keyserj

Ameliorate models questions and arguments, but they're more auxiliary (modeled as being _about_ a cause or effect) than in IBIS, where they're pretty central. Questions in Ameliorate are more "unknowns" than "core questions we are trying to answer".

If you see my root-level comment in this post, I mention refining the Ameliorate ontology (ameliorate-v2) which elevates questions to first-class (to address the issue where it's hard to know where to look in the diagram, without questions to identify motivation). You might also be interested in my ontology playground in that comment if you want to see an IBIS > mermaid pipeline.

Comment · 2 months ago

If you have a problem that's hard to think through or agree on with someone else, this app can help you make a (cause & effect) diagram to understand it better. Use numbers (scores) to show others how important you think something is (nodes) or how much you think something causes another thing (edges). You can add reasons (supports/critiques) to justify your numbers, and tradeoffs (criteria) to compare options for dealing with the problem. The app can show where you disagree with people or what people think are most important (generated views).

I might need LLM help to figure out how to explain to a 5 year old haha.

Comment · 2 months ago

Thanks for the feedback, I agree. I hadn't gotten around to adding an Explore page. There haven't actually been many users so it'd be mostly my topics and topics from some small group discussions I've hosted, but would be good to have more for people to see.

Comment · 2 months ago

Cool to see this posted :) I'm the creator.

For those interested, I've slowed work on the app in favor of refining the app's ontology in markdown form[1], building an ontology playground[2], and building a prototype[3] to show off features that the updated ontology enables. I had some major changes I wanted to make and making it work in the real app was going to be too much effort.

I'll likely be making a Show HN for one/some of these soon^TM (in the next month or two?) but they're currently still a bit early.

[1] https://github.com/keyserj/reasoning-tools/blob/main/amelior...

[2] https://keyserj.github.io/reasoning-tools/ontology-playgroun...

[3] https://github.com/keyserj/reasoning-tools/tree/main/amelior... (not yet deployed)

Comment · 9 months ago

I think there's a lot of good advice in these comments already, at least for individuals to think about for themselves.

I happen to have discovered a fantastic contra dancing community[1] in Chicago that could be great for some who are lonely. You have to chalk up the courage to go (if you aren't used to trying new things, or dancing), but everyone is extremely welcoming, the dancing is easy even for people "with two left feet", and the happiness going around is truly contagious.

I think it's a terrific place to find community. It's a social dance where you'll basically dance with everyone by the end of the evening. There's time before, in the middle (snack intermission), and at the end for striking some conversation. The dancing is every Monday so it's routine. The crowd (100-150 people on average) is diverse in many ways (at least in age, gender, income, interests) so you're bound to find people with commonalities that, using some of the other advice in these comments, you could try to hang out with outside of the dancing.

As far as getting people to feel like they can join, I'm not the expert, but I've had such a great experience that I'm happy to at least bring it up and "spread the good word".

For outside of Chicago: contra dancing is a bit niche, but a surprising amount of large-ish US cities have it. I think it's more popular (relatively) on the East coast. Can't speak for outside of the US.

[1] https://www.chicagobarndance.org/

Comment · 1 year ago

I feel the author loses points (persuasiveness? respect? integrity? I can't think of the word) by not acknowledging what they think accurately happened. What's the word alternative to genocide in this case? "War" with large sprinkles of civilian casualties?

> To defend truth, one must defend vocabulary

I completely agree with this. The decay of words reduces our ability to communicate accurately, which leads then to a myriad of disagreement, misinformation, disinformation, etc.

I think "semanticide" happens often when there's outrage, and there aren't accurate words that carry enough connotation to reflect the emotion and frustration in the speaker. What's the solution in this case? I don't blame the speakers for resorting to it in haste, but perhaps the issue comes when the word abuse becomes well-meditated, and repeated?

Comment · 1 year ago

Cool, that makes sense. Thanks for the explanation

Comment · 1 year ago

Neat idea. Would you say that biggest difference from something like Kysely is the focus on extracting common calculated SELECT targets into methods that can easily be accessed when querying? Or perhaps it's more thorough with providing TS versions of all the SQL syntax available? The list of reference fields/methods in your docs is certainly massive.

Comment · 1 year ago

That's a cool idea. Seems like there would be a ton of things contained in an individual's worldview, that it'd be hard to build all of it up. Perhaps when you encounter something that makes you think of some core philosophy, you note it and the philosophy, and eventually there would be a loose picture that forms amongst all the relations.

Certainly would be helpful for trying to understand someone else. Not sure if this is totally appropriate, but it does seem like something that a chatbot would be good at combing through to find examples to suggest why one thinks a certain way about a new topic. You could even ask it about your own worldview!