The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World

by David Deutsch

simply to deny their existence is a bad explanation:

The only thing that privileges that set of operations is that it is instantiated in the laws of physics.

So we seek explanations that remain robust when we test them against those flickers and shadows, and against each other, and against criteria of logic and reasonableness and everything else we can think of. And when we can change them no more, we have understood some objective truth. And, as if that were not enough, what we understand we then control. It is like magic, only real. We are like gods! HERMES: Well, sometimes you discover

David Deutsch just pinned me to my seat.

Notice that this is a form of bad science that may well have conformed to all the best practices of scientific method – proper randomizing, proper controls, proper statistical analysis. All the formal rules of ‘how to keep from fooling ourselves’ may have been followed. And yet no progress could possibly be made, because it was not being sought: explanationless theories can do no more than entrench existing, bad explanations. It is no accident that, in the imaginary