Statistically there is a 50% chance that the world will end in this century!
'all evils are caused by insufficient
knowledge'
David Deutsch's 'Principle of Optimism'
in The Beginning of Infinity
Born in Haifa, Israel, David Deutsch was educated at
Cambridge and Oxford universities. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and a
professor of Physics at the University of Oxford, where he is a member of the
Centre for Quantum Computation. His many honors include the Institute of
Physics' Paul Dirac Prize and Medal. The author of The Fabric of Reality,
he lives in England.
I haven’t finish this book yet. Not easy for me. The theme of The
Beginning of Infinity is how the search for hard-to-vary explanations is
the source of all progress in science and in the rest of human affairs, and
that this progress may continue indefinitely, since all problems are soluble if
permitted by Physics. A Hard to vary explanation is one that if you change it a
bit it doesn't work and is not an explanation anymore!
This is a very optimistic book. Statistically
there is a 50% chance that the world will end in this century! Either by a meteorite hitting the earth, a plague, some new disease or some climate change. The only way to
prevent that to happen is trough knowledge. The reason for the extinction of
past civilizations was always been the lack of knowledge. This brings me to our
current world where we have some companies (Google, Amazon, etc…) that are
deeply into the finding of the new thing and many others that only want to
survive. In order to do that they cut cost’s, outsourced, do share buy back’s
etc….
The companies that are into the finding of new hard to vary explanations are
the ones that are doing something for the world. We need new knowledge if we
want to survive the next 100 years.
Humans are capable of an infinite amount of progress. We can improve things
without limit, and learn without limit. This covers not just material
improvement but also moral improvement. We have to invest in knowledge non
stop.
The way to go is to study forever.
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