Search Ideas

In #5555, you say that adding an arbitrary component to an explanation makes it worse. Consider these two explanations of winter:

A: Winter happens because a god repeats a spell seven times.

B: Winter happens because a god repeats a spell seven times, and the spell only works if the god wears a red hat.

Suppose neither story explains why the number must be seven. We could substitute eight, nine, or any other positive whole number while the story still accounts for winter. In B, we could also change the required hat colour without affecting its ability to account for winter.

Both explanations therefore have infinitely many working variations. Your program declares them equally hard to vary.

But B has an additional arbitrary requirement: the hat colour. It is explicitly part of the supposed mechanism, not an unrelated detail added to the wording.

Removing that requirement removes an arbitrary part of the explanation. Yet your program cannot register the improvement, because the variation count remains infinite.

The proposal does not say whether conduct from before the rule is adopted can count as an offence for existing members. Without a prospective effective date, members could be warned or banned for conduct that was not covered by this rule when it occurred.

The proposal should require the statement and claimed match to be recorded and open to criticism before they can support a warning.

Veritula’s rule applies to an idea “as written”. An off-platform statement may be different because of its wording or context. How would a moderator decide that it is the same idea as a particular Veritula post?

The wrapper provides no immunity. If X’s flaw defeats the proposed use, that flaw can criticise the new policy too. ‘This bridge design collapses, but keep using it’ is criticised by the danger of collapse. Therefore, not almost any criticised idea becomes adoptable this way.

This does not identify an error in #5387. It only says ‘there are no serious contenders’ can be criticised, which is exactly what #5387 is doing.”

The criterion excludes comparing the strength of criticisms, not comparison altogether. ‘Serious’ could be binary: does the contender solve the same problems, reproduce GR’s successful predictions, and lack a pending criticism that prevents replacing GR?

‘X is true’ and ‘use X for purpose Y while acknowledging that X is not true’ are different proposals. A criticism of X as a true description does not necessarily criticise its bounded use.

This assumes ‘approximation’ means measurable closeness to an unknown final theory. In context, it actually means that GR’s predictions closely approximate observed gravitational behaviour in its tested domains. We can compare predictions with observations without knowing the final theory.

Would it be better to make them all root ideas?

Progress does not require a complete ranking of every live explanation. If B has a fatal flaw while no fatal flaw is currently known in A or C, the flaw in B is enough to reject B while A and C both remain live. There does not need to be one property that all three explanations possess to different degrees.

Take the same explanation in two possible realities. The explanation has the same content and the same HTV in both, but it can correspond to one reality and fail to correspond to the other. HTV alone therefore cannot determine correspondence.

An explanation can be harder to vary than a rival and still contain a fatal flaw of another kind. Unless every possible fatal flaw is itself a form of ETV, HTV cannot comprehensively determine which explanation should be rejected.

Explanation A surviving criticism does not establish that explanation A is objective progress over explanation B. But the claim that one fatal flaw in explanation B is enough to reject explanation B does not depend on explanation A being objective progress. Rejecting explanation B and establishing explanation A as objective progress are separate claims.

One fatal flaw in B is enough to reject B. A does not also need to possess some opposite property that makes it the winner.

https://youtu.be/boWSKR7OrUw?t=627&si=V4UOiSZym6i0ZhjO

From 10:27 onwards, this video goes over a variety of diet related elements that affect sleep. Might be useful.

Something simple you could try is heavily dimming your computer and other devices and using strong red filters for the last few hours before bed.

Not just the standard night shift features, which are often far too weak. I mean making the screen properly red so that almost all of the blue and green light is removed.

You might be surprised by how dim you can make your devices while still being able to use them fine. You just need to give your eyes a minute to adjust. I routinely have my iPhone and MacBook on their dimmest settings.

Dimming or reddening the room lighting could help too. (Following up on #5243.)

This doesn't rule out blue light from other sources disturbing your ability to wind down and fall asleep.

Becoming progressively less tired is compatible with physiological causes, such as those I mention in #5241.

(Steel-manning the common sense view)

We assign implicit probabilities as an expression of our current state of knowledge.

"In the summer desert it will probably be sunny this afternoon" tends to come from some who has no reason to think it won't be sunny, but maybe hasn't investigated it enough to be confident. It roughly translates to "everything I know points to it being sunny this afternoon, but I don't have a grasp of all the factors involved, so I am allowing myself the slim possibility (lol) that I will be surprised".

Alternatively, you could make an option "allow revisions by other users" in the new idea form that is off by default.

5 Minute Creativity

TL;DR: When making a decision or working to solve a problem, spend 5 minutes (using a timer) just coming up with ideas. Managing your attention like this can supercharge your creativity.

A few days ago I was helping a friend flesh out an idea for an app that he is developing in his spare time. We came up with a new feature that we were both excited about, and we spent a few minutes going over how much more useful and fun the app was going to be with this new feature.

But in the spirit of philosopher Karl Popper, I asked my friend: "Is there anything wrong with this new feature idea?"

He spent about two seconds considering the question, before confidently answering "No!"

This took me by surprise. Somehow he had come to think that if a problem didn't jump out at him within the first two seconds of looking for problems, then for him the idea mustn't have any problems.*

I took some time later in the day to reflect on that moment. My first thought was about how irrational he was to have spent so little effort trying to poke holes in this new feature idea. After all, he was getting ready to spend hours of his valuable time bringing this new feature into reality. If he had just spent one minute thinking about what could be wrong with the new idea, and in that minute he discovered a fatal flaw in it, it might've saved him hundreds of minutes of wasted work over the next few weeks! Silly guy! Lucky he had me there to save him!

But then I thought about it some more, and realised that maybe I'm not actually that different to him. In many aspects of my daily life, I don't consciously give myself a meaningful amount of time to come up with new ideas or criticisms for the things I want to do. Many of my choices are kind of uncreative—I simply do the first thing that pops into my mind, in much the same way my friend decided there was nothing wrong with the new feature idea; because that was the first thing that popped into his mind.

I did some e-sleuthing around this thought and found On Creativity - The joys of 5 minute timers by Neel Nanda. It suggests literally using timers to make sure we spend meaningful time thinking about the things that matter. It might be worth reading if you identify at all with anything I have just said.

My favourite part of the article is this:

Set a 5 minute timer, and make a list of problems in your life - things that annoy you, things you want to work on, things that could be better. And then, go through that list, and cross off any you’re confident you’ve spent at least 5 minutes of focused time trying to solve. If you’re anything like me, you’ll have an embarrassingly long list left over. I’d be pretty curious about what happens if you try doing a 5 minute brainstorm for anything left.

I also found Nate Soares blogposts talking about using this approach (I’m guessing the Neel Nanda article was at least partly inspired by Nate Soares).

In 'Obvious advice', Nate Soares writes:

When you're about to make a big decision, pause, and ask yourself what obvious things a reasonable person would do before making this sort of decision. Would they spend a full five minutes (by the clock) brainstorming alternative options before settling on a decision? Would they consult with friends and advisors? Would they do some particular type of research?

Then, actually do the obvious things.

In 'Be a new homunculus', Nate Soares writes:

Notice the guilt, listen to the message it bears, and actually write down the behavioral pattern that you wish to change. Then spend five minutes (a full five minutes, by the clock) brainstorming ways that you might change the pattern and start retraining your mind.

I think if I dedicated 5 minutes each week to thinking about all the things I could do that week, I would come up with a lot of stuff. Some of those ideas would suck, but some of them would probably be a lot more useful and interesting than whatever I would’ve done otherwise that week if I hadn't spent 5 minutes exclusively thinking about it. I might even start using 5 minute timers each morning to decide what I want to do that day. Time to explore.

It's worth mentioning that 5 minutes is just a nice round number to get started with. Some problems merit more dedicated time, and others less. If you are considering using a smaller number of minutes, I urge you to keep in mind why it is you're doing this in the first place—you're intentionally giving yourself more time to think than you would give yourself naturally. This is about experimenting with a new thinking pattern, so consider allowing yourself to feel some amount of boredom or friction when you are first trying it, rather than cutting the 5 minutes shorter. (The boredom may also be a sign that the problem isn't worth 5 minutes of your time, in which case... find a different problem!)

Let me know what you think about all this. Going forward, I expect to be using timers for a lot more than just cooking!

*Needless to say, I suggested he spend a little longer thinking about it before he added the feature to his plans. In less than a couple minutes, he found three or four legit problems that would need to be addressed before the feature would merit inclusion in the project. Yay Popper!

Pretty close!

🦉 = wisdom / focus / attention

🐚 = the fractal, recursive aspects of life, particularly in epistemology / striving towards "inward infinities"

🕯️ = this / having "the lights on" (being sentient, as opposed to being a philosophical zombie or a mindless animal)

🚀 = progress / striving towards "outward infinities" / let's colonise the galaxy!

I realise I don't have any overtly moral emojis in that set. But maybe that is fine.

I think users will expect reposts to appear on their profile alongside their posts on the wall. That seems natural.

Suggestion: Allow reacts to be used in the activity feed.

That way I can quickly add colour to whatever has been happening recently on the site.