A Compendium of @DavidDeutschOxf's Explanations.
Joined July 2023
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.@DavidDeutschOxf: "Wealth is not a number. I don't think it can be characterized very well by a number. It is a set.
The set of all transformations that you are capable of bringing about, that is your wealth.
And obviously, if optimism is true, then there's no limit to wealth.
And at any one time, there is a rough correlation between the wealth that is the set of all transformations that you could bring about, and other things that aren't very fundamental, like the amount of money you have, or the amount of energy you control, or the amount of land you control, or the amount of power you have, and so on.
But those are not fundamental. They are all outgrown, eventually, by the growth of knowledge."
"The simple epistemological error leads to unlimited suffering. And it’s a common error."
@DavidDeutschOxf
"We know that the Turing machine property is a special property of the laws of physics. It need not have been so. It's an amazing property that the laws of physics have."
@DavidDeutschOxf
"Explanatory knowledge is by far the most powerful in terms of causation. At the moment, we can't really see that because... Well, we can in special cases. Like, for example, entities with explanatory knowledge are the only ones that can propel themselves to the moon and back to the earth without being destroyed.
So, that can only be done with explanatory knowledge."
@DavidDeutschOxf
"The ideas with the best chance of surviving through many generations of change are truths with reach – deep truths."
@DavidDeutschOxf
"The future of civilization is unknowable, because the knowledge that is going to affect it has yet to be created. Hence, the possible outcomes are not yet known, let alone their probabilities.
The growth of knowledge cannot change that fact. On the contrary, it contributes strongly to it: the ability of scientific theories to predict the future depends on the reach of their explanations, but no explanation has enough reach to predict the content of its own successors – or their effects, or those of other ideas that have not yet been thought of."
@DavidDeutschOxf, The Beginning of Infinity. ––Chapter 9: Optimism.
"There are no insuperable obstacles to transforming nature other than the laws of physics."
@DavidDeutschOxf
"The idea that circumstantial evidence and direct evidence are different in kind is a mistake. All evidence is circumstantial, and people can be mistaken by what they remember; they can be mistaken about what they see, [and] nobody can see causes anyway."
@DavidDeutschOxf
"It is inevitable that we face problems, but no particular problem is inevitable. We survive and thrive by solving each problem as it comes up. And, since the human ability to transform nature is limited only by the laws of physics, none of the endless stream of problems will ever constitute an impassable barrier.
So, a complementary and equally important truth about people and the physical world is that problems are soluble. By ‘soluble’ I mean that the right knowledge would solve them."
@DavidDeutschOxf, The Beginning of Infinity. —Chapter 3: The Spark.
"What makes a method creative? That's the AGI problem."
@DavidDeutschOxf
"One of the systematic defects of centrally Planning people's lives is that it ignores the costs to individuals of complying – which can add up to vast, unmetered costs to the economy, let alone to people's psychological well-being."
@DavidDeutschOxf
"Mixing two explanations to create a better explanation requires an additional act of creativity."
@DavidDeutschOxf, The Beginning of Infinity. ––Chapter 13: Choices.
"Our best theories are not only truer than common sense, they make far more sense than common sense does. We must take them seriously, not merely as pragmatic foundations for their respective fields but as explanations of the world.
And I believe that we can achieve the greatest understanding if we consider them not singly but jointly, for they are inextricably related."
@DavidDeutschOxf, The Fabric of Reality.
"We should develop many technologies and implement those that test out best. The current policy of strangling world economies, demonising technology, and impoverishing billions to pose as a virtue monoculture, is even more stupidly irresponsible than what we did to nuclear power."
@DavidDeutschOxf
