How Does Veritula Work?

I think we agree that the conjecturing and criticising of explanations is where the progress happens, and this choice you're saying people make at the end among conjectured theories is (relatively) mechanical. But I would also point out that trying to measure how HTV a theory is is as futile and scientistic as trying to measure moral worth. Yet it's still possible to have meaningful discussions about morality. I can't measure the moral value of murder but I can meaningfully argue it's worse than theft. So I think the claim that "if you can't program it you don't understand it" doesn't apply so universally as #3020 implies.

#5175​·​Liberty Fitz-Claridge, 6 days ago

It seems that you've taken the idea of hard to vary as saying that the process of choosing between competing theories is just about measuring how much of this trait they have. One clearly wouldn’t get better explanations from doing that, as it would just be a mechanical way of judging theories.

Yes, but as I understood Deutsch, this process of choosing happens after one has conjectured and criticized a bunch of explanations. I don’t think he suggests that the application of the HTV criterion makes theories better, only that we should use it to choose between explanations after they have been guessed and improved.

So the process of choosing between already existing explanations really is “just about measuring how much of this trait they have.”

#3924​·​Dennis HackethalOP, 7 months ago

I’ve formalized some of these ideas in my first paper, ‘The Structure of Rational Thought’.

https://www.academia.edu/170297518/The_Structure_of_Rational_Thought

#5083​·​Dennis HackethalOP, 21 days ago

should_adopt? and pending_criticisms are implemented in terms of each other. Doesn’t that cause an infinite regress?

#5116​·​Dennis HackethalOP, 10 days ago

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.

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ruby

def should_adopt? idea
  pending_criticisms(idea).none?
end

def pending_criticisms idea
  criticisms(idea).filter { |c| should_adopt?(c) }
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.

#5114​·​Dennis HackethalOP revised 10 days ago

if somebody suggests some system they can’t put into practice, then the system is no good.

Agreed. My point is that you can't refute a flaw by saying the flaw doesn't have a workable system to resolve it. "Your boat has a hole in it". "Yeah, well I don't have any way of fixing it". That doesn't resolve the criticism of the boat. If it's unfixable and a real flaw, you might just need a new boat.

#5096​·​Sam Cymbaluk, 15 days ago

if somebody suggests some system they can’t put into practice, then the system is no good.

Agreed. My point is that you can't refute a flaw by saying the flaw doesn't have a workable system to resolve it. "Your boat has a hole in it". "Yeah, well I don't have any way of fixing it". That doesn't resolve the criticism of the boat. If it's unfixable and a real flaw, you might just need a new boat.

#5096​·​Sam Cymbaluk, 15 days ago

if somebody suggests some system they can’t put into practice, then the system is no good.

Agreed. My point is that you can't refute a flaw by saying the flaw doesn't have a workable system to resolve it. "Your boat has a hole in it". "Yeah, well I don't have any way of fixing it". That doesn't resolve the criticism of the boat. If it's unfixable and a real flaw, you might just need a new boat.

#5096​·​Sam Cymbaluk, 15 days ago

Maybe I’m misunderstanding you, but if somebody suggests some system they can’t put into practice, then the system is no good.

#5094​·​Dennis HackethalOP, 15 days ago

Is rejecting an idea equivalent to adopting it's negation?

#5088​·​Sam Cymbaluk, 16 days ago

An inability to improve on the criticized aspect of a system is not a refutation of that criticism.

#5086​·​Sam Cymbaluk, 16 days ago

This approach does not specify how long you should spend coming up with criticisms before adopting it, therefore it cannot be put into action as stated. The delay must be nonzero otherwise, the fresh idea "you should ignore criticisms" would nullify the system.

#5085​·​Sam Cymbaluk, 16 days ago

But what if the idea that you should be suspicious of a large volume of criticism in a short time has pending criticism itself?

#5087​·​Sam Cymbaluk, 16 days ago

Rational Decision-Making

Expanding on #2112…

If an idea, as written, has no pending criticisms, it’s rational to adopt it and irrational to reject it. What reason could you have to reject it? If it has no pending criticisms, then either 1) no reasons to reject it (ie, criticisms) have been suggested or 2) all suggested reasons have been addressed already.

If an idea, as written, does have pending criticisms, it’s irrational to adopt it and rational to reject it – by reference to those criticisms. What reason could you have to ignore the pending criticisms and adopt it anyway?

Or, simplified:

It is rational to adopt only those ideas which, as written, don’t have pending criticisms, and to reject ideas that do.

#4902​·​Dennis HackethalOP revised 3 months ago

You’d know it’s a DDoS long before reviewing all the contents. That amount of criticism in a short time is suspicious, so you’d investigate for signs of coordination. Companies investigating actual DDoSes don’t need to review every single request to know they’re being DDoS’ed. And no otherwise reasonable person could blame them if a few good requests get dropped during their defense efforts.

#2182​·​Dennis HackethalOP revised 10 months ago

To incorporate some notion of decisiveness or severity, we need to be prepared to program that into our decision-making tool. I’m not aware that anyone knows how to programmatically determine the severity or decisiveness of a criticism, and I suspect outsourcing it to the user would result in the same unintended behavior we saw with the sliders for hard to vary.

#4711​·​Dennis HackethalOP, 4 months ago

Say the thought of adopting some idea with no criticisms bothers you. Then you can always try to be the first to suggest criticisms, which will then give you a rational reason not to adopt the idea. If instead you fail to come up with criticisms, why not adopt it?

#3028​·​Dennis HackethalOP revised 9 months ago

I’ve formalized some of these ideas in my first paper, ‘The Structure of Rational Thought’.

https://www.academia.edu/170297518/The_Structure_of_Rational_Thought

#5083​·​Dennis HackethalOP, 21 days ago

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.

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1. Popperian epistemology has some flaws, like verisimilitude, but Veritula doesn’t implement those.

#4471​·​Dennis HackethalOP revised 5 months ago

What reason could you have to ignore the pending criticisms and adopt [the criticized idea] anyway?

Maybe the criticisms aren’t decisive.

#2138​·​Dennis HackethalOP revised 10 months ago

What reason could you have to ignore the pending criticisms and adopt [the criticized idea] anyway?

Maybe the criticisms aren’t decisive.

#2138​·​Dennis HackethalOP revised 10 months ago

What reason could you have to ignore the pending criticisms and adopt [the criticized idea] anyway?

Maybe the criticisms aren’t decisive.

#2138​·​Dennis HackethalOP revised 10 months ago