Search Ideas

The rules aren’t clear about whether changes can apply retroactively.

If actual notice is the intended threshold, should an occurrence count only after the person has been shown the particular idea and its pending criticism?

I think that’s included (#5508), but it’s probably better in any case to refer to some standard of reasonableness: given the user’s and the mod’s actions, would an otherwise reasonable person agree that the user should have acted differently.

There’s a risk in being more specific about these conditions because it encourages trolls and other bad actors to look for loopholes. Whereas a standard of reasonableness encourages people to be good actors instead.

The proposal itself only says “when they should know better”.

It doesn’t only say that. It also says “If it happens twice, it may warrant a warning.” Meaning by that time, a mod will have talked to them. And: “They could run a bounty that will charge their card a small but non-negligible amount if they don’t address a criticism.” They wouldn’t know to run a bounty unless a mod told them to.

What must someone have been told and understood before they count as someone who “should know better”?

I don’t know if this can be fully defined ahead of time. Someone new to V would naturally be given more leeway. Over time, if they need to be told again and again but make no or little progress, and if they conveniently keep forgetting how V works to save their pet ideas, then it wouldn’t be unreasonable for a mod to conclude they’re not all that interested in rationality. I don’t know if the specific circumstances under which that might happen can be predicted.

But as a hypothetical example: a member of V is pointed repeatedly to the state of the discussion around HTV, say. Then they go on X to talk about how great HTV is. When asked about this, they ‘forgot’ HTV had pending criticisms. They promise to look into it. But they ‘forget’ again and the same behavior repeats. That’s basically lying at that point.

If it happens repeatedly, mods could ask for some evidence that the person has at least tried to make the criticism explicit. If the person can’t even remember the previous outcome of a discussion, then clearly they have not. Or they could show some public record of them acting the way #5482 asks them to: that they’ve linked to the objective state of the discussion while voicing personal disagreement.

This proposal would count that person as rejecting an idea without pending criticisms.

Only superficially, since a mod could just ask them about it. They can then voice that they have an inexplicit criticism.

I reply:

The purpose of demarcation was to delineate science from non-science. That’s different from a criterion of rationality.

For such a criterion, Popper proposes measures of corroboration and verisimilitude. And he get pretty technical in defining those.

I reply:

The task would actually be *harder* to program if we constrained it to work only for some ideas and not others.

I reply:

Rational decision-making (involving HTV or not) is a computational task. We can’t claim to have understood such a task unless we’ve programmed it.

I reply:

Because it’s better for error correction. If you want your life to be a beginning of infinity, if you want to make sustained progress, you need to be rational. To be rational, you need to be able to tell when you’re being irrational. So you need a criterion of rationality. The more inputs it works for, the better. Universal is best.

Like most people, he’s confused about the purpose of HTV. My blog post linked in #3069 already explains.

That’s why I said it’s fine to prompt the user for creative input if necessary, within reason. #5439

This new proposal would punish irrationality itself…

The purpose of the rule wouldn’t be to punish anyone but to protect our time, associate with good people, and keep our ability to make progress.

There’s a better Popper quote on https://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/cross-check/the-paradox-of-karl-popper/

Should it have been submitted as a criticism of #4460?

I don’t think so, no, since it reads more like a suggestion/extension than anything wrong with #4460.

(Have I misunderstood that part of #4460?)

Slightly, yes. I had in mind a scenario where someone violates a rule and then submits a criticism of #4460 so he can claim to have disabled it with a pending criticism. As in: people can’t conveniently criticize #4460 only because they have reason to personally take issue with it.

A new rule could help set expectations. I don’t think the general public would view repeatedly forgetting the outcome of a discussion as bad faith, for example.

I think this is already covered by #5460:

… sometimes we have a nagging feeling that something about the outcome of a discussion just isn’t quite right, but we can’t put our finger on it. In such a situation, when asked about one’s stance, it’s rational to say something like: ‘Although I personally disagree, at the current state of the discussion, idea X (link to the idea on V) is (or is not) rationally adoptable.’

I don’t see a clash here. Being irrational is anyone’s prerogative. It’s also others’ prerogative to avoid them as a result.

Fair point, I’ve revised #2201.

Make a reasonable effort to make the criticism explicit so it can be brought into direct conflict with the parent idea and examined further. In the meantime, do consider it a pending criticism and don’t act on the parent idea.

You can also submit a placeholder criticism saying something like ‘I have an inexplicit criticism of this idea.’ (Unless such a criticism would block others from adopting the idea – do this only in, say, discussions about personal matters, private discussions, or discussions about matters of taste.)

You can also submit a placeholder criticism saying something like ‘I have an inexplicit criticism of this idea.’

But then that would block everyone else from adopting the idea. See #5465.

No, they don’t need to look up every single idea beforehand. The kind of scenario I have in mind is more like recent discussions on X. Say you send someone links to resources that already address their argument preemptively. But then you can tell they flat out ignore those resources because next they ask questions or raise objections those resources already address as well. And they do this repeatedly. At some point it’s just patently irrational and no productive discussion is possible.

Long term, I do want to create a culture where people get in the habit of looking up the state of a discussion on V the same way they’d look up the meaning of a word in a dictionary. Users who’ve been told that can be held to that standard.

But even someone new to V should know to look up the state of a discussion they themself have participated in.

I want to improve the search function for independent reasons. (Though I just tried it and found results for three out of four sample topics, which should be enough to tip somebody off that something may have been discussed before.)

If somebody were to make a convincing case that they wouldn’t have started a duplicate discussion if it weren’t for a subpar search feature, I’d let that slide. But if it happened repeatedly, even after you point them to the ideas directly or explain how the search feature works, then that wouldn’t be good enough.

Dirk replies to a bunch more points Brett has made. I won’t get into them, at least not for now. Brett’s previous arguments have too many pending criticisms, and he ignores them, so tracking additional points won’t help. Brett isn’t in truth-seeking mode, he’s in defend-Deutsch mode. If I see Brett addressing any pending criticisms on X after all, I’ll update V accordingly.

I think that was the intention behind it, but its effect has been the opposite, to an extent. Hand-wavy referrals to explanations being HTV and rationality being synonymous with creativity, without explaining in detail how these things work, turn them into a black box that may as well work magically to give us the answers we want.

Being rational requires a criterion of rationality that is clear and precise enough so you know when you stray from it. HTV isn’t.