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Related Popper reading: ‘Preference for Theories and the Search for Truth’
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The rules should say whether AI-generated content is okay to submit or not.
For posterity regarding the most recent bounty on this idea, ChatGPT made me this awesome illustration a while back for my post about the bounty on X:
How Do Bounties Work?
Bounties let you invite criticism and reward high-quality contributions with real money.
Bounties are in beta. Expect things to break.
How do I participate?
Only users with a Beginner, Engager, and Defender badge can participate in bounties. Find a list of all badges and how to get them here.
To participate in a bounty, start by logging in or sign up.
Next, browse the list of bounties. Click a bounty’s dollar amount to view its page, review the bountied idea and the terms, and submit a criticism of that idea.
That’s it – you’re in.
How do I get paid?
The bounty owner reviews submissions for eligibility against his bounty terms.
To be eligible for a payout, all of the following must be true:
- Your submission is a direct criticism of the bountied idea.
- Your submission has no pending counter-criticisms by the deadline. (For temporary bounties, that’s when the review period ends; for standing bounties, it’s seven days after submission.)
- Your submission meets the bounty terms and the site-wide terms.
- You’ve connected a Stripe account in good standing before the deadline.
- You’ve not contributed funds to the bounty.
The bounty owner is never eligible to receive payouts from their own bounty.
Note that counter-criticisms are not constrained by the bounty-specific terms. Only direct criticisms of the bountied idea are.
How much will I get paid?
For temporary bounties, the amount is prorated among eligible participants based on contribution. For example, if there are ten eligible criticisms and you contributed two of them, you receive 20% of the amount when the bounty ends.
For standing bounties, amounts are assigned on a per-submission basis. For example, funders may indicate that they will pay a total of USD 100 for the first eligible submission, a total of USD 50 for the second eligible submission, and so on. Each eligible submission has its own payout date.
Fractions of cents are not paid out.
How do I run a bounty?
Click the megaphone button next to an idea (near the buttons to bookmark, archive, etc.).
Set a bounty amount and write clear terms describing the kinds of criticisms you’re willing to pay for. Then enter your credit-card details to authorize the amount plus a 5% bounty fee.
Your card is at most authorized, but not charged, when the bounty starts.
A temporary bounty typically runs for five to seven days, depending on your card’s authorization window. You may review submissions during the entire bounty period. Toward the end, a 24-hour grace period begins during which no new submissions can be made but you may continue your review. Reject any submissions that don’t meet your terms. Submissions you don’t reject are automatically accepted at the end of the review period and become eligible for payout. Your card is then charged the full authorization.
A standing bounty runs for as long as funds last. Each submission has its own seven-day review period. Again, reject any submissions that don’t meet your terms. Submissions you don’t reject are automatically accepted seven days after submission. Your card is then charged as indicated in your funding allocation.
If you reject all submissions, your card is never charged.
What’s the difference between a temporary and a standing bounty?
A temporary bounty has a fixed duration, typically between five and seven days. The bounty amount is prorated among eligible participants at the end. Standing bounties, on the other hand, don’t have a fixed duration; they run as long as funds last. Funds are paid out continuously and on a per-submission basis, as described above.
Temporary bounties are ideal when you have limited time and a smaller budget. Standing bounties are ideal for the long term with a larger budget. However, you can mix and match based on your own unique preferences and circumstances: for example, it’s possible to use a larger budget on a temporary bounty.
Can I fund an existing bounty?
Yes. Review the bounty terms. If you agree with them, click the ‘Add funding’ button on the bounty page and follow the next steps. At this point, your card is at most authorized but not charged.
Your card is charged for any submissions the bounty owner does not reject. If he rejects all submissions, your card is never charged.
Funders are never eligible to receive payouts from a bounty they funded.
Start a bounty today. Terms apply.
I’ve just posted the following update on my article linked in the parent idea. The bounty can be closed, at least for now.
Update 2026-09-06
TL;DR: Computational underspecification may have been solved; HTV is still not a description of rationality or of the cause of progress.
Dirk Meulenbelt, Benjamin Davies, and I ran a Veritula bounty worth USD 3,600 to rehabilitate HTV with regard to its computational underspecification. Jad Elmourad came up with a simple idea:
- Prompt the user for two explanations.
- Prompt the user for variants of each.
- Compare the count of variants and rank accordingly (lower count = better).
Unfortunately, the integrity of the discussion of this idea can’t be warranted because of problematic participation in the bounty. As a result, it’s currently not known whether the idea has pending criticisms, ie, whether its advocacy is rational.
That said, the program runs. I’ve tried it out. It offers a simple alternative to the sliders above. It does seem to partially rehabilitate HTV specifically with regard to its previous computational underspecification. In other words, where proponents of HTV used to be unable to explain exactly how to determine how HTV an explanation is, they can now follow the steps above and answer accordingly. They can now rank explanations this way. That helps.
What the program also shows, maybe ironically, is that nobody actually follows those steps in real life. For example, scientists don’t count variants of theories like that. Deutsch is still right about the following: “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.” (BoI chapter 1; also, the ‘grass cure’ from FoR comes to mind as an example.) So when a theory is easy to vary in this sense, that does indeed mean we can’t form a rational preference for one of the variants, at least not without additional information. But that doesn’t mean all preference formation involves theories being hard to vary.
What scientists actually do is criticize a theory for being ‘easy to vary’ (they’d just call it ‘arbitrary’), reject it, and look for a different one. They wouldn’t care to rank theories this way. And they’d use HTV as only one mode of criticism among many. It’s not the core of rationality and progress; again, not all problems of preference formation can be reduced to having too many variants.
Philosophers don’t rank theories this way either. I don’t recall a single instance in BoI where Deutsch counts variants and justifies a preference that way. Instead, he lists and addresses criticisms. He follows the Veritula method.
Also, one would only enter variants into the program that have already survived criticism. So then the question is how scientists tell whether an idea has survived criticism. And there the answer is still the Veritula method. So the program could maybe be incorporated into Veritula as an additional step. But again, it’s not needed if ETV is simply one kind of criticism among many, with no ranking.
To be clear, that isn’t a criticism of the program – the bounty specifically asked for the ranking. Here, I’m only exploring the wider implications if the program can be advocated rationally. And the answer is: the computational underspecification is then solved, but HTV is still not a description of rationality or of the cause of progress. That idea, as I just phrased it, can be adopted rationally at the time of writing, and we can move forward accordingly.
The integrity of the discussion branches off of this idea and its siblings is questionable due to problematic participation in a bounty. Labels around pending criticisms and battle-tested may be not be accurate.
This is true, but assumes that "qualiation" still occurs when each subsequent state is pre-existing and determined. Do we know this? What if qualiation somehow depends on the (computational) indeterminacy of the subsequent states..?
Veritula discussion trees can’t accurately reflect problematic vs unproblematic ideas when unreasonable people are involved, see #5624. Submitting this as a fix. Jad agrees to terms, breaks them, then wants to argue the purpose and meaning of them. That’s arbitrary, ie the opposite of reason and Veritula. He will no doubt claim he was just trying to follow the Veritula method of addressing criticisms, but the effect is that he’s turning Veritula on its head in the process. There’s no point discussing with people like him.
Veritula discussion trees can’t accurately reflect problematic vs unproblematic ideas when unreasonable people are involved, see #5624. Submitting this as a fix. Jad agrees to terms, breaks them, then wants to argue the purpose and meaning of them. That’s arbitrary, ie the opposite of reason and Veritula. He will no doubt claim he was just trying to follow the Veritula method of addressing criticisms, but the effect is that he’s turning Veritula on its head in the process. There’s no point discussing with people like him.
Veritula discussion trees can’t accurately reflect problematic vs unproblematic ideas when unreasonable people are involved, see #5624. Submitting this as a fix. Jad agrees to terms, breaks them, then wants to argue the purpose and meaning of them. That’s arbitrary, ie the opposite of reason and Veritula. He will no doubt claim he was just trying to follow the Veritula method of addressing criticisms, but the effect is that he’s turning Veritula on its head in the process. There’s no point discussing with people like him.
Veritula discussion trees can’t accurately reflect problematic vs unproblematic ideas when unreasonable people are involved, see #5624. Submitting this as a fix. Jad agrees to terms, breaks them, then wants to argue the purpose and meaning of them. That’s arbitrary, ie the opposite of reason and Veritula. He will no doubt claim he was just trying to follow the Veritula method of addressing criticisms, but the effect is that he’s turning Veritula on its head in the process. There’s no point discussing with people like him.
Veritula discussion trees can’t accurately reflect problematic vs unproblematic ideas when unreasonable people are involved, see #5624. Submitting this as a fix. Jad agrees to terms, breaks them, then wants to argue the purpose and meaning of them. That’s arbitrary, ie the opposite of reason and Veritula. He will no doubt claim he was just trying to follow the Veritula method of addressing criticisms, but the effect is that he’s turning Veritula on its head in the process. There’s no point discussing with people like him.
Veritula discussion trees can’t accurately reflect problematic vs unproblematic ideas when unreasonable people are involved, see #5624. Submitting this as a fix. Jad agrees to terms, breaks them, then wants to argue the purpose and meaning of them. That’s arbitrary, ie the opposite of reason and Veritula. He will no doubt claim he was just trying to follow the Veritula method of addressing criticisms, but the effect is that he’s turning Veritula on its head in the process. There’s no point discussing with people like him.
Veritula discussion trees can’t accurately reflect problematic vs unproblematic ideas when unreasonable people are involved, see #5624. Submitting this as a fix. Jad agrees to terms, breaks them, then wants to argue the purpose and meaning of them. That’s arbitrary, ie the opposite of reason and Veritula. He will no doubt claim he was just trying to follow the Veritula method of addressing criticisms, but the effect is that he’s turning Veritula on its head in the process. There’s no point discussing with people like him.
Veritula discussion trees can’t accurately reflect problematic vs unproblematic ideas when unreasonable people are involved, see #5624. Submitting this as a fix. Jad agrees to terms, breaks them, then wants to argue the purpose and meaning of them. That’s arbitrary, ie the opposite of reason and Veritula. He will no doubt claim he was just trying to follow the Veritula method of addressing criticisms, but the effect is that he’s turning Veritula on its head in the process. There’s no point discussing with people like him.
I gave you an opportunity to be eligible for the remaining funds if you just stopped arguing. Now you’re doubling down and arguing more. You’ve forfeited the remaining funds.
Veritula discussion trees can’t accurately reflect problematic vs unproblematic ideas when unreasonable people are involved.
I’m banning you from Veritula in perpetuity. Don’t contact me again. I wish you well and hope you find another forum more to your liking.
One can’t agree to a rule, immediately break it, get an unfair advantage, hope I won’t notice, and then complain when I do.
I don't accept the characterization that I knowingly violated the rule and hoped you wouldn't notice. That wasn't my state of mind. More on this in #5622.
But why not raise that before agreeing to a rule he took issue with? Why accept the risk of disqualification instead?
This is a fair point, like I conceded in #5613: "We also agreed that in the future, discussions like this about the terms ought to be brought up at the beginning rather than after the fact."
And I definitely learned a lesson: to hash things out before if I see any potential conflict.
If you're curious for some more details about what happened here, I would say I got excited about getting my idea out as fast as possible and hearing criticisms. I had noticed the potential conflict about AI use, and I had marked it in my head as something we might have to discuss eventually, but I didn't see that point as arriving until at least the submission seemed to be surviving the criticisms. So when you brought it up and asked whether I was using AI, I immediately said yes.
But with any luck, he’ll get the remaining funds, provided that the arguing ends now.
I'm not sure what you mean by that. Are you saying that my eligibility for the remaining funders' funds depends on me not continuing this discussion?
If so, then this statement seems to block discussion and thus the growth of knowledge. Isn't the point of this platform to be able to hash out ideas and conflicts between them and thereby become more rational and knowledgeable?
I like the quote at the bottom of the website
[T]he growth of knowledge depends entirely upon disagreement.
— Karl Popper, The Myth of the Framework
I hope this is what we are doing here :)
I’m surprised he now wants to continue the discussion publicly
In fact, I had explicitly conveyed in the private discussion that I wanted to continue the discussion, but that I will also respect Dennis's boundaries if he wishes to stop the conversation. Dennis brought the conversation to an end by saying: "I think we've discussed all we have to discuss."
When he subsequently posted about the issue publicly in #5606, I replied publicly to confirm the AI use and explain my position.
When a participant uses AI to help with that, but the funders don’t know about it, it creates an unfair advantage. That’s a violation of not just the letter but also the spirit of the rules.
I don't see what creates an "unfair advantage". Maybe the next lines clarify.
It’d be like secretly using a chess computer for help in a chess competition.
I don't think this analogy is appropriate at all. In a chess competition, people are competing between themselves to prove who is better at chess. My understanding of this platform and the bounty is that it's to incentivize the growth of knowledge, not to prove who is better at writing ideas without AI.
The amount of text Jad has submitted also creates an uphill battle for the remaining funders to review his submissions before the deadline.
This reads to me as suggesting that the text I submitted was somehow excessive or perhaps even intentionally overwhelming, when instead my intention with all my writing was to communicate my ideas as clearly as possible. In fact, on the contrary, I felt that I had to excessively elaborate on some ideas that were clear to me just so that I could better get the idea across.
I showed Jad these results privately and he didn’t have a good answer
My actual reply to this was to bring up the questions from #5617 about what "AI-generated" signifies. Specifically, I asked "What does Pangram consider AI edits to be?", to which Dennis replied "I don't think they disclose that."
After that, I tried to make progress towards common ground by raising the deeper issue. I said:
Hmm, maybe we mean different things, so what do you think qualifies as an appropriate use of AI / using AI to edit vs an inappropriate use?
To which, Dennis replied by re-iterating that the bounty terms are clear that no AI must be used, but that didn't address the deeper issue I was trying to raise. I was trying to distinguish between different kinds of AI use in the context of what it means to have done the intellectual work necessary to earn the reward, see #5615.
When I later asked him directly whether he was using AI, he admitted to it but claimed it was merely to “help edit some of [his] writings”.
Pangram, an AI detector, paints a different picture
I think this relates to #5615. I think there is a fundamental disagreement about what the term AI-generated means. If I write something and then pass it to an LLM for edits, then that gets marked as AI-generated. But is that really the deal-breaker here? Are we testing "ability to solve the bounty and write up the solution without AI"? Or are we testing that the submitter understands what they're submitting, which we already established?
At some point, I noticed Jad had submitted his replies very quickly, with unusually verbose text, and in fairly rapid succession.
For the record, I was working in blocks. I would read all the criticisms available at a time, then think about how to address them together. So I was sometimes writing out the response for each criticism, but holding off on submitting them so that I can properly cross-reference between them. Then I would submit them all at the same time. This is the explanation for the rapid succession and what might have appeared as unusually fast typing.