Lessons from David Deutsch

On Knowledge and Explanation

1. On good explanations: David Deutsch: "Once you have a good explanation that tells you about the planets as well, it’s no good going back to the angels or any of those easy-to-come-by explanations." — David Deutsch: Knowledge Creation and The Human Race, Part 1 (Naval, his turns).
2. On falsifiability: David Deutsch: "So, falsifiability is very much part of what makes a good explanation in science." — David Deutsch: Knowledge Creation and The Human Race, Part 1 (Naval, his turns).
3. On conjecture and problems: David Deutsch: "All knowledge is conjectural and comes from within at first and is intended to solve problems not to summarize data." — David Deutsch & Sam Harris (Waking Up podcast transcript, via Brett Hall; Deutsch's turns).
4. On knowledge not derived from observation: David Deutsch: "If you say, like Popper did, that scientific knowledge is not derived from observations, he’s really sticking his neck out." — David Deutsch: Knowledge Creation and The Human Race, Part 1 (Naval, his turns).
5. On expecting to be slightly wrong: David Deutsch: "We expect our opinion about what the laws of physics are to be slightly wrong." — David Deutsch: Mysticism and Quantum Theory (Reality Check interview, 2011, via Brett Hall; Deutsch's turns).
6. On not destroying the means of error correction: David Deutsch: "Maybe not destroying the means of correcting errors is the heart of morality; because if there is no way of correcting errors, then sooner or later one of those will get us." — David Deutsch: Knowledge Creation and The Human Race, Part 1 (Naval, his turns).
7. On reach: David Deutsch: "The more reach something has, the better an explanation it is, as long as it does account for what it’s trying to account for." — David Deutsch: Knowledge Creation and The Human Race, Part 1 (Naval, his turns).
8. On enjoyment and creativity: David Deutsch: "Enjoyment is not addictive because enjoyment is intimately connected with creativity." — David Deutsch: Knowledge Creation and The Human Race, Part 1 (Naval, his turns).
9. On copying a program: David Deutsch: "But unlike a human body, an AGI program can be copied into multiple computers at the touch of a button." — Philosophy will be the key that unlocks artificial intelligence (The Guardian, David Deutsch).
10. On Kuhn and accelerating knowledge: David Deutsch: "And Kuhn's vision cannot explain how science has in fact been delivering knowledge about physical reality at an ever-accelerating rate." — Quantum Jumps (Edge.org, 2014).
11. On making good explanations: David Deutsch: "Often we succeed in making good explanations, but rarely do they have much reach." — David Deutsch: Knowledge Creation and The Human Race, Part 1 (Naval, his turns).
12. On the problems inside a theory: David Deutsch: "Newton’s theory contains the problems to which Einstein’s theory is the solution." — David Deutsch: Knowledge Creation and The Human Race, Part 2 (Naval, his turns).
13. On the authority of science: David Deutsch: "So that’s...The difference between science and other things comes up when people pretend the authority of science for things that aren’t science." — David Deutsch & Sam Harris (Waking Up podcast transcript, via Brett Hall; Deutsch's turns).
14. On the solar system and constants of nature: David Deutsch: "Getting out of the solar system is: if that were impossible it would mean there is some, for example, some number, some constant of nature - 1000 astronomical units or something - which limits the other laws of nature that we already know." — David Deutsch & Sam Harris (Waking Up podcast transcript, via Brett Hall; Deutsch's turns).

On Optimism and Problems

1. On basic values and civilisation: David Deutsch: "And I readily accept that how to make a world where people share the basic values that will allow civilisation to continue to exist is a big problem." — David Deutsch & Sam Harris (Waking Up podcast transcript, via Brett Hall; Deutsch's turns).
2. On bad choices and the planet: David Deutsch: "If we don’t, it’ll be because of bad choices we have made, not because of constraints imposed on us by the planet or the solar system." — David Deutsch: Knowledge Creation and The Human Race, Part 1 (Naval, his turns).
3. On knowledge as problem solving: David Deutsch: "Knowledge consists of problem solving and morality is a set of ideas which have arisen from previous morality by error correction." — David Deutsch & Sam Harris (Waking Up podcast transcript, via Brett Hall; Deutsch's turns).
4. On beginning with problems: David Deutsch: "Popper only had one idea, and that is that it all begins with problems, and there’s no royal road to solving them." — David Deutsch: Knowledge Creation and The Human Race, Part 2 (Naval, his turns).
5. On things that can wipe out a civilization: David Deutsch: "On a scale, on a scale of 10s or 100s of millions of years there are plenty of things that can wipe out a civilization unless it does something about it." — David Deutsch & Sam Harris (Waking Up podcast transcript, via Brett Hall; Deutsch's turns).
6. On managing growing knowledge: David Deutsch: "And there is a real problem with how to manage the world in the face of growing knowledge to make sure that knowledge isn’t misused." — David Deutsch & Sam Harris (Waking Up podcast transcript, via Brett Hall; Deutsch's turns).
7. On creating more wealth than we destroy: David Deutsch: "I think virtually all humans, apart from mass murderers or whatever, create more wealth than they destroy." — David Deutsch: Knowledge Creation and The Human Race, Part 1 (Naval, his turns).
8. On transforming atoms: David Deutsch: "Then it’s a matter of transforming atoms in one configuration to atoms in another configuration and we’re now getting used to the idea that that is an everyday thing." — David Deutsch & Sam Harris (Waking Up podcast transcript, via Brett Hall; Deutsch's turns).
9. On deflecting asteroids: David Deutsch: "You can cause asteroids which are heading towards the earth to turn around and go away." — David Deutsch: Knowledge Creation and The Human Race, Part 1 (Naval, his turns).

On Reality and the Multiverse

1. On fixing a fictional story into a theory: David Deutsch: "I start with the fictional story about parallel universes and then I point out that this doesn’t make sense in certain ways so we fix it and we get a better theory and so on and we eventually end up with the actual theory of quantum parallel universes." — David Deutsch: Mysticism and Quantum Theory (Reality Check interview, 2011, via Brett Hall; Deutsch's turns).
2. On no quantum jump: David Deutsch: "Yet there is no such phenomenon in quantum physics as a 'quantum jump': under the laws of quantum theory, change is always continuous in both space and time." — Quantum Jumps (Edge.org, 2014).
3. On different laws of physics in fiction: David Deutsch: "I don’t mind if they imagine different laws of physics - in fact I like that - that’s the good thing about science fiction." — David Deutsch: Mysticism and Quantum Theory (Reality Check interview, 2011, via Brett Hall; Deutsch's turns).
4. On technology over minutes and years: David Deutsch: "Before the technology exists to make it happen over the course of minutes, there’ll be the technology to make it happen over the course of years." — David Deutsch & Sam Harris (Waking Up podcast transcript, via Brett Hall; Deutsch's turns).
5. On education as instruction: David Deutsch: "One implication is that we must stop regarding education (of humans or AGIs alike) as instruction – as a means of transmitting existing knowledge unaltered, and causing existing values to be enacted obediently." — Philosophy will be the key that unlocks artificial intelligence (The Guardian, David Deutsch).
6. On wanting to do something else: David Deutsch: "When people—I say people because I want to avoid terminology that suggests that children are any different from anyone else, epistemologically or morally—when people don’t want to do a thing, it’s because they want to do something else." — David Deutsch: Knowledge Creation and The Human Race, Part 1 (Naval, his turns).
7. On why Galileo resisted Kepler: David Deutsch: "Galileo did not want to believe Kepler’s theory because it didn’t explain why the orbits were ellipses." — David Deutsch: Knowledge Creation and The Human Race, Part 2 (Naval, his turns).
8. On time travel into other universes: David Deutsch: "What we can say though, is that if time travel is possible - time travel into the past is possible - then it’s necessarily also involves travel into other universes." — David Deutsch: Mysticism and Quantum Theory (Reality Check interview, 2011, via Brett Hall; Deutsch's turns).

On Human Significance and the Future

1. On the rights of AGIs: David Deutsch: "Ignoring the rights and personhood of AGIs would not only be the epitome of evil, but a recipe for disaster too: creative beings cannot be enslaved forever." — Philosophy will be the key that unlocks artificial intelligence (The Guardian, David Deutsch).
2. On not being a predetermined program: David Deutsch: "You have to have a very jaundiced view of yourself—let alone other people—to think that what you are doing is executing a predetermined program." — David Deutsch: Knowledge Creation and The Human Race, Part 1 (Naval, his turns).
3. On new laws of physics for a printer: David Deutsch: "The idea that new laws of physics would be required to make a printer is just beyond belief, really." — David Deutsch & Sam Harris (Waking Up podcast transcript, via Brett Hall; Deutsch's turns).
4. On Popperian epistemology and AGI: David Deutsch: "Without Popperian epistemology, one cannot even begin to guess what detailed functionality must be achieved to make an AGI." — Philosophy will be the key that unlocks artificial intelligence (The Guardian, David Deutsch).
5. On treating AGIs like programs: David Deutsch: "Treating AGIs like any other computer programs would constitute brainwashing, slavery and tyranny." — Philosophy will be the key that unlocks artificial intelligence (The Guardian, David Deutsch).
6. On stubborn theorists: David Deutsch: "Sometimes stubborn people who support a theory for no reason except that they feel it’s right, turn out to be right." — David Deutsch: Knowledge Creation and The Human Race, Part 2 (Naval, his turns).
7. On institutions that suppress moral knowledge: David Deutsch: "Institutions that suppress the growth of moral knowledge are immoral." — David Deutsch & Sam Harris (Waking Up podcast transcript, via Brett Hall; Deutsch's turns).
8. On universal computers: David Deutsch: "And we already know that the computers we have like the ones through which we’re having this computation are universal in the sense that given the right program they can perform any transformation of information whatsoever." — David Deutsch & Sam Harris (Waking Up podcast transcript, via Brett Hall; Deutsch's turns).
9. On how authoritarian education was: David Deutsch: "A hundred years ago, education of every kind was much more authoritarian than it is now; but still we’ve got a long way to go." — David Deutsch: Knowledge Creation and The Human Race, Part 1 (Naval, his turns).

Learnings and General Philosophy

1. On the size of error: David Deutsch: "Newton was wrong that there is a maximum size of error that competent people can fall into, but right that this particular one is severe." — Quantum Jumps (Edge.org, 2014).
2. On rationality and ancient problems: David Deutsch: "Unlike many ancient philosophical problems, this one has, paradoxically, been made both more urgent and less tractable by the gradual triumph of scientific rationality." — How are moral assertions connected with the world of facts? (Edge.org).
3. On science and moral stance: David Deutsch: "Not only scientific discovery, but scientific understanding itself can depend on one’s moral stance." — How are moral assertions connected with the world of facts? (Edge.org).
4. On quantum jumps and explanation: David Deutsch: "Quantum jumps in all these fields represent a retreat from explanation, and therefore in effect an appeal to the supernatural." — Quantum Jumps (Edge.org, 2014).
5. On entrenched errors about AGI: David Deutsch: "I cannot think of any other significant field of knowledge where the prevailing wisdom, not only in society at large but among experts, is so beset with entrenched, overlapping, fundamental errors." — Philosophy will be the key that unlocks artificial intelligence (The Guardian, David Deutsch).

Learn more:

1. David Deutsch: Knowledge Creation and The Human Race, Part 1 - Naval