Benjamin Davies
@davies·Joined Oct 2025·Ideas
A life aimed at infinity 🦉 🐚 🕯️ 🚀
#2114·Dennis HackethalOP, 10 months ago[Veritula] does not tell you what to think – it teaches you how to think.
If Veritula shows me whether an idea is problematic or not, and then expects me to adopt or reject the idea accordingly, how is that not telling me what to think?
Advocacy is not the same as telling people what to think.
#3049·Dennis HackethalOP revised 9 months agoHow 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 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.
Consider an idea
I:plaintextISince it has no criticisms, we tentatively consider
Iunproblematic. 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:plaintextI|C1The idea
Iis now considered problematic so long as criticismC1is not addressed. How do you address it? You can reviseIso thatC1doesn’t apply anymore, which restores the previous state with just the standaloneI(now calledI2to indicate the revision):plaintextReviseI ------------> I2|C1To track changes, Veritula offers beautiful diffing and version control for ideas.
If you cannot think of a way to revise
I, you can counter-criticizeC1, thereby neutralizing it with a new criticism,C2:plaintextI|C1|C2Now,
Iis considered unproblematic again, sinceC1is problematic and thus can’t be a decisive criticism anymore.If you can think of neither a revision of
Inor counter-criticism toC1, your only option is to accept thatIhas 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:
plaintextI/ | \C11 C12 C13/ \ \C21 C22 C23/ \C31 C32In this tree,
Iis considered problematic. AlthoughC11has been neutralized byC21andC22,C12still needs to be addressed. In addition,C23would have neutralizedC13, butC31andC32makeC23problematic, soC13makesIproblematic as well.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, you can use such trees for decision-making, 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.
Popperian epistemology has some flaws, like verisimilitude, but Veritula doesn’t implement those.
Because decision-making is a special case of, ie follows the same logic as, truth-seeking, you can use such trees for decision-making, too.
This sentence is difficult to follow. Could it be made simpler or broken up?
#2528·Dennis Hackethal, 10 months agoIt’s an understandable concern. I subscribe more to the insight from BoI chapter 10. Open societies inadvertently give their enemies more access than closed ones, but they also gain so much more knowledge and strength because of their openness that they can deal with their enemies better than if they were closed.
(I went back and forth on whether to label this as a criticism. I decided to do so but I want to be clear that it doesn’t mean I’m trying to tell you how to live your life.)
Is there a reason the analogy follows from open vs closed societies, to open vs closed people? A society is not a person.
Those who advocate making most/all drugs illegal tend to think alcohol should remain legal, despite alcohol having many of the same problems as drugs.
The purpose of the law isn’t to minimise negatives and maximise positives. The purpose of the law is to uphold the rights of people.
The purpose of the law isn’t to minimise negatives and maximise positives. The purpose of the law is to uphold the rights of people.
The purpose of the law isn’t to minimise negatives and maximise positives. The purpose of the law is to uphold the rights of people.
Legalising drugs will bring lawful competition to cartels and gangs, breaking geographical monopolies that perpetuate other (actual) criminal activity.
#4059·Benjamin DaviesOP, 6 months agoPeople on drugs violate the rights of others way more often.
If they violate rights they should be punished by the law, that applies regardless of if they take drugs or not.
#4058·Benjamin DaviesOP, 6 months agoAll drugs should be legal because people have a right to do what they want, as long as it isn’t violating the rights of others.
People on drugs violate the rights of others way more often.
Should drugs be legal?
All drugs should be legal because people have a right to do what they want, as long as it isn’t violating the rights of others.
This is not exactly true. The business still needs to produce something people want to buy, at a price they will accept. This is separate from competition.
Another way to say that is: all businesses are in competition with all others at the broadest level.
If you liked Snickers bars, but they suddenly 5x in price, it isn’t necessarily true that you will buy a different chocolate bar. You might go to the bakery instead, or use that money to put a little more fuel in your car.
This is not exactly true. The business still needs to produce something people want to buy, at a price they will accept. This is separate from competition.
Another way to say that is: all businesses are in competition with all others at the broadest level.
If you like Snickers bars, but they suddenly 5x in price, it isn’t necessarily true that you will buy a different chocolate bar. You might go to the bakery instead, or use that money to put a little more fuel in your car.
#3991·Zelalem Mekonnen revised 6 months agoCan shorting be a mechanism of error correction?
I've also noticed incumbent advantage in business. Unless a competitor offers a better product, a company can be as corrupt and lazy as possible.
This is not exactly true. The business still needs to produce something people want to buy, at a price they will accept. This is separate from competition.
Another way to say that is: all businesses are in competition with all others at the broadest level.
If you liked Snickers bars, but they suddenly 5x in price, it isn’t necessarily true that you will buy a different chocolate bar. You might go to the bakery instead, or use that money to put a little more fuel in your car.
#4006·Edwin de WitOP, 6 months agoI could indeed have been clearer. The point isn’t that using creativity to re-establish direction is the distinguishing feature. The distinction is the method of conflict resolution.
In a non-coercive, rational resolution, you take the distraction or impulse seriously, examine its content, and form a theory of what problem it’s signaling. Then you conjecture candidate solutions and select one to try. A common solution is to acknowledge the distraction and explicitly schedule it for later, which removes the unfinished business feeling it creates in the moment. Direction returns because the conflict got resolved.
In self-coercion, the method is irrational and coercive: you don’t examine the content of the distraction at all. You steamroll it or swat it away. You may regain direction, but the underlying problem remains unresolved.
Both methods cost creativity, but the coercive one causes more downstream problems (maybe even suffering), which then requires further creative expenditure to be resolved in the future.
Thank you, I think that is an important clarification.
There is overlap but I don’t think that is necessarily a bad thing. Many virtues overlap. The purpose of identifying them is to draw focus to different aspects of virtuous as such. Conscientiousness and thoroughness are quite similar, but I think different enough to merit mentioning both.
Excellence and pride are more similar IMO, but I think that it is fine to feature both.
There is overlap but I don’t think that is necessarily a bad thing. Many virtues overlap. The purpose of identifying them is to draw focus to different aspects of virtues as such. Conscientiousness and thoroughness are quite similar, but I think different enough to merit mentioning both.
Excellence and pride are more similar IMO, but I think that it is fine to feature both.
Bounties should be clear about what currency they are being paid out in.
#3970·Zelalem MekonnenOP revised 7 months ago"Man simply invented God in order not to kill himself, that is the summary of universal history down to the moment."
Dostoevsky
Why haven't all atheists killed themselves?
#3966·Zelalem Mekonnen, 7 months agoIs shorting be a mechanism of error correction?
I've also noticed incumbent advantage in business. Unless a competitor offers a better product, a company can be as corrupt and evil as possible.
Being as evil as possible would include things like murdering people. I don't think businesses can get away with murdering people just because they don't have viable competitors.
If a business gets away with murdering people, it is usually for other reasons, like creating coverups or lobbying politicians.
#3966·Zelalem Mekonnen, 7 months agoIs shorting be a mechanism of error correction?
I've also noticed incumbent advantage in business. Unless a competitor offers a better product, a company can be as corrupt and evil as possible.
I think it is an error to short stocks in most situations.
It might be an error correcting mechanism at the level of the market, but that is not what I am talking about when I say I don't like shorting. This discussion is specifically about making money in the markets.
#3972·Dennis Hackethal, 7 months ago…often they are dealing with larger sums of money, which can make it harder to make higher returns…
Why is it harder to make higher returns for larger sums?
Dealing in larger sums means you have to make big trades to building meaningful positions. Moving large money in, around, and out of the market takes time and needs to be done carefully (so that the price doesn't get away from you). Small investors can build proportionally large positions much easier.
It is like piloting an oil tanker vs a speed boat.
#3972·Dennis Hackethal, 7 months ago…often they are dealing with larger sums of money, which can make it harder to make higher returns…
Why is it harder to make higher returns for larger sums?
Dealing with larger sums of money narrows your investable universe.
As an example, Berkshire Hathaway has an investable universe of only a few hundred companies. Everything else is too small to move the needle for them.
There are many great opportunities available only to smaller investors.
#3967·Zelalem Mekonnen, 7 months agoBecause these barriers exist, the company does not have to constantly reinvent its core model to survive.
This sentence makes an opposite point if it stopped at "does not have to constantly reinvent," meaning economic moat is slowing down error correction.
Do you mean error correction within the company or at the level of the economy?
#3965·Zelalem Mekonnen, 7 months agoMarkets are also mostly based on knowledge from the outside. If you invest based on internal knowledge, that will be called insider trading (not making a moral judgement whether insider trading is good or bad).
Yes, but I think it is largely the interpretation of information that matters.
Different people respond very differently to the same information.
An economic moat is a structural barrier that allows a business to resist the natural forces of competition. In a standard market, high profits act as a signal for other companies to enter, replicate products, and drive prices down—a process that eventually erodes a company's ability to generate wealth. A moat interrupts this cycle by making it difficult or expensive for competitors to take market share, enabling the business to perpetuate its earnings and survive far into the future.Because these barriers exist, the company does not have to constantly reinvent its core model to survive. Instead, it can rely on its established position to maintain a steady output of value. This structural durability makes the business's long-term trajectory more stable and less prone to the sudden decay that typical firms face when a new rival appears.
One of the most enduring forms of a moat is Brand Power, where a name creates such high consumer trust or habit that people are unwilling to switch to a cheaper alternative. Coca-Cola provides a classic example of this; it has spent over a century building a brand that occupies a unique "real estate" in the consumer's mind, allowing it to sell what is essentially a commodity with much higher margins than generic competitors. Similarly, Scale and Cost Advantages occur when a company grows so large that it can deliver services at a cost that smaller rivals simply cannot match. Amazon utilises its massive logistics network and volume to offer prices and delivery speeds that would be financially ruinous for a smaller retailer to attempt.
Other businesses perpetuate themselves through Network Effects, where a service becomes more valuable as more people use it. Instagram is a prime example of this dynamic; the platform's primary value to a user is the presence of their friends and family, which means a new competitor cannot simply offer a better interface to win—they would need to move the entire social circle simultaneously. This is often paired with High Switching Costs, which make it too painful for a customer to move to a competitor. Apple provides a masterclass in this with its "walled garden," an ecosystem where its hardware, software, and services (like iMessage, iCloud, and the App Store) are designed to work harmoniously together but intentionally difficult to use with outside devices. Once a user has invested in the apps, storage, and accessories within this garden, the cost of leaving—not just in money, but in time and frustration—creates a barrier that preserves the company's customer base. Each of these moats serves to insulate the business from the "mean reversion" that typically forces profits toward zero, making the long-term outcome of the business more a matter of its internal nature than of market dynamics.