# 2020-03-18 - Visa - Chat about The Beginning of Infinity [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t511rshmw1Y) Duration: 01:08:08 ## Transcript ### David Deutsch 00:00:00 - 00:00:04 Great. Great. Fantastic. All right. ### Visa 00:00:04 - 00:00:28 So I don't know what Lully has told you so far, but so I am, my name is Visa. I am from Singapore and my friends have been trying to get me to read your book for like a year now. And I finally, I got a copy in the mail like three days ago and I read it all at once a couple of days ago. I loved it. ### David Deutsch 00:00:28 - 00:00:29 Cool. ### Visa 00:00:29 - 00:02:05 And there's so much I have actually, I have so many things to talk to you about that I have to prioritize. And I think what's most interesting is that we have really different backgrounds. So I mean, I've read up as much as I could about all your interviews and stuff. And you know, it's, I really appreciate your scientific background and your theoretical physics and that stuff that I'm a curious lay person about, but I don't have a strong foundation in. So when I'm reading it, it makes sense to me, but you know, I don't have the kind of deep contexts to really fully appreciate it. But I mean, so okay, what I wanted to talk to you about is about optimism. And I find that, and I think that I found quite amusing is throughout your book, you use the word parochial a lot, which is, which is I enjoy that. And I was hoping to dig into that with you a little bit. So for some more context. So what people know me on Twitter for and on the Internet for is just kind of a, I'm a guy who tries to cultivate the sort of digital intellectual coffee house sort of space where I invite friends from all over the world, different perspectives, different interests. And I think we have similar interests in that I want to help accelerate progress in every sense. ### David Deutsch 00:02:05 - 00:02:06 Right. ### Visa 00:02:06 - 00:02:49 And reading your book, I find myself thinking, yes, I want more good explanations. I want more conjectures. I want to help foster a culture of criticism. And yeah, I just would like to hear from you about your experiences doing that, you know, kind of like talking to people about these ideas. Oh, I mean, okay, I guess what I would be most curious about is how did you, how do you think about, let's say, parochialism? Right. Where, what is your relationship with that? What is, is it a very deliberate choice, that word or, you know? ### David Deutsch 00:02:49 - 00:03:16 Okay, so parochialism, I've recently discovered that the word parochialism doesn't really exist in languages other than English. You know, it originally meant having something to do with the parish or with the local, religious authorities as opposed to the central religious authorities. So that's what it originally meant. ### Visa 00:03:16 - 00:03:17 Interesting. ### David Deutsch 00:03:17 - 00:03:23 And in English, it has come, and that word exists in many languages. ### Visa 00:03:23 - 00:03:24 Right. ### David Deutsch 00:03:24 - 00:04:09 But in English, it has come to have, and is much more often now used in a figurative sense, to mean having too narrow a horizon, especially having too narrow an intellectual horizon. And I should say that having a broad horizon is not a virtue in itself. It all depends on the problem situation. What I mean by parochial is a point of view or a way of thinking that is more narrow than the problem dictates. ### Visa 00:04:09 - 00:04:10 Right. ### David Deutsch 00:04:10 - 00:04:19 And one of my mottos is, all problems are parochial. Some solutions are universal. ### Visa 00:04:19 - 00:04:20 Interesting. ### David Deutsch 00:04:20 - 00:04:21 But most aren't. ### Visa 00:04:21 - 00:04:24 That's true, yeah. Interesting. ### David Deutsch 00:04:24 - 00:04:31 So I don't know if that's what you wanted, but that's how I came to use parochial a lot. ### Visa 00:04:31 - 00:06:00 I love it. I really like that you just said that having a broader horizon is not necessarily optimal, in a sense, right? Absolutely. Because I've encountered people over the years who, they almost seem to sometimes, you know, So they begin with the assumption that bigger and broader is better. And which again, like I think you pointed out, it's not, it's generally kind of often good. But like, I found it, I found people sometimes using it almost as a distraction from dealing with some particular problem that they want, that they would need solving. And then it's kind of like, yes, we have some problem that we need to solve, but because it's challenging or difficult or whatever, it becomes tempting to try and kind of frame the problem in a much more broad and vague way, such that it can't really be solved, maybe. But like, it's really cool that you mentioned that, because I think it's been challenging to find an intuitive way to convey that to people that sometimes, like, so the general case seems to be that people tend to frame their problems too narrowly, but there's also this kind of minority of people who do the opposite. And they, instead of addressing the challenges in front of them, they kind of get distracted from it and seek broader and broader perspectives. ### David Deutsch 00:06:00 - 00:06:30 Yes. I mean, it leads to infinity eventually. If you're, like if you're writing a computer program and you want a function to do so and so, and you think, oh, well, maybe it would be better if I made it more general. So I'll put another parameter in the function. And then you say, well, I could make it even more general. Then I'll abstract over something or other. And then I'll go into tools to help me abstract and so on. Eventually, the thing you actually wanted to do is add two numbers together. ### Visa 00:06:30 - 00:07:32 Yeah, that's true. And another thing that I wanted to discuss with you was your chapter on creativity. So I consider myself very much a fan of creativity. And I love that you also seem to appreciate that. You know, it's not just an artsy thing. It's like science is progressed by creative conjectures and having creative ideas. And yeah, I want to see more of that. And I find even very recently I've gotten into kind of boring and frustrating disagreements about, you know, kind of the building blocks of creativity. So some people feel that. So one of my riffs is that, you know, to some degree, all creativity is a remix or like, you know, like just rearranging what you have. But also you ask new questions that you couldn't conceive of before. ### David Deutsch 00:07:32 - 00:07:36 Yes, it could be a remix with variations. ### Visa 00:07:36 - 00:07:38 Yes, exactly. ### David Deutsch 00:07:38 - 00:07:45 And everything is based on existing things, but mixing around and varying them then to fit the problem. ### Visa 00:07:45 - 00:08:38 Correct. Yeah. Yeah. And it's again, I run into a similar problem again, where if the other person in the conversation, or, you know, if it's if we are workshopping, trying to solve a problem together and someone gets kind of fixated on what a creative solution would look like, I think it's one of those traps where people try too hard to stick to a certain frame or certain, how would you say, like, like an encapsulation of the challenge ahead of them. And I sense that you would have had experience persuading people to adjust their point of view to be more constructive. Have you? I'm projecting. ### David Deutsch 00:08:38 - 00:09:53 Maybe I generally speaking, I don't want to like, I don't want to influence people. I don't want to save the world or save people. I just have some ideas, some guesses about how the world works, how thinking works, how physics works and so on. And in some cases, I've thought about it a lot. And I think that some existing ideas about this are wrong. And so I'm like, but that's wrong because so and so. But then the object of a conversation, I think, is not primarily to persuade people. It's to exchange ideas. Yes. And not even necessarily. I mean, so persuading people is nice. Learning things from other people is nice. Yes. That does not exhaust the possibilities. That's not even the main purpose to me of a conversation. The main purpose is just the fun of exchanging ideas. ### Visa 00:09:53 - 00:09:59 And yeah, you could call that learning something, but it's not it's not necessarily, you know, what did you learn from this conversation? ### David Deutsch 00:09:59 - 00:10:06 Right. Yes. It's playful. Right. Yes. And yeah. So what. ### Visa 00:10:06 - 00:11:17 So even now, talking about this with you, like it's the perspective that you hold, it feels unusual. It feels like, you know, it's refreshing to talk with someone who kind of, you know, so like you said, I just have ideas. I'm not trying to change the world or trying to, you know, like not hankering for an outcome specifically. And I find that that's you know, I wish that were more common. And I find that it's not as common as I wish it were. So in the I think in the past, I used to approach a lot of conversations with, oh, why don't you see my point of view or why don't you do that? And I think over time, I have come to all right, you know, if where we are in this conversation, it's not moving, you know, it's not it's not we're not having fun. You know, it's not enjoyable. I should just find someone else and kind of keep looking for new people to play with basically. Yes. And I'm curious about how, you know, do you share that assessment that it's not very common? And do you have like a hypothesis for why it's not that common? I mean, you've written about it, but I love to hear it from you. ### David Deutsch 00:11:17 - 00:13:44 I think it's not very common. And I think the reason is like like all or nearly all errors to do with knowledge. It comes from aspects of wrong epistemology or wrong philosophy of knowledge that are embedded in culture in language and everything. So that we will take them for granted unless we really think about them. And, you know, this is what Karl Popper did for us. Right. He realized that that there there are various things that are deeply wrong with the prevailing theory of knowledge. So, for example, one thing that that would that would already do what you're talking about that would already make people make that mistake is what Popper calls the bucket theory. The bucket theory of the mind. The bucket. Oh, right. Yes. Of knowledge. Right. Right. Which is knowledge is a kind of fluid which one can transfer from one person to another. And then if you if you think of knowledge that way, it perverts everything. Everything you automatically start thinking of a conversation as being a task of transferring something from your mind into the other person's mind or maybe vice versa. But that's all it can be. And if it goes wrong, it's because either the fluid was polluted. The knowledge fluid was was polluted with bad stuff, or because the person receiving it is too stubborn to open their minds to it. Right. And this whole conception. Right. Completely defines away the fact that minds are creative and critical. So once you've removed. So this concept of knowledge as a fluid removes the idea that that that minds are both creative and critical when you've removed those two things. You can be trained to do something or not. And that's it. You can't you can't create. ### Visa 00:13:44 - 00:15:04 Yeah, that's a it's a and it's a very zero-sum kind of yes mindset. And yes, when I was when I was reading your book, I was struck by how, you know, at one point you even just casually mentioned like something as simple as a nuclear fusion reactor that our current knowledge doesn't allow us to do. And that was just kind of a throwaway point. And reading that, I found myself thinking, yes, like, that like, why do I not go about my day thinking nuclear fusion reactors are possible. It's just it doesn't even occur to me to think that. And, you know, it's, it's such a it's such a it's a trip to realize that I have already been kind of inhabiting these like limited spaces in my in my mind about what is possible and what is not. So it's an imagination deficit in a way. Right. Like, and so yes, I sense that. So again, it's like what we just described, which is most people kind of not being very creative in their conversations or thinking or not being very imaginative. That's kind of it's a it's something to be a little bit sad about maybe or something to be just kind of slightly disappointed by. ### David Deutsch 00:15:04 - 00:16:42 I'm slightly disappointed by but at the same time, what you pointed out is that for the vast majority of human history, it seems like most people were not capable of that probably or their creativity was funneled. They were severely disabled in that respect. I mean, never completely. Humans always have been creative and able to improve. But, you know, when you've when you've got the weight of a static society, right, bearing down on you. And when you do think of something you think you're the only person in the world ever to think that and therefore you must be wrong, you know, whatever. Yeah, then it's no wonder that that very little progress was made, but still even in such societies. Right. In the past, where they had, you know, inconceivably little infrastructure. I mean, cultural infrastructure to rest on. People still did make progress. Right. You know, somebody invented fire wasn't even a human. It was it was a previous species. Right. Some previous species. I don't know what species. And right. Somebody invented fire, which takes takes a hell of a lot of doing. Yeah. You have to be able to think very abstractly. Right. There's this terrible joke that goes something like the person who invented fire was probably burnt at the stake for it. ### Visa 00:16:42 - 00:17:25 Which is kind of a, you know, it's I think that is like so well, that's a joke. I think there's a general theme of I think even with, you know, Fritz Haber, right with like when he came up with ammonia, you simultaneously invent fertilizer and dynamite-like weapons, right? Chemical weapons. And it's kind of a, you know, as a as a scientist trying to create more knowledge and grappling with the implications of you can't entirely control how other people are going to use that knowledge. Right. Because if they don't have the cultural. What are your thoughts about that? About, you know, kind of some people call it like info hazards. ### David Deutsch 00:17:25 - 00:19:29 Yes, I think it's not at all unlikely that the person who invented fire regretted it. They were either, you know, I don't they probably wouldn't have invented burning at the stake by then, but they might have been killed for it. Right. And there would have been a non-trivial argument for because that person would have had to violate some tradition to do this. Yes. Yes. And the violating tradition would have been dangerous. Right. So it's like, you know, one person decides to mess around with it's thought that they first fire was made by varying a spear hardening technique. Where you rub the tip of the spear, you know, and somebody else might have might have decided to tame the local saber tooth tiger. Right. And that would have been a bad idea, as we now know. But they so all and fire is also dangerous. It's not obvious that the first two or three or 10 uses of fire didn't do harm. Right. They might have. Yeah. And so it's true of all knowledge. All creativity is dangerous. Yes. All knowledge is dangerous. Yes. And I mean, it seems trite to say it, but Right. It's worse than dangerous. It's suicidal. That's the only thing we could do that is guaranteed to kill. Okay. Right. Yeah. Because like the Easter Island problem, right? Like where. Yes. Yes. Without the culture of learning and solving new problems, eventually it's inevitable that some problem will be insoluble and crush you. Yes. Yes. ### Visa 00:19:29 - 00:21:05 Yeah. So it's funny because I'm thinking now about how, you know, so I've always been kind of paying lip service to the idea of creativity, like just very, very superficially. Oh, it's good to be creative. It's good to experiment and have fun like in a very like I just advocate for it because I like music and art and all those things. But like I almost had to had a moment where I had to step back and think about it where I realized that when you encourage people to be creative, you are in like two steps down the line, you're encouraging them to do things that may be taboo to do things that may be culturally incensed. So you're like you said, it's dangerous. So it's you're advocating for people to do dangerous things. And again, it's like that. And when I then recoil a little bit at that thought, that too is informed by this cultural infrastructure of, oh, you know, so like danger bad, right? But danger, danger bad in some senses, but without the ability to solve problems, that's bigger bad. So it's a it's a it's an interesting challenge. So the challenge as I see it is, how can we get better at teaching the world? I mean, not necessarily, you know, like, like forcing people but like demonstrating that small danger in creativity is good, basically. Right, like it's a it's a challenge. ### David Deutsch 00:21:05 - 00:22:37 Yes. One thing is that people should be free to choose how much danger. Yes, yes. So you know, if you're if you've got a lot of money, like if you're a billionaire, you can you can either like, invest your money, make sure that your business is is is secure. Secure it, you know, in its supply chain and in its customer base and so on. And then eventually sell your stake and retire and so on. Or you can decide to go to Mars. Right. Yes. Right. Yes. And even though you're a billionaire, you have to borrow a lot more money so that you risk you risk being ruined financially, you risk. Right. Yes. And I don't, you know, I don't want to give people advice as to where to put themselves on the spectrum of risk. Right. And I'm glad when people are, you know, they're not going to be able to do that. I'm glad when people behave optimistically. But I'm aware that they are taking a risk and I'm ready for it to go wrong. Yes. Yeah. ### Visa 00:22:37 - 00:23:22 Yeah, that is true. And yeah, it's this thing. So one of my friends asked me to ask you about coercion, like in the general sense, I think his specific question was, how do we avoid self coercion? But I'm also thinking about it in terms of like what you just said in that you don't want to tell someone else how much risk they should take because then if it doesn't work out, then they'll they'll I mean, it's you know, they'll blame you or you know, if you're not going to take the risk, you're going to be the one to blame. Yeah, I mean, it's you know, they'll blame you or it wasn't really their informed decision. And it just yes, it doesn't feel correct in some way. I'm kind of projecting my feelings. But yeah, I sense that you have the same instinct. ### David Deutsch 00:23:22 - 00:25:50 Yeah, yeah. Well, self coercion, like, that's a big issue. That's like viewed viewed as non parochially as possible. Right. Self coercion. It covers all unhappiness. Wow. So well, with the if you've got an incurable disease, then self coercion is not although it's true that you're also self coercing in that case, right, you also need techniques of medical science and so on. And if the knowledge might not be there, you're going to die. Right. But that's that's not the typical human problem. Especially nowadays. Right. The typical human problem is is psychological. Right. Yes. And therefore the typical human unhappiness, which isn't caused by other humans creativity, which still happens a lot in the world. Yeah, but the unhappiness which is not caused by the creativity of other humans chasing you trying to hurt you. Right. Is caused by self coercion. And so I don't know whether I can say very much about this. I should one thing I can say is that realizing this is liberating. Yes. If you think if you're in a situation where you're unhappy or you think you're no good as a person, you think you can't succeed. And you don't realize that these prefixes you think you think right. Right. Right. That I just said you did what you the way you conceive of it is that I'm no good as a person. I'm not going to succeed. I haven't got it. what it takes and so on. Once you realize that those are theories. Right. And there's nothing there's nothing there's no authority in theories. They might be true or false. Right. They can all be criticized. Right. And any bad theory can be improved by thinking. Yes. Yes. If you're prepared to expand your horizon to include that possibility. ### Visa 00:25:50 - 00:26:45 Right. Yeah, I think it's accurate to say that. So when a person experiences self loathing, so they experience it as negative, just seemingly negative feelings out of out of nowhere. But like there is a part of the self doing the loathing of the rest of the self. And the and the part that's doing the loathing is the authority that has been granted. It is some part of your mind that you've granted authority and you should question those. Exactly. You should question that authority as with all authorities. Right. Yeah. Exactly. That's so true. That's very cool. Yeah. Another thing I kind of just wanted to share with you was I was reading this part about how you pointed out that, you know, so people often describe, oh, space is uninhabitable and hostile to humanity. And you pointed out that, oh, you know, so is most of the most of the earth. ### David Deutsch 00:26:45 - 00:27:02 Most of the earth. Yes. Most of it is hostile and we have made it more habitable. And, you know, whether or not a space is hostile is a function of the knowledge that the person has or people have in terms of how do you get water? How do you get power? How do you get all those things? Yes. ### Visa 00:27:02 - 00:29:02 I wanted to share with you that this seems to be also true for cultural knowledge. So the example I recently encountered was, do you know Trevor Noah? So Trevor Noah is this he's a South African. I have a book. He's a South African comedian. And so he was he was born to a black mom and a white dad in South Africa when apartheid was happening. And his observation is very interesting. He observed that, you know, because he's he doesn't fit into one of the dominant groups that is around him. And so like people would not know how to treat him. And like they would be they would treat him with hostility until he can speak their language. And the moment he speaks their language, suddenly he has the cultural knowledge. He can speak their shibboleths, right? He can speak their language like what they like. And now they welcome him and they love him. And it's you know, that's why he's a comedian. And it's how he charms people and stuff. And yeah, so the ability to charm a hostile audience is is knowledge the same. It feels to me it's almost the same way like knowing how to get water out of the ground, for example, kind of helps people survive. Yeah, which is such a again for me that was a trip like really the and it you know, I when I was reading your book, I was thinking all of these things seemingly different things they all fit into this set they are like branches on the same tree of explanations and conjectures, right? Or conjectures, just like, how do I get people to like me or treat me fairly? Like, what is it? What is the theory of who I am? And how do I and it's the same method of figuring stuff out? Which I find very... By the way, sorry, go on. No, what do you think? ### David Deutsch 00:29:02 - 00:30:33 Yeah, well, it's partly it's a two way street to a large extent that a culture can be more or less amenable to welcoming deviant people. Right? Yes, that's true. Including foreigners, people who don't speak the language, or people who don't understand the customs or whatever. Yeah. The I think it's so being welcoming to other people, outsiders, different, yes, part of general rationality and so on. I think it's not it's not an accident that the most successful societies are also the most tolerant ones or vice versa. Right? The ones who have somehow solved the problem of how to accommodate deviants. Right? Yeah, yeah, it's true. How to. So well, the other you know, the big example is the United States, which had its melting pot policy. Right. But also Britain is a tremendous mixture of different cultures. Right? And I don't know much about Singapore. But I think Singapore is ... ### Visa 00:30:33 - 00:31:14 Yes. Yeah, very much so. Yes, it is. I mean, people have, you know, that's that's friction. But, you know, it's I think it's a constructive friction overall, like, it does feel like over the decades, people have gotten better at kind of interfacing with each other. I mean, you always hear stories from people who don't get along. But in general, I think, you know, just having more people with different backgrounds and different points of view and different conceptualizations of the issues that we face, it seems to be a net positive. And it seems to be working on generally. ### David Deutsch 00:31:14 - 00:31:29 Yes. I mean, as I said, it's, it's definitely a net positive in itself. But the overall culture must make this possible. It must allow. Yeah, the benefit to be obtained. ### Visa 00:31:29 - 00:33:25 I think that I'm very excited about is so I like to think of myself as someone who grew up on the internet. And the internet is almost kind of a, you know, it's a wild and crazy, chaotic space. And the interesting thing is, there are new people coming online who weren't online not too long ago. So for example, I have some friends in several different countries in Africa in like, in Nigeria and Kenya in South Africa. And the interesting thing to me is, they are generally very young and they are very optimistic about politics. I mean, again, like when I say this now, I can imagine someone showing up in the comments saying like, you know, they'll always be people who, you know, like you said, you pointed out very much so that, you know, we will never solve all problems, because there will always be new problems. And there'll always be frictions and all those things. But it's so refreshing just to encounter someone who, you know, is kind of new to the political process. In a sense, like in terms of like, like being like in your early 20s and new to contemplating how a better form of governance maybe can lead to more like like which is again related to what you're saying about, like cultural infrastructure, which is just it's it and me from halfway across the planet when I witnessed these people being optimistic in contrast with let's say, people from maybe older. Countries that have gotten a bit more pessimistic maybe like just the I guess what I'm getting at is the simple presence of an optimistic person just being optimistic without even trying to persuade you of anything but just being optimistic in and of themselves is so powerful to experience and like I feel like reading your book I got some of that as well. Just witnessing kind of how you think. Right. ### David Deutsch 00:33:26 - 00:33:30 Thanks, thanks. It's a very nice thought in general and about my book. Thank you. ### Visa 00:33:30 - 00:33:59 Yeah, so I am eager to share it with more of my friends because I think that yeah, it's so much better than telling people what they should do. Because if like, you know, you get it, right? It's like so the, like you mentioned the bucket analogy, I think the different metaphor is the fire analogy. Have you heard that one? Like the kind of ... ### David Deutsch 00:33:59 - 00:34:00 Don't think so. ### Visa 00:34:00 - 00:34:15 So I think someone said, I can't remember who I feel like there's multiple people who've been quoted saying this and they said like education is not the filling of a bucket but the lighting of a fire. Meaning like so you ignite their curiosity and then they will go on to ... ### David Deutsch 00:34:15 - 00:34:23 Yeah, I mean, it's more like trying to avoid putting out the fire and obviously the fire is already there. ### Visa 00:34:23 - 00:34:24 Yes, they're born with it. ### David Deutsch 00:34:26 - 00:34:28 Children will be unable to learn to speak. ### Visa 00:34:29 - 00:34:30 Right. ### David Deutsch 00:34:30 - 00:34:34 You know, you can't say go put out the trash. ### Visa 00:34:34 - 00:34:35 Right. ### David Deutsch 00:34:36 - 00:34:40 To a child who hasn't yet learned what go and put and trash mean. ### Visa 00:34:40 - 00:34:49 Yes. And yet nobody has to force their children to learn language. ### David Deutsch 00:34:49 - 00:34:50 Yes. Yes. ### Visa 00:34:51 - 00:34:52 They learn but ... ### David Deutsch 00:34:52 - 00:34:55 The fire is already burning. ### Visa 00:34:56 - 00:35:00 Young children learn language at like 20 words per day at peak. ### David Deutsch 00:35:01 - 00:35:02 Yeah. ### Visa 00:35:03 - 00:35:15 And that plus the grammar plus the meanings plus the connotations plus the cultural significance of everything. What you're allowed to say what you're not allowed to say they're learning all that along with those 20 words per day. ### David Deutsch 00:35:16 - 00:35:25 Astounding. And nobody's there's no curriculum. There are no standardized tests or maybe they do have them now. But that would be terrible. ### Visa 00:35:25 - 00:35:27 Yeah. Yeah. ### David Deutsch 00:35:29 - 00:35:42 And it just happens. And so when you say, you know, the role of the teacher is to light that fire. Right. First, fire is already there. The first thing is so don't put out the fire. Right. ### Visa 00:35:42 - 00:38:54 So it's yeah. And it is it does seem unfortunate that we haven't yet. I mean, yeah, it's how you look at it. Right. So on one hand, I think, oh, it's unfortunate that we still seem to put out a lot of fires. But on the other hand, like, you know, most of human history was like that. And we are seeing The Beginning of Infinity. Right. Basically. Yes. Which is, which is exciting. And yeah, so I wanted to also ask you kind of I mean, so I have some notes here. I have stuff to ask you. One of the things I wanted to ask was, I want to know what's it like inside your head, which is, you know, it's this super vague question that's kind of not technically. It's like a it's not solvable, but you know, like I'll give you an analogy, which is so I play the guitar, I play music. I'm not very good at it. I'm pretty decent at it. But when I see a virtuoso, like a real musical genius performing, I can see that they don't think about what they're doing. Like it's and I see that the way their hands move, I can tell that, you know, they have a feeling and the feeling is expressed through the fingers and into the sound waves and emotions and whatever. And I can kind of approximate because like when I practice, I get glimpses of that. I'm like, oh, I kind of feel I feel like I'm getting across a message. I have to think a little bit. And sometimes I have moments of flow and I feel like, oh, OK, so that's what I can try to imagine what it would be like to be so fluent that I don't have to think at all. And I'm just flowing sort of. And I know when I was reading your just even your first chapter and I was reading about like just how you were laying out kind of a history of philosophy in a sense or history of knowledge and kind of the misconceptions and how like, you know, I was I was surprised even at how confidently you were able to say things like, let me pick up a sentence like we never know any data before interpreting it through theories. I underlined that. And I'm like, oh, that's that's true. Like that sounds like so when I read a sentence like that, I'm like, that's that's an assertion. And then I read it and like thinking about it. I'm like, that makes sense, though. And then I have to process it for a while. I'm like, yeah, that's true. And it's so interesting to, you know, so I guess I'm curious about your experience as a thinker, as a writer, as a person who makes utterances, right, or conjectures. And, you know, I just I just read this Paul Graham essay very recently where he was talking about how essayists seem very confident. But the reason that they're confident is not kind of born out of like false bluster, but basically because they've thought about it a lot and they've kind of like they've checked out all the possible ways in which they might be wrong and then they remove those wrongs. And so by the time they publish it, what you see is that one sentence. But what you don't see is all the what if they were wrong? ### Visa 00:38:54 - 00:39:13 What if like all the questioning? And I kind of want to hear you hear your experience with that, like with conjectures and criticism and like your own personal experience like, you know, I guess I would start is do you remember your earliest questions as a child even? Like, what were your. How did you start? ### David Deutsch 00:39:14 - 00:40:31 I do remember some early questions. I don't know whether they are very illuminating. By the way, I think there's a there's a theory of the mind. Right. Of consciousness and so on, which is which highlights self-awareness. In fact, some people some people even use self-awareness as the definition of consciousness and so on. And then they get very surprised when a dolphin can recognise its own reflection in a mirror. You know, like, oh, my God, dolphins, dolphins are the same as we do. I don't think. I don't think that thinking about one's thinking is often very helpful. I mean, there are special situations where it is, but I think this thing about being in the flow that you mentioned. That happens when you are thinking about the subject, the music or the problem. Right. Or whatever it is you're thinking about. Yes. That is occupying your consciousness. And you are not there. ### Visa 00:40:32 - 00:40:36 Right. Yes. Yes. That's that's so that's so funny. Yeah, that's true. ### David Deutsch 00:40:37 - 00:41:23 So and I think children tend to be like that unless they're brought up against a thing that forces them to think about themselves. So I don't know what one of the first things I remember is I had just been taught I'd previously been taught to count up to 10. And this was in nursery school. And then we taught how to how to go up to 100. And I remember being driven home in the car and in the car thinking. Does this go on for or not? ### Visa 00:41:23 - 00:41:24 That's wonderful. ### David Deutsch 00:41:24 - 00:42:08 And of course, you know, a lot of mathematicians have thought that question. And I didn't solve it. And I remember thinking about it. And then I well, I don't know. Maybe I did solve it. I came to the conclusion that the answer is yes. It does go on forever. But I didn't have really an argument about that. I suppose it was just that having seen how you could go from 10 to 100, I didn't see how that could stop. Right. Why the same thing? But apparently, Archimedes never quite dared to say. ### Visa 00:42:08 - 00:42:18 Oh, yeah, I read that. I read the part where you mentioned that he seemed to not want to universalize. Yes. With the notation. Yes. Yeah. What does that mean? ### David Deutsch 00:42:18 - 00:42:54 He invented these bigger and bigger huge numbers. But it was always by this ad hoc parochial method. Yeah. Which could have been extended infinitely, but he just didn't. Yeah. So interesting. Yeah. So I think I say in the book, I think he may have been wanting an authoritative permission from the culture or something. Yeah. And the culture did not like that kind of infinity. ### Visa 00:42:54 - 00:43:40 Oh, this is beautiful. I remember. So, you know, I'm a huge Richard Feynman fan as well. And I was I was almost shocked a little bit when I saw that you pointed out that Feynman made a mistake when he was describing kind of like the future of physics and that, you know, and one of Feynman's quotes is kind of like the phrase that's tattooed in my brain is, you know, the first rule is you shouldn't fool yourself and you're the easiest person to fool. Right. He says that. And then he goes on to make that kind of almost casual mistake. That's such a gigantic mistake in a sense. And then I find myself I'm writing in the margins. Oh, no. Like if Feynman himself was not able to resist that. What chance do I have? ### David Deutsch 00:43:40 - 00:44:01 But, you know, it's it was well, I think just because he made a mistake doesn't mean he wasn't able to resist it. Maybe, you know, Feynman's works are really just transcripts of stuff he said. Right. How do you know that he didn't change his mind the next day? ### Visa 00:44:02 - 00:44:40 That's true. That's that's true. Yeah. So we shouldn't be trying to not make mistakes. We should be making interesting mistakes and absolutely make more and more new and more interesting mistakes. And I love the way you put that. What if we called theories misconceptions? Because everything is a misconception. And we just have slightly better and better misconceptions. Yes. Yeah, that is that is something. That's very cool. And better problems. Yeah. So what would you say is the problem on your mind right now when you're in the shower or when you're going about you're working on a new book? ### David Deutsch 00:44:40 - 00:44:48 Oh, yes, I am. I'm working on the like what will be the third in the trilogy. ### Visa 00:44:48 - 00:44:49 Nice. ### David Deutsch 00:44:50 - 00:46:05 It I mean, I don't know how long it's going to take. It always takes longer than I think. Oh, yeah. My previous two books took hell of a lot longer than I thought. So I can't tell when we'll be finished. But it will talk more about. Issues of the mind and how the mind works. I mean, you know, we don't know how the mind works, but right. Issues arising in psychology and how psychology is connected to physics and computation and there'll be stuff about constructors and so on, other things that I have thought about since then. All those things raise fascinating problems like, constructors, for example. There's the technical theory of them, which is very challenging. And then there's the application of the universal constructor. And then there's what the constructor tells us, what constructor theory tells us about knowledge and so on. And then how it will affect the how the universal constructor will affect the economy. And how can whether constructor theory will be at all useful in making real constructors. Right. And so on. ### Visa 00:46:05 - 00:46:18 Yeah. For my. I. Go ahead. Like for my layperson friends and for me, actually, how would you describe what a universal constructor is? Just casually. ### David Deutsch 00:46:18 - 00:47:47 Well, a universal constructor, the idea, I think, was invented by John von Neumann back in the 1940s or something. It is a machine. You could say a robot. All right. Which can be programmed. So it's a programmable robot. Right. That can be programmed to convert some stuff into some other stuff. Right. So it can convert, let's say, a pile of metal and plastic into a car. Right. That would be an example of a construct programmable constructor. It's important. Programmable is important here because you can just have a constructor as well. But the real power of the theory comes with programmable constructors and then a universal constructor, which is a programmable constructor that can convert anything into anything that's permitted by the where the transition is permitted by the laws of physics. Right. So if it's if the laws of physics allow it, it can do it. Yeah. And usually a universal constructor would do an arbitrary task by first building another constructor, which builds another constructor. Right. Right. As this book by Larry Niven, where he where he describes this as the problem of how to build the tools to make the tools to make the tools. Right. Right. Interesting. Yeah. ### Visa 00:47:47 - 00:48:35 Oh, I just randomly remembered that. So my wife was in China for like several years ago for some trade fair. And like this, they have these massive trade fairs where they do sell those huge like factory robots that make the robots that make other things. And it's just like she was she was describing her sense of like how her mind was blown when you see the objects that you see a can of soup. And you're like, oh, I wonder how the can of soup was made. And you visualize, oh, it's in a factory. The cans are coming out. But you don't think you don't naturally think what made the thing that makes the cans of soup. Right. And I guess a universal constructor would be able to produce those things at will for like a space colony or something and just whatever is required. ### David Deutsch 00:48:35 - 00:49:37 Yes. Right. From scratch. That's the thing. When you get to a universal constructor, you have this jump to universality. Where suddenly the repertoire, instead of being a large repertoire, like, you know, for example, a giant machine that makes robots. Right. And you can program it like a different kind of robot, but it'll make it out of it won't go and mine the raw materials. Yeah. And so on. But a universal constructor will be able to do that. It will be able, you know, if necessary, it'll be it'll be able to build a rocket which will go to an asteroid, which will mine the rare elements, which will bring them back, you know, so on. What I find very interesting is. The difficulty of doing a particular task then becomes only once you've got a universal constructor, the only difficulty is to write the program. Right. So everything becomes programming. ### Visa 00:49:37 - 00:49:47 Right. Right. And then once once everyone is once everyone is very skilled at programming, then it's what you can imagine to be the most active use. ### David Deutsch 00:49:47 - 00:51:18 Yeah. Well, I don't think you can you can be infinitely skilled at. I mean, there's there'll there'll always be scope for more and more and more skilled. Yeah. In the program, more and more knowledge. Yeah. How to how to solve different manufacturing tasks. But when you've written a program for the universal constructor, that's it. Whether you want one of the item or a trillion, as long as you own the raw materials, you know, if you program it to steal someone else's raw materials, there'll be trouble. Right. If you own that asteroid, then there is once you've programmed how to make one of the objects. Right. You've programmed how to make any number. So we have an intuition about what manufacturing is. We'll have to change. Oh, for sure. Yeah. Up to up to the time of the universal constructor. Wanting more of something always meant more effort, right? More human effort. Right. There's it's you have to have the theoretical knowledge as well. You as it were, the program, you know, how to do things, but it always required human effort as well. Once there's a universal constructor, then making one is the same as making a million. Yeah. And this will completely change the nature of the economy in ways that we totally can't predict at the moment. But it would be amazing. ### Visa 00:51:19 - 00:52:10 Right. What I find myself thinking is what you're describing. So if we if we remove the universal aspect of the constructor, like, you know, the present day status quo, like to someone from 20,000 years ago, like our current circumstances would seem like a very grand constructor made up of organizations and people and, you know, supply chains and, you know, you put in an order. And then once once we had emails, for example, like so before emails and after emails, like the human scale constructor suddenly had like a big leap forward, like suddenly you can put in orders quicker. And yeah, so this sounds like basically singularity stuff, right? Like it gets to the point where. Yeah, I don't actually believe in the singularity, but it doesn't matter. ### David Deutsch 00:52:11 - 00:52:14 Exponential growth is mind boggling enough. ### Visa 00:52:15 - 00:52:54 Right. Yeah. Functionally. Yeah. Yeah. Even I think there's a quote that said something like, was it from you? I think I was just reading your book. So as probably you said that people, yeah, it was you. People who can't imagine what they would do if more than two times their income. Like, you kind of know what you would do if you had a salary. That's a quote from David Friedman, actually. Right. And then if you had 10 times your income, you would have to fundamentally reimagine what you would do. It's not just like, yeah. So if I double my income, I would renovate my kitchen. I would, you know, I have stuff in my mind. But if I had like 10, like a hundred times more, I have to, oh my God, like, why am I going to have to re-conceptualize everything? ### David Deutsch 00:52:55 - 00:52:57 Yes, it might not be so good. ### Visa 00:52:57 - 00:53:36 Yeah, yeah, that's true. That's true. It can be a curse. Well, that's actually that's actually an interesting. I wonder if I wonder if there are parallels between that and when we go all the way back to when we're talking about like fire and new technology, where because in both cases, you know, so whether it's more money or new knowledge, like having new it's like having the new ability to do something you couldn't do before. And like, how do you it's dangerous, I guess, to figure out what's going to happen. Oh, like now you may have made yourself a target, a target in some way. Right. ### David Deutsch 00:53:37 - 00:54:15 Yes. Well, if you got there by solving problems that you had, then you will already have the kind of mental infrastructure to know what to do with the hundred times the income. Right. Right. Yes. You've got that hundred times the income for a reason. It's because you have a project and, you know, and so on. Right. But if you're not if you like if you inherited it. Yeah. If you if you inherited more money than you know what to do with, then it's dangerous. I mean, people do get unhappy from things that sometimes they get happy. But it's volatile. ### Visa 00:54:15 - 00:54:39 They get unhappy. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. It's volatile. Right. It's yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's unpredictable. And by the way, I think this is maybe going off the tangent, but I read recently about Silicon Valley billionaires keeping their children away from tech. I you know, not letting them have mobile phones and that kind of thing. ### David Deutsch 00:54:39 - 00:55:01 I think that's a terrible idea. One of the great difficulties of being rich and having children. Right. Is is bringing the children onto the on ramp of how to live happily with a lot of money. They might be able to do it because, as I said, they got there for a reason. Ah, they need help. ### Visa 00:55:02 - 00:55:08 That's true. And the absolute opposite of giving them help is keeping them away ### David Deutsch 00:55:08 - 00:56:16 From it, keeping them away from the money, the technology, and so on. And you know, I think in the past. When there have been very rich people and sometimes there have been dynasties of rich people like the Rothschilds or Royal families. At other times. Yeah. Well, no, that's different because they were solving a different kind of problem. But if we just talk about people in. Wealthy, industrialized. In the economy. Right. Self-made billionaires or whatever. OK. Sometimes the dynasty thing worked, but more often the offspring of the very rich person didn't know what to do. They couldn't continue the rich person's work, nor could they do something new. Right. And so this is the stereotype of them like wasting their money. ### Visa 00:56:16 - 00:56:20 And then the generation after that is back to normal. Interesting. ### David Deutsch 00:56:22 - 00:57:16 And if you wanted to, if you I think, you know, far be it from me to tell people what to do. But I think that if you're a super rich person and you have children. One of the major challenges facing you is to give your children the means of being rich and happy, which means being rich and creative. Right. Right. And being rich can, if you don't have that knowledge, if you're not creative, it can make you kind of not able to make progress. It doesn't look like a poor person who is unable to be creative will stop. But a rich kid who is unable to be creative will just be unhappy. ### Visa 00:57:16 - 00:57:53 Right. Right. That is an interesting way of framing it. I like. Yeah, that's interesting. It's slightly surprising that this isn't a solved problem in a way. Like, you know, like when you when you so they have like financial planners and stuff. Right. When you make that much money, people come to you and they say, you know, here's how you manage, like somebody should be. OK. And here's like the concerns for people with this amount of net worth. Like, you know, I'm sure they have like private tutors and stuff like for their. ### David Deutsch 00:57:53 - 00:58:00 Yeah. Well, yes. But the trouble is they have conventional educational theory. Ah, theory of the mind. ### Visa 00:58:00 - 00:58:31 Oh, dear. And so they will think of the problem in completely the wrong terms. Mm hmm. That's true. Wow. I like how quickly you that that was obvious to you. That's true. Yeah, that makes sense. That is unfortunate because, like you said way earlier on, you know, if we had creative, wealthy people, then they would be well positioned to accelerate us towards. Yes. Right. That is it. That is interesting. ### David Deutsch 00:58:31 - 00:58:41 We do have some, luckily. Yeah. But they are they are an enormous public good. And we could do a lot more. ### Visa 00:58:41 - 00:59:29 That's true. That is interesting. Wow. That's a that's a lot to think about. That is, you know, I think one of the last things that I haven't gotten to ask you about yet that's in my notes is about the idea of rational versus anti-rational memes, which, yes, let me try and irrational. I like to say, yeah. Yeah. So let me try and make sure you're right. Yeah. Let me let me try and make sure that I understand it properly. So my and I'm now I'm going from memory here. But so an anti-rational meme is something that is an idea that's sticky, meaning that people who receive that idea keep it and it makes them act not in their interests. Is that what would you correct? ### David Deutsch 00:59:29 - 01:02:02 So both rational and anti-rational memes by being memes, memes means that they're sticky. That's already in the thing. Rational and anti-rational memes achieve their stickiness by kind of opposite methods. The anti-rational memes achieve their stickiness by depriving the holder of the ability to criticise them. So there's a kind of authority. Yes, yes, that's right. It sets up an authority, but it sets up an entrenched authority so that so that thoughts that go along in the direction of maybe I should behave differently, always get stuck, always get diverted into, no, I can't know that's bad. No, no, I'm a bad I would be a bad person or whatever. I will go to hell. Right. And that kind of thought. And because the thoughts get diverted into that kind of channel, they can't get round to criticising the thing that says, do this behave in this way or don't behave in this way, whatever the meme says. So and that's how and of course, being a meme, it has to, among other things, not only does it prevent you from criticising, but it compels you to install the meme into other people. Yes. Yeah. So otherwise, it wouldn't be a meme if it was just in if it was just in one mind, it would just be a hang up. Right. Right. To be a meme, it's got to be transferable to other people. And usually we only call something a meme if it's readily transferable into lots of other people. Right. A rational meme is is the opposite. It's one that survives criticism, not disables criticism. It's one which thrives in a critical environment because, as it were, because it's true, because it's useful. So people adopt it because they can improve their lives by using that idea or acting on that behaviour or whatever. So ... ### Visa 01:02:03 - 01:02:39 Well, I've interrupted you, but no, no, this is what I want to understand. So the difference between anti-rational. I mean, so OK, so anti-rational memes have that kind of self protective mechanism. The meme has a protective mechanism and it spreads, whereas the rational meme welcomes criticism because and I guess the so the thing about the rational meme is it has a certain proof of work in a way. There's something within that meme that persists despite criticism. Right. So it has to be. I mean, yes, like I think you mentioned something about. ### David Deutsch 01:02:41 - 01:03:49 It's not even despite criticism. The criticism clarifies what helps to correct the errors. Otherwise, that if you just try to copy a meme blindly without criticism, right, then mistakes will happen. Yeah, yeah. And eventually it will not be the same meme. If the meme is if a rational meme reproduces faithfully because it's being criticised and the criticism itself is what makes the meme sticky, as you put it. Right. Right. It's what makes it unchanged. Otherwise, it would gradually change. And for an anti-rational meme, what makes it sticky is that criticism is disabled. Right. And so anti-rational memes do evolve by kind of dumb evolution in the same way that genes evolve. Anti-rational memes do not stay the same for thousands of generations. Right. And that's right. ### Visa 01:03:49 - 01:05:21 What you just described, it's almost intrinsically caused by optimism. Right. Because something that evolves through dumb replication should not be. I mean, I don't know. It feels it feels I mean, I need to. I'm sure if you work out the math in a way or like, you know, you game it out. Yes. There might be some circumstances where maybe the anti-rational memes overpower the rational memes by sheer volume, maybe. But as long as the anti-rational memes survive, like eventually they will they should win out. It feels it feels like rational memes survive. Yes. Yes. Right. Yeah, that's that's a yeah, that's reminding me of how I once had a funny thought, which is that a lot of people play act their optimism, meaning they aren't fundamentally optimistic or they haven't like, thought about whether or not they're really optimistic. It's just that they feel that being pessimistic is not nice, like socially. And so they feel like I should carry. I should say optimistic sounding things like, oh, you should. You should be hopeful for the future, but you don't really believe in it. It's not true. It's not grounded in honest belief. And it's always funny to encounter these things where, oh, like, if that's true, then you should be optimistic. It's just it's like this, therefore that it's like logical thing. Have you encountered that like kind of a you're talking to somebody and then you realize that they're not actually optimistic until. ### David Deutsch 01:05:22 - 01:06:10 I'm not sure whether I have either way. I think it's much more common for people to be cynical. Right. In other words, artificial pessimism. Kind of right. They're not really pessimistic. They just like the stance being pessimistic. Right. I guess certain politicians have an artificial optimism. And because in that context, cynicism is usually not beneficial to a politician. Sometimes they are, you know, if you if you have prophets of doom, they can be cynical and be popular because of it. I don't know. ### Visa 01:06:10 - 01:06:53 Mm hmm. That's interesting. Wow. OK. I think I have exhausted most of my of my questions. OK, cool. And I wonder if there's any anything that I can kind of get. Have like a like overarching theme. I guess I guess the big picture thing I wanted to talk to you about was optimism and parochialism. And yeah, I feel like we've addressed those things. I guess what like if I can get you to kind of have like a closing remarks on parochialism in the world and, you know, like for whoever watches. But what's like your. ### David Deutsch 01:06:53 - 01:07:19 Yeah, well, like I said, we let's not put ourselves in the position of telling people not to be parochial or whatever. Yeah, it shouldn't. Or even telling people that it's OK not to be parochial or whatever. Yeah, yeah. I'm just encouraged by this conversation. You said at the beginning that you like talking to people. ### Visa 01:07:19 - 01:07:20 Coming from different. ### David Deutsch 01:07:21 - 01:07:31 Intellectual directions, I forget how you put it. You put it very nicely. Yeah, we have different. I think you and I seem to be coming from the same intellectual direction. So that's also sometimes. ### Visa 01:07:31 - 01:07:33 Right. Trying to be. ### David Deutsch 01:07:33 - 01:07:37 Yeah, trying to be rigorous, trying to be honest, trying to be correct, trying to criticize. ### Visa 01:07:39 - 01:08:05 Yeah, yeah, that that's a very happy thing for me to hear. And it's a wonderful thing to close on, I think. I would encourage everyone who watches this, whether it's on YouTube or whatever, to check out The Beginning of Infinity. It's a great book. And thank you, David. And we look forward to that. Right. And I will look forward to your next one when it when you're eventually done with it. Thanks.