The Beginning of Infinity
Encyclopedia
The Beginning of Infinity is a popular science
book
by physicist David Deutsch
published in 2011.
of the 18th century as near the beginning of an infinite sequence of purposeful knowledge
creation. Knowledge here consists of information
with good explanatory function that is resistant to falsifiability
. Any real process physically possible is able to be performed provided the knowledge to do so has been acquired. The enlightenment set up the conditions for knowledge creation which disrupted the static societies that previously existed. These conditions are the valuing of creativity and the free and open debate that exposed ideas to criticism to reveal those good explanatory ideas that naturally resist being falsified due to their having basis in reality. Deutsch points to previous moments in history, such as Renaissance Florence
and Plato's Academy
in Golden age Athens, where this process almost got underway before succumbing to their static societies' resistance to change.
The source of intelligence is more complicated than brute computational power, Deutsch conjectures, and he points to the lack of progress in Turing test AI
programs in the six decades since the Turing test
was first proposed. What matters for knowledge creation, Deutsch says, is creativity
. New ideas that provide good explanations for phenomena require out side the box thinking as the unknown is not easily predicted from past experience. To test this Deutsch suggests an AI behavioural evolution program for robot locomation should be fed random numbers to see if knowledge spontaneously arises without inadvertent contamination from a human programmer's creative input. If it did Deutsch would concede that intelligence is not as difficult a problem as he currently thinks it is.
Deutsch sees quantum superposition
s as evidence for his many worlds quantum multiverse
, where everything physically possible occurs in an infinite branching of alternate histories. Deutsch argues that a great deal of fiction is close to a fact somewhere in the multiverse.
Deutsch extols the usefulness of the concept of fungibilty in quantum transactions, his universes and the particles they contain are fungible in their interactions across the multiverse structure. Deutsch explains that interference offers evidence for this multiverse phenomenom where alternate histories affect one another without allowing the passage of information, as they fungibly intertwine again shortly after experiencing alternate events. According to Deutsch, our perspective on any object we detect with our senses is just a single universe slice of a much larger quantum multiverse object.
Deutsch speculates on the process of human-culture development from a genetic
basis through to a memetic emergence
. This emergence lead to the creation of static societies where innovation occurs, but most of the time at a rate too slow for individuals to notice during their life times. It was only at the point where knowledge of how to purposefully create new knowledge through good explanations was acquired that the beginning of infinity took off during the enlightenment. His explanation for human creativity is that it evolved as a way to faithfully reproduce existing memes, as this would require creative intelligence to produce a refined rule set that would more faithfully reproduce the existing memes that happened to confer benefit (and all the other memes too). From this increased creative ability, the ability to create new memes emerged and humans thus became universal constructor
s and technological development accelerated.
Deutsch criticizes Jared Diamond
's resource luck theories as to why the west came to dominate the other continents outlined in his book Guns Germs & Steel. For Deutsch the sustained creation of knowledge could have arisen anywhere and lead to a beginning of infinity, it just happened to arise in Europe first. Deutsch extols the philosophical concept of Optimism
where although problems are inevitable, solutions will always exist provided the right knowledge is sought out and acquired.
University, has described the book in a New York Times review as exhilarating but flawed. Doug Johnstone writes in The Independent
that Deutsch's "examination of the multiverse theory of quantum physics is great. But when he tries to apply his ideas to aesthetics, cultural creativity and moral philosophy, he seems on shakier ground and is less commanding as a result." Peter Forbes also writing in The Independent has a more positive take on Deutsch's ideas and mode of thinking. The Economist
's review says The Beginning of Infinity is "equally bold" as Deutsch's previous book The Fabric of Reality
, and "its conclusions are just as profound. Mr Deutsch argues that decent explanations inform moral philosophy, political philosophy and even aesthetics. He is provocative and persuasive." Kirkus Review's take is the book is "A philosophical exploration of progress, surprisingly lucid and thought-provoking."
Popular science
Popular science, sometimes called literature of science, is interpretation of science intended for a general audience. While science journalism focuses on recent scientific developments, popular science is broad-ranging, often written by scientists as well as journalists, and is presented in many...
book
Book
A book is a set or collection of written, printed, illustrated, or blank sheets, made of hot lava, paper, parchment, or other materials, usually fastened together to hinge at one side. A single sheet within a book is called a leaf or leaflet, and each side of a leaf is called a page...
by physicist David Deutsch
David Deutsch
David Elieser Deutsch, FRS is an Israeli-British physicist at the University of Oxford. He is a non-stipendiary Visiting Professor in the Department of Atomic and Laser Physics at the Centre for Quantum Computation in the Clarendon Laboratory of the University of Oxford...
published in 2011.
Synopsis
Deutsch views the enlightenmentAge of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...
of the 18th century as near the beginning of an infinite sequence of purposeful knowledge
Knowledge
Knowledge is a familiarity with someone or something unknown, which can include information, facts, descriptions, or skills acquired through experience or education. It can refer to the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject...
creation. Knowledge here consists of information
Information
Information in its most restricted technical sense is a message or collection of messages that consists of an ordered sequence of symbols, or it is the meaning that can be interpreted from such a message or collection of messages. Information can be recorded or transmitted. It can be recorded as...
with good explanatory function that is resistant to falsifiability
Falsifiability
Falsifiability or refutability of an assertion, hypothesis or theory is the logical possibility that it can be contradicted by an observation or the outcome of a physical experiment...
. Any real process physically possible is able to be performed provided the knowledge to do so has been acquired. The enlightenment set up the conditions for knowledge creation which disrupted the static societies that previously existed. These conditions are the valuing of creativity and the free and open debate that exposed ideas to criticism to reveal those good explanatory ideas that naturally resist being falsified due to their having basis in reality. Deutsch points to previous moments in history, such as Renaissance Florence
Italian Renaissance
The Italian Renaissance began the opening phase of the Renaissance, a period of great cultural change and achievement in Europe that spanned the period from the end of the 13th century to about 1600, marking the transition between Medieval and Early Modern Europe...
and Plato's Academy
Platonic Academy
The Academy was founded by Plato in ca. 387 BC in Athens. Aristotle studied there for twenty years before founding his own school, the Lyceum. The Academy persisted throughout the Hellenistic period as a skeptical school, until coming to an end after the death of Philo of Larissa in 83 BC...
in Golden age Athens, where this process almost got underway before succumbing to their static societies' resistance to change.
The source of intelligence is more complicated than brute computational power, Deutsch conjectures, and he points to the lack of progress in Turing test AI
Ai
AI, A.I., Ai, or ai may refer to:- Computers :* Artificial intelligence, a branch of computer science* Ad impression, in online advertising* .ai, the ISO Internet 2-letter country code for Anguilla...
programs in the six decades since the Turing test
Turing test
The Turing test is a test of a machine's ability to exhibit intelligent behaviour. In Turing's original illustrative example, a human judge engages in a natural language conversation with a human and a machine designed to generate performance indistinguishable from that of a human being. All...
was first proposed. What matters for knowledge creation, Deutsch says, is creativity
Creativity
Creativity refers to the phenomenon whereby a person creates something new that has some kind of value. What counts as "new" may be in reference to the individual creator, or to the society or domain within which the novelty occurs...
. New ideas that provide good explanations for phenomena require out side the box thinking as the unknown is not easily predicted from past experience. To test this Deutsch suggests an AI behavioural evolution program for robot locomation should be fed random numbers to see if knowledge spontaneously arises without inadvertent contamination from a human programmer's creative input. If it did Deutsch would concede that intelligence is not as difficult a problem as he currently thinks it is.
Deutsch sees quantum superposition
Quantum superposition
Quantum superposition is a fundamental principle of quantum mechanics. It holds that a physical system exists in all its particular, theoretically possible states simultaneously; but, when measured, it gives a result corresponding to only one of the possible configurations.Mathematically, it...
s as evidence for his many worlds quantum multiverse
Multiverse
The multiverse is the hypothetical set of multiple possible universes that together comprise all of reality.Multiverse may also refer to:-In fiction:* Multiverse , the fictional multiverse used by DC Comics...
, where everything physically possible occurs in an infinite branching of alternate histories. Deutsch argues that a great deal of fiction is close to a fact somewhere in the multiverse.
Deutsch extols the usefulness of the concept of fungibilty in quantum transactions, his universes and the particles they contain are fungible in their interactions across the multiverse structure. Deutsch explains that interference offers evidence for this multiverse phenomenom where alternate histories affect one another without allowing the passage of information, as they fungibly intertwine again shortly after experiencing alternate events. According to Deutsch, our perspective on any object we detect with our senses is just a single universe slice of a much larger quantum multiverse object.
Deutsch speculates on the process of human-culture development from a genetic
Genetics
Genetics , a discipline of biology, is the science of genes, heredity, and variation in living organisms....
basis through to a memetic emergence
Emergence
In philosophy, systems theory, science, and art, emergence is the way complex systems and patterns arise out of a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions. Emergence is central to the theories of integrative levels and of complex systems....
. This emergence lead to the creation of static societies where innovation occurs, but most of the time at a rate too slow for individuals to notice during their life times. It was only at the point where knowledge of how to purposefully create new knowledge through good explanations was acquired that the beginning of infinity took off during the enlightenment. His explanation for human creativity is that it evolved as a way to faithfully reproduce existing memes, as this would require creative intelligence to produce a refined rule set that would more faithfully reproduce the existing memes that happened to confer benefit (and all the other memes too). From this increased creative ability, the ability to create new memes emerged and humans thus became universal constructor
Von Neumann universal constructor
John von Neumann's Universal Constructor is a self-replicating machine in a cellular automata environment. It was designed in the 1940s, without the use of a computer. The fundamental details of the machine were published in von Neumann's book Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata, completed in...
s and technological development accelerated.
Deutsch criticizes Jared Diamond
Jared Diamond
Jared Mason Diamond is an American scientist and author whose work draws from a variety of fields. He is currently Professor of Geography and Physiology at UCLA...
's resource luck theories as to why the west came to dominate the other continents outlined in his book Guns Germs & Steel. For Deutsch the sustained creation of knowledge could have arisen anywhere and lead to a beginning of infinity, it just happened to arise in Europe first. Deutsch extols the philosophical concept of Optimism
Optimism
The Oxford English Dictionary defines optimism as having "hopefulness and confidence about the future or successful outcome of something; a tendency to take a favourable or hopeful view." The word is originally derived from the Latin optimum, meaning "best." Being optimistic, in the typical sense...
where although problems are inevitable, solutions will always exist provided the right knowledge is sought out and acquired.
Reception
David Albert, a philosophy professor at ColumbiaColumbia
Columbia may refer to:-Places:* Columbia , a poetic name for the Americas, and the feminine personification of the United States of America* District of Columbia, the federal district in which the capital of the United States is located...
University, has described the book in a New York Times review as exhilarating but flawed. Doug Johnstone writes in The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
that Deutsch's "examination of the multiverse theory of quantum physics is great. But when he tries to apply his ideas to aesthetics, cultural creativity and moral philosophy, he seems on shakier ground and is less commanding as a result." Peter Forbes also writing in The Independent has a more positive take on Deutsch's ideas and mode of thinking. The Economist
The Economist
The Economist is an English-language weekly news and international affairs publication owned by The Economist Newspaper Ltd. and edited in offices in the City of Westminster, London, England. Continuous publication began under founder James Wilson in September 1843...
's review says The Beginning of Infinity is "equally bold" as Deutsch's previous book The Fabric of Reality
The Fabric of Reality
The Fabric of Reality is a book by physicist David Deutsch written in 1997. It expands upon his views of quantum mechanics and its implications for understanding reality....
, and "its conclusions are just as profound. Mr Deutsch argues that decent explanations inform moral philosophy, political philosophy and even aesthetics. He is provocative and persuasive." Kirkus Review's take is the book is "A philosophical exploration of progress, surprisingly lucid and thought-provoking."
See also
- The Fabric of RealityThe Fabric of RealityThe Fabric of Reality is a book by physicist David Deutsch written in 1997. It expands upon his views of quantum mechanics and its implications for understanding reality....
- Age of EnlightenmentAge of EnlightenmentThe Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...
- Scientific RevolutionScientific revolutionThe Scientific Revolution is an era associated primarily with the 16th and 17th centuries during which new ideas and knowledge in physics, astronomy, biology, medicine and chemistry transformed medieval and ancient views of nature and laid the foundations for modern science...
- Karl PopperKarl PopperSir Karl Raimund Popper, CH FRS FBA was an Austro-British philosopher and a professor at the London School of Economics...