If you want a real bird’s eye (and then some) view of the universe ( I know, that’s another grandiose statement…W/E) the best place to look is in the writings of David Deutsch. His second book, The Beginning of Infinity, hooked me when it came out twelve years ago and still amazes me at its general applicability.
A blurb on this substack on elections a while back was basically stolen from Chapter Thirteen of this cool book.
His review of the math of elections (better to say selection) has implications for today’s hedonistic postmodern identity insanity. TW. The insanity has to do with the level of statistical cherry picking (promotion or marketing would be better words than picking) of arbitrary phenotypes which is just a cover for hedonistic virtue signaling. However this does not seem to really matter today. But eventually? Deutschian rationality will, imo, eventually put the boots to the pathological narcissistic self-serving activism now running the sadistic clown show known as woke.
In this Chapter Thirteen he talks about compromise in politics as a belief held by nobody. Furthermore when a compromise is put in place it fails, as no problem is solved. Master politicians love this bc they want to evade responsibility.
The first book David did was called The Fabric Of Reality. Basically he says there are four strands of reality: 1)computation 2)evolution 3)quantum mechanics 4)epistemology. He has made fundamental contributions to all four.
1)The Church Turing thesis says that a solution to a real world problem can be computed by a machine. David extended this to the Church Turing Deutsch principle which says that a quantum computer can simulate any physical process.
2)Neo-Darwinism as so well promoted by Richard Dawkins is Charles Darwin’s natural selection combined with Gregor Mendel’s genetics. David extended this to memes being propagated in homo sapien internet cultural space.
3)The multiverse of quantum mechanics was first proposed by Hugh Everett who basically said just take the Schrodinger equation at face value so everything happens to each particle everywhere in different “universes”. David took the concept of an identical particle (like, an electron) further to show that said particle is fungible (think the opposite of an NFT) by being present in every universe history. Btw, we don’t have a quantum computer that can test this YET!
4)David’s epistemology (just a fancy word for how knowledge grows) comes from Karl Popper who said that the main function of science is to falsify things. David went further with this to say that an experiment solves a problem which is a conflict between theories. The problem is solved by the best explanation (one that does not vary while continuing to explain everything it purports to explain).
The second book David did was The Beginning Of Infinity which starts with a succinct history of philosophy and how it relates to science.
Initially….like at the start of the Enlightenment… science fought the dogmatism of religion. And it did a pretty good job. Science at this time was (and still is?) all about sense perceptions. The experimentalists said, “Hey, you religious guys can’t see god so I am just going to drop these two balls off the Tower of Pisa.”….or something like that….and “SEE” which one lands first.
David with Popper as his muse extents this to say that this way of thinking about science, in our post religious world, is the wrong model of science as all sense perception is fallible. This is exactly what the current neuroscience folks are saying….your brain makes up your reality and it is different that some other guy’s made up reality. All knowledge according to David starts with a problem and is modified by criticism (forbidden today in certain areas…don’t get me started!). There are some other smart guys like Nobel laureate Sidney Brenner who said a new technique of observing something leads to a new observation which leads to a new theory. That’s sorta made sense to me B4 this book. David refutes this totally with Popper’s concept that “all knowledge is theory laden”.
David is one of those rare individuals that can look at two diametrically opposed ideas (like, earth being special or earth being typical) and tell you why both are completely wrong.
The tour de force of this book is his idea that explanations are at the heart of progress. He says that this is “the only unique thing humans have”. And it is explanations that don’t vary like the old Greek myths that make progress. And this progress is reliant on conjecture and criticism.
This book will give you an nice definition of science and why it is rational to be optimistic as we have always created more knowledge which means we will escape the Malthusian trap. So we are always just at the beginning of infinity.
Deutsch has moved onto something now that is even more profound. It is called constructor theory. It aims to redefine physics. His post-doc, Chiara Marletto wrote a really understandable book about it called The Science Of Can And Can’t in 2021. It is based on asking which transformations are possible by the laws of physics and which ones are not. This brings into discussion the counterfactual and ergodic theory. Google those two puppies up if you really want to blow your mind.
Right now physics (yes, quantum mechanics too) is formulated as laws of motion. These dynamic laws have equations that are time invariant….meaning you can run the movie back and forward and get the same answer. Now we know this does not happen. IRL. So wtf? Well, the usual and somewhat bullshitty explanation given over a hundred years ago is to add in statistics. Entropy. And all that stuff!
David calls BS on this by saying that the probability of something that happens is either zero or one. The next Chicxulub Impactor is out there already. It will hit the earth or it will not. We don’t have enough knowledge to say which so we give you a probability. This “comet hitting the earth” issue needs to be resolved by a better explanation and not probabilistic game theory like the economists so love. PS. Medical literature is loaded with BS.
If you are ISO everything David’s writings will give you a glimpse. I’m still SMH.