David Deutsch Quotes

28 quotes in 452 categories

• I myself believe that there will one day be time travel because when we find that something isn't forbidden by the over-arching laws of physics…
• 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…
• Like every other destruction of optimism, whether in a whole civilisation or in a single individual, these must have been unspeakable catastrophes for those who…
• The whole [scientific] process resembles biological evolution. A problem is like an ecological niche, and a theory is like a gene or a species which…
• Feeling insignificant because the universe is large has exactly the same logic as feeling inadequate for not being a cow.
• Base metals can be transmuted into gold by stars, and by intelligent beings who understand the processes that power stars, but by nothing else in…
• Is the human race a universal constructor?
• It is possible to build a virtual-reality generator whose repertoire includes every possible environment.
• Our best theories are not only truer than common sense, they make more sense than common sense.
• Humans may or may not have cosmic significance, and if they do, it will be by hitching a ride on the objective centrality of knowledge…
• If you can’t program it, you haven’t understood it.
• Despite the unrivaled empirical success of quantum theory, the very suggestion that it may be literally true as a description of nature is still greeted…
• Discovering a new explanation is inherently an act of creativity.
• No precautions, and no precautionary principle, can avoid problems that we do not yet foresee. We need a stance of problem-fixing, not just problem-avoidance.
• If we can't program it, we can't understand it.
• If you reject the infinite, you are stuck with the finite, and the finite is parochial... the best explanation of anything eventually involves universality, and…
• Time travel may be achieved one day, or it may not. But if it is, it should not require any fundamental change in world-view, at…
• Every problem that is interesting is also soluble.
• 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…
• The overwhelming majority of theories are rejected because they contain bad explanations, not because they fail experimental tests.

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