The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World

by David Deutsch

So much for inductivism. And since inductivism is false, empiricism must be as well. For if one cannot derive predictions from experience, one certainly cannot derive explanations. Discovering a new explanation is inherently an act of creativity.

But one thing that all conceptions of the Enlightenment agree on is that it was a rebellion, and specifically a rebellion against authority in regard to knowledge.

The deeper an explanation is, the more new problems it creates.

eponymous

Good word

If it is possible to live indefinitely in a spaceship in space, then it would be much more possible to use the same technology to live on the surface of the Earth – and to make continuing progress which would make it ever easier. It would make little practical difference whether the biosphere had been ruined or not. Whether or not it could support any other species, it could certainly accommodate people – including humans – if they had the right knowledge.

There is no inconsistency in having multiple explanations of the same phenomenon, at different levels of emergence.

Reductionism The misconception that science must or should always explain things by analysing them into components (and hence that higher-level explanations cannot be fundamental).

In reality, explanations do not form a hierarchy with the lowest level being the most fundamental. Rather, explanations at any level of emergence can be fundamental.

for centuries, some people have tried to explain the mind in mechanical terms, using similes and metaphors based on the most complex machines of the day. First the brain was supposed to be like an immensely complicated set of gears and levers. Then it was hydraulic pipes, then steam engines, then telephone exchanges – and, now that computers are our most impressive technology, brains are said to be computers. But this is still no more than a metaphor, says Searle, and there is no more reason to expect the brain to be a computer than a steam engine. But there is. A steam engine is not a universal simulator. But a computer is, so expecting it to be able to do whatever neurons can is not a metaphor: it is a known and proven property of the laws of physics as best we know them. (And, as it happens, hydraulic pipes could also be made into a universal classical computer, and so could gears and levers, as Babbage showed.)

in reality, information that cannot be reliably retrieved is not really being stored.

It is not as though someone has written a chatbot that could pass the Turing test but would currently take a year to compute each reply.

if you can’t program it, you haven’t understood it.

intractably

Good word

But my guess is that when we do understand them, artificially implementing evolution and intelligence and its constellation of associated attributes will then be no great effort.

The idea that there could be beings that are to us as we are to animals is a belief in the supernatural.

The Principle of Optimism All evils are caused by insufficient knowledge.

The key defect of compromise policies is that when one of them is implemented and fails, no one learns anything because no one ever agreed with it.