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David Deutsch
28 quotes
“A computation is a physical process in which physical objects like computers, or slide rules or brains are used to discover, or to demonstrate or to harness properties of abstract objects—like numbers and equations. How can they do that? The answer is that we use them only in situations where to the best of our understanding the laws of physics will cause physical variables like electric currents in computers (representing bits) faithfully to mimic the abstract entities that we’re interested in.”
David Deutsch (born 1953) first seen 2008 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: What is computation? How Does Nature Compute? Lecture (November 1st, 2008)
“Surely it is more interesting to argue about what the truth is, than about what some particular thinker, however great, did or did not think.”
David Deutsch (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Our best theories are not only truer than common sense, they make more sense than common sense...”
David Deutsch (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The truly privileged theories are not the ones referring to any particular scale of size or complexity, nor the ones situated at any particular level of the predictive hierarchy—but the ones that contain the deepest explanations.”
David Deutsch (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The overwhelming majority of theories are rejected because they contain bad explanations, not because they fail experimental tests.”
David Deutsch (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A prediction, or any assertion, that cannot be defended might still be true, but an explanation that cannot be defended is not an explanation.”
David Deutsch (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To say that prediction is the purpose of a scientific theory is to confuse means with ends. It is like saying that the purpose of a spaceship is to burn fuel. … Passing experimental tests is only one of many things a theory has to do to achieve the real purpose of science, which is to explain the world.”
David Deutsch (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The quantum theory of parallel universes is not the problem, it is the solution. It is not some troublesome, optional interpretation emerging from arcane theoretical considerations. It is the explanation—the only one that is tenable—of a remarkable and counter-intuitive reality.”
David Deutsch (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Reality contains not only evidence, but also the means (such as our minds, and our artefacts) of understanding it. There are mathematical symbols in physical reality. The fact that it is we who put them there does not make them any less physical.”
David Deutsch (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Think of all our knowledge-generating processes, our whole culture and civilization, and all the thought processes in the minds of every individual, and indeed the entire evolving biosphere as well, as being a gigantic computation. The whole thing is executing a self-motivated, self-generating computer program. More specifically it is, as I have mentioned, a virtual-reality program in the process of rendering, with ever-increasing accuracy, the whole of existence.”
David Deutsch (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is possible to build a virtual-reality generator whose repertoire includes every possible environment.”
David Deutsch (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Since building a universal virtual-reality generator is physically possible, it must actually be built in some universes.”
David Deutsch (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Quantum computation is … nothing less than a distinctly new way of harnessing nature … It will be the first technology that allows useful tasks to be performed in collaboration between parallel universes, and then sharing the results.”
David Deutsch (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The next chapter is likely to provoke many mathematicians. This can't be helped. Mathematics is not what they think it is.”
David Deutsch (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Mathematical knowledge may, just like our scientific knowledge, be deep and broad, it may be subtle and wonderfully explanatory, it may be uncontroversially accepted; but it cannot be certain.”
David Deutsch (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Necessary truth is merely the subject-matter of mathematics, not the reward we get for doing mathematics. The object of mathematics is not, and cannot be, mathematical certainty. It is not even mathematical truth, certain or otherwise. It is, and must be, mathematical explanation.”
David Deutsch (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Time travel may be achieved one day, or it may not. But if it is, it should not require any fundamental change in world-view, at least for those who broadly share the world view I am presenting in this book.”
David Deutsch (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Kuhn's theory suffers from a fatal flaw. It explains the succession from one paradigm to another in sociological or psychological terms, rather than as having primarily to do with the objective merit of the rival explanations. Yet unless one understands science as a quest for explanations, the fact that it does find successive explanations, each objectively better than the last, is inexplicable.”
David Deutsch (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Experience is indeed essential to science, but its role is different from that supposed by empiricism. It is not the source from which theories are derived. Its main use is to choose between theories that have already been guessed. That is what ‘learning from experience’ is.”
David Deutsch (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The misconception that knowledge needs authority to be genuine or reliable dates back to antiquity, and it still prevails. 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.”
David Deutsch (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Any theory about improvement raises the question: how is the knowledge of how to make that improvement created? Was it already present at the outset? The theory that it was is creationism. Did it ‘just happen’? The theory that it did is spontaneous generation.”
David Deutsch (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If something is permitted by the laws of physics, then the only thing that can prevent it from being technologically possible is not knowing how.”
David Deutsch (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Let me define that [wealth] in a non-parochial way as the repertoire of physical transformations that they would be capable of causing.”
David Deutsch (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Could it be that the moral imperative not to destroy the means of correcting mistakes is the only moral imperative? That all other moral truths follow from it?”
David Deutsch (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As I understand it, the claim is that the less you use Homeopathy, the better it works. Sounds plausible to me.”
David Deutsch (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The rational thing for a layperson to do is to take seriously the prevailing scientific theory.”
David Deutsch (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Thus we can see that if we take solipsism seriously - if we assume that it is true and that all valid explanations must scrupulously conform to it - it self destructs. How exactly does solipsism, taken seriously, differ from its common-sense rival, realism? The difference is based on no more than a renaming scheme. Solipsism insists on referring to objectively different things (such as external reality and my unconscious mind, or introspection and scientific observation) by the same names. But then it has to introduce the distinction through explanations in terms of something like the 'outer part of myself'. But no such extra explanation would be necessary without its insistence on an inexplicable renaming scheme. Solipsism must also postulate the existence of an additional class of processes - invisible, inexplicable processes which give the mind the illusion of living in an external reality. The solipsist, who believes that nothing exists other than the contents of one mind, must also believe that that mind is a phenomenon of greater multiplicity than is normal supposed. It contains other-people-like thoughts, planet-like thoughts and laws-of-physics-like thoughts. These thoughts are real. They develop in a complex way (or pretend to), and they have enough autonomy to surprise, disappoint, enlighten or thwart other classes of thoughts which call themselves 'I'. Thus the solipsist's explanation of the world is in terms of interacting thoughts rather than interacting objects. But those thoughts are real, and interact according to the same rules that the realist says govern the interaction of objects. Thus solipsism, far from being a world view striped to its essentials, is actually just realism disguised and weighed down by additional baggage, introduced only to be explained away.”
David Deutsch (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“That progress is both possible and desirable is perhaps the quintessential idea of the Enlightenment. It motivates all traditions of criticism, as well as the principle of seeking good explanations. But it can be interpreted in two almost opposite ways, both of which, confusingly, are known as ‘perfectibility’. One is that humans, or human societies, are capable of attaining a state of supposed perfection – such as the Buddhist or Hindu ‘nirvana’, or various political utopias. The other is that every attainable state can be indefinitely improved. Fallibilism rules out that first position in favour of the second.”
David Deutsch (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source