The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch
Rating: 9/10
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One Sentence Wrap-Up
On the same wavelength as Sapiens but with the complexity dialed up, centred around the theme that seeking good explanations via criticism and conjecture is how the human race could achieve rapid expansion of knowledge with increasing reach, i.e. the beginning of infinity.
Summary Notes
I don't know where to start with this book. Despite the underlying theme being simple, the author has included many interesting (albeit complex) concepts to back up his assertions that it is not easy to review succinctly. The book is excellent though. It has made me reevaluate the importance of a free society, which should serve to exclude ideas failing to survive criticism; prevent their entrenchment, and promote the creation of new ideas.
In addition, the book has brought to light that there is infinite potential to what humans as universal constructors could achieve, as long as we remain humble and continue to seek good explanations in everything we do. As noted by the author David Deutsch:
Infinite ignorance is a necessary condition for there to be infinite potential for knowledge. Rejecting the idea that we are 'nearly there' is a necessary condition for the avoidance of dogmatism, stagnation and tyranny.
In order to continue seeking good explanations, we would need to understand 1) where good explanations come from; 2) how to differentiate between good and bad explanations and 3) how to foster an environment which values good explanations. Deutsch provides his point of view on all of the topics mentioned. He also touched upon the concept of infinity, objective beauty and creativity which in my opinion, do not underpin his main argument but nevertheless good food for thought that have stuck with me since I finished the book.
I would definitely recommend it to all. It might be difficult to get through some of the chapters (i.e. The Multiverse / A Window on Infinity) but I feel that it offers something for everyone to ponder upon. At the very least, you would understand what the word 'parochial' means :).
Key Lesson Learnt #1 - Good explanations come from conjecture, criticism and testing
Where do good explanations come from? Deutsch argues that they are not from our observations or our senses (i.e. empiricism). We can use our observations to choose between existing theories, not to be the source of new ones. We interpret experiences through explanatory theories, but true explanations are not obvious. For example, we have good explanations for gravity, blackholes, particles, etc., yet they were not derived from observation through our naked eyes.
Similarly, no one would have wondered what stars are if there had not been existing expectations - explanations - that unsupported things fall, and that lights need fuel, which runs out, and so on, which conflicted with interpretations (which are also explanations) of what was seen, such as that stars shine constantly and do not fall. In this case it was those interpretations that were false: stars are indeed in free fall and do need fuel. But it took a great deal of conjecture, criticism and testing to discover how that can be.
Instead, good explanations come from conjecture or creativity, which are then subjected to continuous criticism and testing. This is a process not limited to one individual, but multiple individuals through an extended period of time. Good explanations are spread via memes from one to another, essentially undergoing a sort of 'accelerated evolution', i.e. similar to the variation and selection of genes but faster.
To be a meme, an idea has to contain quite sophisticated knowledge of how to cause humans to do at least two independent things: assimilate the meme faithfully, and enact it. That some memes can replicate themselves with great fidelity for many generations is a token of how much knowledge they contain.
We are different from other animals as we have the ability to create and use explanatory knowledge to transform nature, which is ultimately not limited by parochial factors, as all other adaptations are, but only by universal laws. Do not be mistaken: the biosphere is not benevolent to the human race since the beginning of time. Even now, If we were to strip off our clothes and stay outside in Oxfordshire in the middle of winter, we would not survive long. It is our ability to leverage explanatory knowledge that enables us to build a support system and live comfortable lives.
Traditionally, there is a push towards the need to justify our knowledge through an authoritative source. This should not be the case as it is not the pursuit of truth, rather the feeling that we are right.
To this day, most courses in the philosophy of knowledge teach that knowledge is some form of justified, true belief, where 'justified' means designated as true (or at least 'probable') by reference to some authoritative source or touchstone of knowledge. Thus 'how do we know...?' is transformed into 'by what authority do we claim...?' It converts the quest for truth into a quest for certainty (a feeling) or for endorsement (a social status).
Instead, we should embrace fallibilism, in which one accepts that there are no reliable means of justifying knowledge as true or probable. This is essential for the initiation of unlimited knowledge growth - the beginning of infinity.
The logic of fallibilism is that one not only seeks to correct the misconceptions of the past, but hopes in the future to find and change mistaken ideas that no one today questions or finds problematic.
Key Lesson Learnt #2 - Knowledge creation is subject to errors, which in turn reveal further and better problems. An unproblematic state is a state without creative thought. Its other name is death
By embracing fallibilism, we are acknowledging that we may always be mistaken and trying to correct errors.
Errors are common, and significant, and always will be, and correcting them will always reveal further and better problems.
We do so by seeking good explanations - explanations that are hard to vary in the sense that changing the details would ruin the explanation. By doing so, we will continue to unravel new problems thus the process never ends. If we were to halt the creative process, we would roll back to a static society prior to the 16th century, where no critical faculties are exercised; no innovation is tolerated, and almost none is attempted. Keep to the status-quo rather than promote progression.
Here is another misconception in the Garden of Eden myth: that the supposed unproblematic state would be a good state to be in. Some theologians have denied this, and I agree with them: an unproblematic state is a state without creative thought. Its other name is death.
Despite the never-ending emergence of new problems, we should not despair as 'problems are soluble'. The fact that everything is not forbidden by laws of nature is achievable, given the right knowledge. With unlimited progress, we would always be at the beginning of infinity - the possibility of the unlimited growth of knowledge in the future.
I think that there is only one way to science - or to philosophy, for that matter: to meet a problem, to see its beauty and fall in love with it; to get married to it and live with it happily, till death do ye part - unless you should meet another and even more fascinating problem or unless, indeed, you should obtain a solution. But even if you do obtain a solution, you may then discover, to your delight, the existence of a whole family of enchanting, though perhaps difficult, problem children... Realism and the Aim of Science (1983)
Key Lesson Learnt #3 - It is important to foster a society that promotes the seeking of good explanations. Systems of governments are to be judged not for their prophetic ability to choose and install good leaders and policies, but for their ability to remove bad ones that are already there
How to foster an environment that promotes the seeking of good explanations? Since we can never be certain of our knowledge, we should establish a society that tolerates the removal of a leader or policy without violence if they are bad.
How can we rid ourselves of bad governments without violence? Just as science seeks explanations that are experimentally testable, so a rational political system makes it as easy as possible to detect, and persuade others, that a leader or policy is bad and to remove them without violence if they are. Just as the institutions of science are structured so as to avoid entrenching theories, but instead to expose them to criticism and testing, so political institutions should not make it hard to oppose rulers and policies, non-violently, and should embody traditions of peaceful, critical discussion of them and of the institutions themselves and everything else. Thus, systems of governments are to be judged not for their prophetic ability to choose and install good leaders and policies, but for their ability to remove bad ones that are already there.
Similar to the pursuit of good explanations, we would need to take on the stand of 'infinite ignorance': accepting that we would never be 100% right even on the political front. We will never disagree any less than we do now, and that is a very good thing. Keep the discussions and debates going; refine and change for the better such that we can improve without limit.
Human beings will never disagree any less than they do now, and that is a very good thing. If those institutions do, as they seem to fulfill the hope that it is possible for changes to be for the better, on balance, then human life can improve without limit as we advance from misconception to ever better misconception.
In the past, there have been revolutionists fighting to reset the existing societal structure in favour of implementing their utopia, which are often fixed with limited wiggle room for further improvements. They brought about sudden, violent and unpredictable changes, but typically achieve only stagnation of progress.
The revolutionists all thought they were making decisions based on the best knowledge available to them, however they are misled by the fact that we cannot make predictions for the future in which we do not yet know what we have not yet discovered. In the end, we will need to fall back to the principle of establishing a society where the civilisation as a whole has to value tolerance, integrity and openness of debate.
For instance, whenever pretenders to a throne claimed to have a better hereditary entitlement than the incumbent, they were in effect citing the precautionary principle as a justification for sudden, violent, unpredictable change - in other words, for blind optimism. The same was true whenever monarchs happened to favour radical change themselves. Consider also the revolutionary utopians, who typically achieve only destruction and stagnation. Though they are blind optimists, what defines them as utopians is their pessimism that their supposed utopians, or their violent proposals for achieving and entrenching it, could ever be improved upon. Additionally, they are revolutionaries in the first place because they are pessimistic that many other people can be persuaded of the final truth that they think they know.
The reason for these paradoxes are parallels between blind optimism and blind pessimism is that those two approaches are very similar at the level of explanation. Both are prophetic: both purport to know unknowable things about the future of knowledge. And since at any instant our best knowledge contains both truth and misconception, prophetic pessimism about any one aspect of it is always the same as prophetic optimism about another.
Key Lesson Learnt #4 - There are many infinites, including a countable infinity and an uncountable infinity
Infinity as a concept is not simple to grasp. We understand infinity as something high level or abstract: the idea that it is an entity with no end in sight. However, there are actually different sizes of infinity and that not all infinities are equal. There are countable infinity and uncountable infinity: the infinity of the natural numbers and the infinity of the continuum, as proven by the German mathematician Georg Cantor.
An infinity that is small enough to be placed in one-to-one correspondence with the natural numbers is called a 'countable infinity' - rather an unfortunate term, because no one can count up to infinity. But it has the connotation that every element of a countably infinite set could in principle be reached by counting those elements in some suitable order. Larger infinities are called uncountable. So, there is an uncountable infinity of real numbers between any two distinct limits. Furthermore, there are uncountably many orders of infinity, each too large to be put into one-to-one correspondence with the lower ones.
The mind-blowing nature of infinity is further explored via the thought exercise of Infinity Hotel by the German mathematician David Hilbert.
This should instill a wonder in all of us that infinity is beyond our reach and that we are nowhere close to plateauing in our knowledge. We are only scratching the surface, and will forever be at that state: at the beginning of humanity's infinite possibility.
Favourite Quotes
Behind it all is surely an idea so simple, so beautiful, that when we grasp it - in a decade, a century, or a millennium - we will all say to each other, how could it have been otherwise?
Some people become depressed at the scale of the universe, because it makes them feel insignificant. Other people are relieved to feel insignificant, which is even worse. But, in any case, those are mistakes. Feeling insignificant because the universe is large has exactly the same logic as feeling inadequate for not being a cow. Or a herd of cows. The universe is not there to overwhelm us; it is our home, and our resource. The bigger the better.
Edison said that research is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration - but that is misleading, because people can apply creativity even to tasks that computers and other machines do uncreatively. So science is not mindless toil for which rare moments of discovery are the compensation: the toil can be creative, and fun, just as the discovery of new explanation is.
Would we seem like insects to it (i.e. alien)? This can seem plausible only if one forgets that there can be only one type of person: universal explainers and constructors. The idea that there could be beings that are to us as we are to animals is a belief in the supernatural.
The fact that flowers reliably seem beautiful to humans when their designs evolved for an apparently unrelated purpose is evidence that beauty is objective.
New art is unpredictable, like new scientific discoveries. Is that the unpredictability of randomness, or the deeper unknowability of knowledge creation? In other words - is art truly creative, like science and mathematics? That question is usually asked the other way round, because the idea of creativity is still rather confused by various misconceptions. Empiricism miscasts science as an automatic, non-creative process. And art, though acknowledged as 'creative', has often been seen as the antithesis of science, and hence irrational, random, inexplicable - and hence unjudgeable, and non-objective. But if beauty is objective, then a new work of art, like a newly discovered law of nature or mathematical theorem, adds something irreducibly new to the world.
A human being, in terms of knowledge content and creative individuality, is like a species. All the individuals of any other species have virtually the same programming in their genes and use virtually the same criteria for acting and being attracted. Humans are quite unlike that: the amount of information in a human mind is more than that in the genome of any species, and overwhelmingly more than the genetic information unique to one person. So human artists are trying to signal across the same scale of gap between humans as the flowers and insects are between species.
A human brain - quite unlike a genome - is itself an arena of intense variation, selection and competition. Most ideas within a brain are created by it for the very purpose of trying them out in imagination, criticising them, and varying them until they meet the person's preferences.
Although we do not know exactly how creativity works, we do know that it is itself an evolutionary process within individual brains. For it depends on conjecture (which is variation) and criticism (for the purpose of selecting ideas). So, somewhere inside brains, blind variations and selections are adding up to creative thought at a higher level of emergence.
I believe that it would be worth trying to learn something about the world even if in trying to do so we should merely learn that we do not know much... It might be well for all of us to remember that, while differing widely in the various little bits we know, in our infinite ignorance we are all equal. - Conjectures and Refutations (1963)
To attempt to predict anything beyond the relevant horizon is futile - it is prophecy - but wondering what is beyond it is not. When wondering leads to conjecture, that constitutes speculation, which is not irrational either. In fact it it is vital. Every one of those deeply unforeseeable new ideas that make the future unpredictable will begin as a speculation. And every speculation begins with a problem: problems in regard to the future can reach beyond the horizon of prediction too - and problems have solutions.
