without it remaining in a ‘pending’ state.Posting arbitrary emojis doesn’t achieve that purpose.
This is a good idea.
I often receive criticisms that I have no counter-criticisms for, and it would be nice to be able to acknowledge those, both as a way to display gratitude, and as a way to indicate that I think something is tentatively settled.
#2889·Dennis HackethalOP, 3 months agoThere are a few reasons people might send criticisms instead of revising an idea themselves:
- You get a chance to disagree.
- Submitting a criticism is easier.
- A criticism is a written record explaining why a revision is necessary.
Because of the third reason, you may see people post a criticism and then immediately revise your idea to address it.
Maybe I’m wrong but I’m sensing a bit of frustration between the lines. Please note that Veritula pursues a higher standard of error correction than other platforms. Some criticisms may be unexpected; discussions could go in a direction you did not anticipate. You may receive criticisms that would be deemed nitpicky on other platforms, but they’re not meant to be. They may go beyond what’s strictly socially acceptable. I intend criticism to be a gift to you. For ‘small’ criticisms, it’s usually best to revise accordingly and not counter-criticize.
Your idea reads more like a question than a criticism. But since I’ve (hopefully) answered it, I’m marking this response a criticism to neutralize it.
Thank you for clarifying this. The idea of submitting a criticism and also immediately revising makes sense.
The criticisms you shared today (that inspired me to post #2884) are valid. This question came out of confusion as to how Veritula is intended to be used, rather than frustration directed at you.
Political Holism
Synonymous with large-scale social engineering, this is the political program that follows from Historicism. It is the attempt to remodel an entire society from a central blueprint, based on a historicist prophecy of an "ideal" state. Popper argued this program is both violent and irrational. It is violent because it requires the suppression of all dissent to enact the central plan, and it is irrational because when an entire system is changed at once, it becomes impossible to trace the consequences of any single action, making it impossible to learn from mistakes.
Political Holism
Synonymous with large-scale social engineering, this is the political program that follows from Historicism. It is the attempt to remodel an entire society from a central blueprint, based on a historicist prophecy of an "ideal" state. Popper argued this program is both violent and irrational. It is violent because it requires the suppression of all dissent to enact the central plan, and it is irrational because when an entire system is changed at once, it becomes impossible to trace the consequences of any single action, making it impossible to learn from mistakes.
#2771·Dennis HackethalOP, 3 months agoYes, see here: https://veritula.com/discussions/veritula-meta
Give it a shot.
This is no longer working for me.
I am currently unable to zoom out to the full width when accessing Veritula on mobile.
Since users are able to revise other users’ ideas, why is it standard practice on Veritula to submit trivial improvements to ideas (such as correction of typos, poor grammar and redundancies) as criticisms, rather than directly revising the idea itself? Example: #2865
Perhaps I have misunderstood the intention of enabling users to revise other people’s ideas.
Continuing on from #2882, would it make sense to enable users to criticise the discussion/entry/topic, such that it would render a criticism pill?
#2871·Dennis HackethalOP, 3 months agoI am struggling to understand what it means to criticise a discussion.
Top-level criticisms don’t criticize the discussion as a whole. They’re just criticisms of something. Anything. It depends on context.
For example, top-level criticisms in the Veritula – Meta discussion are often bug reports. So they’re criticisms of Veritula.
If ‘discussions’ take on a broader form, like we have discussed up to #2880, would this change? What if a user wishes to express that they take issue with something written in the entry/topic body text? I suppose they would quote it in their top-level criticism.
#2875·Dennis HackethalOP, 3 months ago… is there anything wrong with just titling a discussion 'Karl Popper' and then putting the equivalent of an encyclopedia article in the about section?
About sections are for context or background info, not content.
Given #2877, will this still be the case?
#2878·Dennis HackethalOP, 3 months agoI still think that Veritula already offers what you want – posting a single, top-level idea that is structured any way you like, to a new discussion whose title can be as open-ended as you like – but I’m sympathetic to your motivation.
Not every user is always interested in starting a discussion. Maybe they just want to put some information out there. And although others should still be able to discuss that information, criticism chains and all, that may not always be their primary motivation for posting the information in the first place.
So I’m open to replacing the word ‘discussion’ with a more general word. It should still communicate a sort of ‘grouping’ of ideas but need not be as narrow as ‘discussion’. Would that help?
ChatGPT suggestions:
Topic, thread, subject, space, entry, note / post / piece, context, cluster.
It’s also worth considering what each word would sound like in terms of UI elements. For example, ‘Start a new topic’, ‘Share a space’, etc.
So I’m open to replacing the word ‘discussion’ with a more general word. It should still communicate a sort of ‘grouping’ of ideas but need not be as narrow as ‘discussion’. Would that help?
Certainly. I think this makes a lot sense.
I think ‘entry’ is my favourite of the ones you mentioned (and of some others I explored with Gemini). ‘Topic’ is also alright, but seems more leading than ‘entry’. I like ‘entry’ because it seems the most agnostic to user intent, while also working fine with UI elements.
#2856·Benjamin Davies, 3 months agoSince discussions themselves are criticisable, is there anything wrong with just titling a discussion 'Karl Popper' and then putting the equivalent of an encyclopedia article in the about section? That is functionally identical to what an article would be, but I am interested if you would prefer discussions not be used that way.
Note: Discussions with outstanding top-level criticisms do not render a 'criticised' pill like ideas with outstanding criticisms do.
#2808·Dennis HackethalOP, 3 months agoIf I wanted to keep and share information on Karl Popper, it would be a lot more intuitive to produce an article on him in encyclopedia style—where I can present information in a hierarchy, rather than creating a discussion and then making each detail about him a top-level idea, which is more chaotic.
You already don’t have to do divvy it up like that. Nothing is stopping you from creating a discussion called ‘Karl Popper’ and then posting a single, long-form, top-level idea where you present information in a hierarchy.
Since discussions themselves are criticisable, is there anything wrong with just titling a discussion 'Karl Popper' and then putting the equivalent of an encyclopedia article in the about section? That is functionally identical to what an article would be, but I am interested if you would prefer discussions not be used that way.
#2775·Benjamin Davies, 3 months agoIf Veritula did implement articles, the first thing I’d want is the ability to criticize them; to submit deeply nested counter-criticisms; and to render a label showing how many pending criticisms an article has, calculated based on criticism chains.
I agree, and I think here you have inadvertently pointed at a key difference between discussions and articles. In terms of implementation, articles would be a near clone of discussions, except that the articles themselves can be criticised by users, including all the functionality that articles being criticisable may one day come with, like entire articles going dormant if they don’t answer criticisms within a certain period.
A couple of examples: If I wanted to keep and share information on Karl Popper, it would be a lot more intuitive to produce an article on him in encyclopedia style—where I can present information in a hierarchy, rather than creating a discussion and then making each detail about him a top-level idea, which is more chaotic. The same would be true if I wanted to make articles on CR terms—this doesn’t seem very natural to do in a Veritula discussion, but would be very natural in a series of Veritula articles, one for each term.
It also favours this articles idea that implementing it would be fairly straightforward, due to how much could be carried over from the discussions implementation. It makes it low cost to try.
I just realised that it is possible to publish a top-level idea as a 'criticism' in a discussion, in the way I have advocated an article would be criticisable. I am struggling to understand what it means to criticise a discussion. @dennis-hackethal may you please explain this?
#2746·Benjamin Davies, 3 months agoIt would be a waste of time to add features that don’t scale well.
This would work fine for discussion-specific or idea-specific activity feeds, even at scale.
I noticed that the idea count of some discussions in the Discussions page seem to be inaccurate. In the Keeping Tidy discussion, I count 13 ideas, including revisions, while the listing for it on Discussions says it contains 17.
improved clarity
Interview published today, with one of the founders of Wikipedia:
https://youtu.be/8-0vUZ0hTK4?si=Szd_nS4UvCy9Mifi
I agree with him on many of the problems he identifies, but he doesn’t come at it from a Popperian angle like I do. He argues, like I do, that Wikipedia should allow multiple competing articles on each topic.
Interview published today, with one of the founders of Wikipedia:
https://youtu.be/8-0vUZ0hTK4?si=Szd_nS4UvCy9Mifi
He argues, like I do, that Wikipedia should allow multiple competing articles on each topic.
I partly agree with him on other problems he identifies, but unfortunately he doesn’t come at it from a Popperian angle.