David Deutsch
Overview
 
David Elieser Deutsch, FRS (born 1953 in Haifa
Haifa
Haifa is the largest city in northern Israel, and the third-largest city in the country, with a population of over 268,000. Another 300,000 people live in towns directly adjacent to the city including the cities of the Krayot, as well as, Tirat Carmel, Daliyat al-Karmel and Nesher...

, Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

) is an Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

i-British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 physicist
Physicist
A physicist is a scientist who studies or practices physics. Physicists study a wide range of physical phenomena in many branches of physics spanning all length scales: from sub-atomic particles of which all ordinary matter is made to the behavior of the material Universe as a whole...

 at the University of Oxford
University of Oxford
The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...

. He is a non-stipendiary Visiting Professor in the Department of Atomic and Laser Physics at the Centre for Quantum Computation
Centre for Quantum Computation
The Centre for Quantum Computation or CQC is an alliance of quantum information research groups at the University of Oxford. It was founded by Artur Ekert in 1998....

 (CQC) in the Clarendon Laboratory
Clarendon Laboratory
The Clarendon Laboratory, located on Parks Road with the Science Area in Oxford, England , is part of the Physics Department at Oxford University...

 of the University of Oxford. He pioneered the field of quantum computation by being the first person to formulate a description for a quantum Turing machine
Quantum Turing machine
A quantum Turing machine , also a universal quantum computer, is an abstract machine used to model the effect of a quantum computer. It provides a very simple model which captures all of the power of quantum computation. Any quantum algorithm can be expressed formally as a particular quantum...

, as well as specifying an algorithm designed to run on a quantum computer.
Quotations

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.

Our best theories are not only truer than common sense, they make more sense than common sense...

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.

The overwhelming majority of theories are rejected because they contain bad explanations, not because they fail experimental tests.

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. (Ch. 2)

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. (Ch.3)

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.

It is possible to build a virtual-reality generator whose repertoire includes every possible environment. (Ch. 6)

Since building a universal virtual-reality generator is physically possible, it must actually be built in some universes. (Ch. 6)

Quantum computation is... a distinctively new way of harnessing nature... It will be the first technology that allows useful tasks to be performed in collaboration between parallel universes. (Ch. 9)

 
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