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He says it isn’t vague but then never gets specific about how to tell how hard to vary an explanation is or how to compare explanations this way. Instead, he mistakenly claims that isn’t the purpose of BoI, contrary to the evidence presented to him.

I reply that the actual explanation is that people who make progress participate in a tradition of criticism. They’re critical of ideas and try to address all (or almost all) known criticisms. That process may lead to ideas having the feature Brett calls hard to vary, but it’s strictly an effect of that critical activity, not its means.

I had previously linked Brett to my blog post containing that explanation. He liked that reply at the time so he’s definitely seen it, but he’s still ignoring it.

By saying HTV is central to progress, Brett contradicts his previous claim (#5355) that HTV is just a feature of explanations.

Brett’s response basically ignores existing criticisms and sounds like he’s lecturing people who haven’t read Deutsch or Popper. He’s forgotten that I’ve already corrected him on several misattributions of his to Popper and his misinterpretation of BoI re preference formation.

Dirk replies that he “called "glorpiness" bullshit, not HTV” nor Popper. Brett completely missed the point of Dirk’s argument.

Dirk replies that the bounty doesn’t ask for essentialist definitions. It instead asks for clarity around how to actually use HTV:

Rejecting essentialism doesn't grant your ideas immunity from clarification. Being vague is not something to be proud of.

By your standard, I could invent any bullshit property of explanations, call it "glorpiness" and when you ask what it means, reply that definitions miss the point.

I reply:

The UI can show a *tentative* result. The result can change with more user input. All input remains criticizable.

The UI can show a *tentative* result. The result can change with more user input. All input remains criticizable. Again, I’m not looking for a criterion of truth or some guarantee of infallibility, which I know can’t exist. I’m looking for a criterion of rationality, which I know can: https://x.com/dchackethal/status/2091272979791659054

The word “again” refers to my previous remarks about fallibility here.

I reply that “prompting users for creative input (within reason) would be fine, as the bounty states.”

I reply that “Variations are routinely programmed in genetic programming, no genuine creativity required.”

Well, no, people do conjecture variations, and so could use HTV themselves, though maybe not program a computer to do it for them.

More on the difference between a criterion of rationality and the demand for infallibility: #5336

They’re confused about what BoI actually says about HTV. It says HTV is central to the enlightenment and all rationality, that people use it systematically, that we should choose between explanations based on how hard to vary they are, and so on. According to BoI, HTV is not just another mode of criticism. It’s the central mode explaining progress.

As I say here, I’m personally on board with adopting a weaker form of HTV (or really ETV) where we only treat it as one mode of criticism among many and reject explanations if they have arbitrary components. But again, that’s not what BoI says. The bounty is about taking BoI seriously and rehabilitating HTV as presented there.

I also reply that “Since a fully programmed replacement for HTV already exists that meets all these conditions [mentioned in #5428], I’m not sure it’d be fair to hold HTV to a lesser standard.”

I reply:

The word “reliably” refers to the claim in BoI that ppl search for HTV explanations “systematically”; that they follow some yet-to-be-specified system to form preferences this way.

The system/program, being man-made, would of course be fallible. Still, since BoI says HTV is at the heart of all rational endeavors, the system must be universal. Hence the requirement for any pair.

I also reply that it needs to rank any pair, not every pair.

Why should HTV need to algorithmically rank every pair of explanations to be meaningful?

Because, per BoI, we can’t claim to have understood a computational task if we can’t program it. The formation of rational preferences is a computational task. I say this in my reply.

Not a mathematician but AFAIK, Hilbert basically asked if we could make a machine that answers every math question correctly. The answer to that is ‘no’. But an algorithm for rational decision-making isn’t about that.

I point out that he and I have already discussed that. He has so far ignored the tentative outcome of that discussion, which leaves my stance with zero pending criticisms and his with five (at the time of writing), see #5340.

Related: #5354 and comments.

I don’t care whether people agree with me about this. I care about what’s true, what the ideas imply, as written. Ironically, chapter 1 also says theories can have implications their authors did not intend or may not like (p. 27):

What if you’d rather not know? You may not like these predictions.
Your friends and colleagues may ridicule them. You may try to modify
the explanation so that it will not make them… You will fail.

Citation needed. You of all people should know to cite since you hate when others cite from memory. Don’t be a hypocrite.

I reply:

BoI is full of remarks about preference formation. Doing word searches for “choose between” and “rival explanation”, we can find, for example:

“… we should choose between [policies or theories] not on the basis of their origin, but according to how good they are as explanations: how hard to vary.” (209)

“… how does the ‘dictator’ itself choose between rival explanations …?” (341)

“[The] main use [of experience] is to choose between theories that have already been guessed.” (4)

“The role of experiment and observation is to choose between existing theories…” (32)

I later found more evidence running a word search for the string ‘prefer’:

“Whenever a wide range of variant theories can account equally well for the phenomenon they are trying to explain, there is no reason to prefer one of them over the others, so advocating a particular one in preference to the others is irrational.” (21, emphasis mine)

And chapter 13 is virtually all about forming rational preferences.

Then there’s TCS common-preference finding…

Ben explored and addressed this criticism in more detail, see #5382.

I reply that “Not all programs prompt users for input at runtime”

This is addressed in section 5 of Dennis' paper: The Structure of Rational Thought.

‘How can we rationally proceed when all known ideas have pending criticisms?’
By treating ideas as immutable and discrete, even if content overlaps. For example, as a description of reality, general relativity has pending criticisms. But there are no serious contenders. Instead, take the idea: ‘Although GR has pending criticisms as a true description of reality, it’s an excellent approximation, makes precise predictions, and powers technology such as GPS. So we keep using it until we find a replacement.’ As written, this idea has no pending criticisms, so its advocacy is rational.