00:00:00.000 Welcome to Topcast and again today something slightly different at the
00:00:05.280 request of a patreon hello Aaron I'm going to do a brief as far in so far as I
00:00:13.560 can be brief analysis of the David Deutsch conversation with Tyler which was
00:00:20.240 an excellent conversation Tyler Cohen has pushed back on David on a few
00:00:26.680 points and I just thought it worth clarifying perhaps in my words some of what
00:00:32.440 was being said I'm not going to go through the entire conversation I'm just
00:00:37.240 going to stop it at a few points I'm going to watch I'm going to watch it at
00:00:39.880 two times speed I think that's as fast as I can go on YouTube because I've
00:00:45.600 already watched the conversation before and I will let you know the
00:00:50.960 timestamps I'll provide the clips of course as well let you know the timestamps
00:00:54.440 of where I'm stopping and pausing just to reflect on what's been said so let's
00:01:00.960 start I have a question I am myself a metaphysical agnostic so I'm unwilling to
00:01:06.480 step into a Star Trek transporter machine because I'm afraid it would kill me
00:01:10.640 and it's a copy of me that would keep on living at what price are you willing to
00:01:16.400 step into a Star Trek transporter machine I certainly wouldn't want to be the
00:01:22.760 first person but I suppose you're asking the question separately from do I
00:01:29.200 think it would work technically sure assume it works as in the TV shell but
00:01:35.000 metaphysically there's a question you face but you know you believe in many
00:01:38.520 worlds theory right so yes though I don't think that is connected I think it's
00:01:46.000 more physicalism or something like that that I believe that there's there's
00:01:50.880 nothing to me except this running program in my brain and if that program were
00:01:59.200 to run somewhere else and stop running in my brain then I wouldn't notice
00:02:04.120 anything and I would indeed have traveled to that other place but say the
00:02:10.440 world forks and it's possible both that you do and do not step into the
00:02:14.560 machine isn't it the case that some version of the earlier you is still
00:02:20.440 existing along one of the forks so you have nothing to worry about some
00:02:26.040 version of me whenever I whenever I make a decision which could go either way
00:02:31.160 some version of me will have presumably made the other decision although
00:02:38.280 that's not as simple as it sounds because both the other version of me and me
00:02:44.160 are error correcting entities that's that's the whole point of what human thought
00:02:50.640 is it's error correction okay so I'm stopping the video at 1 minute 43 and
00:02:57.800 there's a clip here of Tyler talking today that about whether or not David would
00:03:03.360 step into the transporter machine or not and this is a version of what might
00:03:08.640 be called the quantum immortality argument something like that and this is the
00:03:12.960 argument that if the multiverse is true then if you die in one universe then a
00:03:20.280 copy of you goes on to exist in the other universe so therefore you're immortal
00:03:24.760 by some stretch of the imagination or whenever you make a decision in the
00:03:30.360 universe that you find yourself versions of you are making another decision the
00:03:35.440 other decision that is possible in those other universes so for example if
00:03:41.080 it's the case that there's a fork in the road and you could have gone left but
00:03:45.840 instead you choose to go right then there is some number of versions of you
00:03:52.160 that in fact go left even though you yourself have gone right and so you know
00:03:56.720 if there's you know if there's the demon at the end of the tract the left
00:04:01.240 then aren't you condemning versions of yourself to the demon that's going to
00:04:05.400 attack you at the end of the left fork road if you take the road to the right
00:04:10.240 which is similar to this whole idea of the transporti you know why worry about
00:04:14.080 getting into a transporter if it doesn't really matter what the outcome is
00:04:18.840 after all if it's possible that you survive the transporter then you will
00:04:22.760 survive the transporter now as David goes on to say this is a misconception
00:04:29.080 about what the nature of decisions are in the multiverse you are you and you
00:04:34.960 have knowledge and in this universe right now there are versions of you which
00:04:41.200 haven't yet differentiated as David will come to say that's another point of
00:04:44.920 clarification that we're going to need to get to but the reason that you make
00:04:48.480 the decisions that you do is not virtually flipping a coin it's not
00:04:52.720 probabilistic it's not random the reason you make the decisions that you do is
00:04:57.200 you deliberate and deliberate and what the knowledge that you have the
00:05:00.560 evidence before you all that sort of stuff so if you are actually literally
00:05:04.560 walking along a road and it forks into different directions let's consider
00:05:09.640 the realistic case of what's going on well why are you walking along the
00:05:13.280 road in the first place maybe it's that you've just been to the shops and
00:05:17.040 you're coming home and the road ahead of you forks into two different places
00:05:20.680 to the right is your home to the left is the neighboring town you don't want
00:05:25.600 to go to the neighboring town you want to go to the right and so you choose to
00:05:29.120 go to the right and you find your way home again in the overall majority of
00:05:33.880 universes in the multiverse all versions of you do precisely that because they've
00:05:38.080 got your knowledge they're thinking about precisely the same things that
00:05:41.760 you're thinking about they are fungible instances of you now yes there is some
00:05:47.840 measure a much smaller measure presumably of versions of you that coming to the
00:05:54.440 fork in the road have the idea for reasons I don't know that decide you don't
00:06:00.440 want to go home even though you're carrying bags of shopping that are quite
00:06:04.760 heavy and the distance to the next town along that left fork in the road is
00:06:09.760 some kilometer's away which is going to make the journey arduous but maybe
00:06:13.480 you remember in fact along that left fork road that's where you were yesterday
00:06:18.160 when you lost your iPhone and maybe it's still along that track and so you
00:06:22.600 think oh I better go that way but and the overall majority of universes in which
00:06:28.200 you didn't lose your iPhone you're going to continue off to the right in order
00:06:33.720 to get home now are you condemning some proportion of versions of you to go to
00:06:38.480 the left isn't there a chance that somewhere yes there is a chance but it is
00:06:42.960 a infinitesimally small chance presumably depending upon what the situation
00:06:47.640 entails and as David is saying here with the transporter he has knowledge
00:06:53.320 and his knowledge tells him that he doesn't understand enough about the
00:06:56.680 transporter this thought experiment this stepping into the transporter to
00:07:01.000 be able to reassure him sufficiently that he should indeed step into the
00:07:05.200 transporter and that's him that's David Deutsch so although some versions of
00:07:10.560 him might step in as a transporter and survive or not he's not going to take
00:07:15.520 that chance the way to think about people and decisions in the multiverse is
00:07:19.920 not to presume that you just do absolutely everything with equal probability or
00:07:25.600 an equal measure we say you do far more frequently across the multiverse we
00:07:31.400 would see the proportion of the universes in which you do precisely what you do
00:07:36.840 based upon your personality and knowledge that's the thing that happens more
00:07:40.120 often this other thing that you tend not to do tends not to happen in the
00:07:46.120 multiverse even though it does if it's physically possible both the other version
00:07:51.280 of me and me are error correcting entities that's that's the whole point of
00:07:57.440 what human thought is it's error correction therefore it will take more than
00:08:02.640 just a cosmic ray hit to make the difference between deciding something
00:08:09.120 yes or no so this would have to be like an inconsequential decision which
00:08:14.320 unbeknownst to me will have a large effect and then later calls me to be a
00:08:19.880 different person and so on and that's happening all the time independently of
00:08:24.320 Star Trek machines or anything like that that is the case and fortunately it
00:08:32.360 turns out at least if if ordinary decision theory is true in in like non-
00:08:39.680 quantum cases then it turns out that ordinary decision theory with randomness
00:08:48.520 produces the same rational decisions as quantum decision theory with the
00:08:56.440 multiverse so it shouldn't make any difference to decisions and that includes
00:09:00.800 the decision whether to use the Star Trek transporter sure so as long as there's
00:09:06.520 a possible world where your atoms aren't scattered and you just didn't get
00:09:10.600 into the machine you don't have to worry too much about your decision I do
00:09:14.720 because when you say so long as there's a possible world that glides over
00:09:20.680 the question how many what proportion of the world is that going to happen
00:09:24.840 in and the this what I said just now about about decision theory in the
00:09:33.680 multiverse the proportion of the multiverse that does one thing or another
00:09:39.680 plays the same role in decisions as probability does in theory where there's
00:09:47.600 randomness so it really does matter and just because there are a few
00:09:52.720 worlds in which x y or z happens if there are very few of them they shouldn't
00:09:57.080 affect my decisions at all yes so this this idea here of error correction is
00:10:02.320 what I was trying to sort of get at because you and all versions of you are
00:10:07.560 error correcting entities they're going to be correcting the errors in the same
00:10:11.880 way broadly speaking having the same knowledge correcting the same errors and
00:10:17.000 so therefore a greater proportion weight of them if you will number of
00:10:22.600 universes we should say measure is going to do precisely what you do and so
00:10:27.800 this proportion of people that make a different decision to you is
00:10:32.200 exceedingly small you still that the meaning of personhood within the multiverse
00:10:36.680 is that the person has a large measure of universes representing them in
00:10:42.760 comparison to versions of themselves they're doing something
00:10:46.200 completely at random so to speak or because of a cosmic ray here okay this is
00:10:51.480 not the reason why we choose to do something completely different the
00:10:56.280 reason why we would choose to do something completely different something that's
00:10:58.920 out of character let's say it's because we have an explanation as to why we
00:11:02.840 would do that thing because we're trying to correct an error that we've
00:11:06.600 hitherto had should also add here that there is confusion about
00:11:12.120 probability on the multiverse version of reality which is the multiverse
00:11:17.720 version of reality says if it's physically possible then it's going to happen
00:11:21.880 now that's not quite the same as saying it's going to happen with the same
00:11:26.360 measure across all of the universes after all creating knowledge is not
00:11:30.840 something that just happens by happenstance and by chance people have to
00:11:34.440 deliberately go out and make the choice to create the knowledge nevertheless
00:11:39.320 this doesn't mean that things probably happen anywhere in reality
00:11:44.120 things either happen or they don't happen the reality is the multiverse
00:11:49.160 so what happens happens and that's that but for any given person
00:11:54.840 they're occupying not the entirety of the multiverse but just a
00:11:58.520 small part of it and so subjectively they cannot predict
00:12:03.480 with perfect precision what's going to happen next so subjectively it seems
00:12:07.320 like there's a probability about things they flip a coin it must
00:12:12.440 necessarily land heads or tails but if you had a god's eye of
00:12:17.640 view of the multiverse or if you just simply have an understanding of
00:12:20.840 quantum theory then you know that the coin must land heads and
00:12:25.240 tails but the observer will only see one of these they can't see two they
00:12:29.160 can't see both although versions of them will see both heads
00:12:33.800 or tails okay in other words heads and tails actually happens in the
00:12:37.640 universe it doesn't happen with chance one half it's just a proportion of
00:12:42.120 the universes in which it lands heads is approximately 50
00:12:45.480 percent the proportion of the universe in which it lands tails approximately
00:12:48.280 50 percent but the probability that it lands heads and tails
00:12:51.720 is one it always is whatever physically can happen indeed
00:12:55.400 will happen so probability is subjective on this view
00:12:59.320 and this is why you know David says that this notion of probability
00:13:03.400 serves the same role as proportionality amongst the universes
00:13:07.320 because we are subjects we are subjects who create knowledge
00:13:12.280 and we don't have this god's eye view of the universe we don't know which
00:13:15.960 universe we're going to end up in next with absolute certainty
00:13:20.520 and so we can talk reasonably about subjectively
00:13:25.080 what the probability of things might be and that's what decision theory is
00:13:29.320 about but we just can't be committed to the idea
00:13:32.760 that it's objectively true you know true as a matter of fact
00:13:41.320 they don't that's only your subjective perspective on the multiverse
00:13:46.040 the reality is coins land heads and tails with probability one
00:13:52.040 anything that can happen happens with probability one which makes
00:13:56.680 the entire notion of probability completely bankrupt
00:13:59.960 because there is no probability of something happening
00:14:03.800 or not it happens or it doesn't happen and that's that
00:14:07.800 it's just that because you don't occupy all of the universes you don't know
00:14:11.720 what's going to happen next probability is subjective
00:14:14.920 not objective not to say that physicists tend to agree with this notion
00:14:19.640 but that doesn't matter okay lots of people don't agree with what the truth
00:14:24.840 happens to be doesn't matter how do you think many worlds
00:14:28.680 interpretation of quantum mechanics relates to the view that just in
00:14:33.400 terms of space the size of our current universe is infinite
00:14:37.400 and therefore everything possible is happening in it
00:14:40.680 it complicates the discussion of probability but it does there's there's no
00:14:46.680 overlap between that notion of infinity and the
00:14:51.640 ever Etienne notion of infinity if we are infinite there
00:14:57.080 because the differentiation as I prefer to call
00:15:02.280 the what used to be called splitting the the when I
00:15:07.480 perform an experiment which can go one of two ways
00:15:11.320 the influence of that spreads out first I see it I may write it down I may
00:15:16.040 write a scientific paper and so and when I write a paper about it and report
00:15:20.200 the results that that that will cause the journal
00:15:26.840 to split or to differentiate into into two journals and so on
00:15:32.680 and but this influence cannot spread out faster than the speed of light
00:15:43.240 because what we see in real life is an Everett bubble within the universe
00:15:52.280 it's undifferentiated or it's to be exact it's exactly as differentiated as it
00:15:57.960 was before and then as the bubble spreads out the the universe becomes
00:16:07.640 but the bubble is always finite I'm pausing it at 10 minutes 25
00:16:14.440 and David there is talking a little bit about the the concept of a universe
00:16:18.440 within the Everettian picture which is in other words the multiverse
00:16:22.760 and this idea of splitting and of course if the situation
00:16:31.400 universe and then the universe split into two copies and then three copies
00:16:35.560 we're getting kind of a multiplication which seems to be a violation
00:16:39.240 of the conservation of energy which would be true we'd be creating
00:16:43.160 universes just again and again and again every time there was
00:16:46.600 some kind of quantum event which caused the splitting of the universe from
00:16:50.200 one universe into two universes where is the additional mass coming from
00:16:54.920 where is the additional energy coming from okay that problem is entirely
00:17:00.680 and instead what we talk about is differentiation
00:17:04.200 differentiation and this requires an understanding of fungibility although
00:17:07.560 David doesn't mention it here this is what it's explained in the beginning of
00:17:14.120 any object the easiest thing to talk about is a quantum objects like
00:17:18.280 well we're all quantum ultimately there's you know the emergent multiverse
00:17:21.480 tells us that the quantum laws of physics govern
00:17:25.640 everything not just the small but it's easy to talk about the small let's
00:17:31.320 in particular the electron when the electron could have gone left
00:17:39.000 parts now in the easiest case 50% of the time it takes
00:17:43.400 your perfect and then 50% of the time it takes path Y but it doesn't need to be
00:17:46.680 that case you know it could be any proportion that you like
00:17:49.160 you know 10% of them go to the left and 90% go right whatever
00:17:53.240 let's take the simple case 50 50 what happens in that case is that the
00:18:03.560 is a multiverse object which means it already occupies
00:18:07.480 uncountably infinite numbers of universes but they're all identical
00:18:12.520 and it's not until the choices then made I'd say choice very loosely I mean
00:18:20.840 universe then differentiating into two slightly different kinds one where
00:18:25.240 this single electron went to the left along path X and one
00:18:29.080 where it went along path Y and so and then you've got uncountably
00:18:34.200 infinite numbers going along path X and uncountably
00:18:37.480 infinite numbers going along path Y but it's a 50 50
00:18:40.600 differentiation of the universes no new universes have been created
00:18:44.360 there was an infinite number before and there's an infinite number after
00:18:48.600 along both paths and you just trace that back in time to the beginning of
00:18:52.120 the universe where you've already got an infinite number
00:18:56.040 an uncountably infinite number of fungible universes
00:18:59.080 that then differentiate differentiate differentiate every single time there's
00:19:06.120 differentiating in such a way now in the level of
00:19:09.720 the level of the quantum what's going on as you're having these
00:19:14.200 possibilities of differentiation because of the quantum laws of physics
00:19:17.720 and at the higher emergent level as we've already talked about with
00:19:23.720 then and larger proportions of universes end up
00:19:26.920 persisting through time those universes where knowledge is being created
00:19:30.520 and the knowledge tends to get itself replicated over time
00:19:33.400 in a larger proportion of universes than where it doesn't
00:19:36.040 and so David also says there that universe is kind of a misnomer
00:19:41.400 in this Everett understanding of quantum theory it probably does
00:19:45.400 a bit of a disservice to the entire understanding of realistic quantum
00:19:50.280 mechanics and it's probably sent a lot of physicists down
00:19:53.800 a bit of a misconceived alley and might be one of the reasons among
00:19:58.360 many you know David's going to get to this about why they reject
00:20:02.200 the multiverse because of this very notion that
00:20:06.200 we use the word universe and the universes are supposed to mean
00:20:08.920 cosmologically speaking something that could be
00:20:11.960 in theory spatially infinite and so just there is no
00:20:16.440 bound to the universes just it goes on forever in all directions
00:20:21.560 that's not all we're talking about here we're talking about a bubble a
00:20:24.760 sphere of differentiation so that if you do an interference
00:20:28.200 experiment in a particular place you know you do the double-stitch experiment
00:20:33.000 then what's going on in that case across the multiverse is differentiation which
00:20:37.720 spreads out of the speed of light the information about
00:20:44.280 begins to spread out of the speed of light and you end up getting all these
00:20:48.040 mini bubble universes inside of the universe which is yet to be
00:20:52.360 differentiated yet to be differentiated and this is explained
00:20:59.480 emergent multiverse. How do your views relate to the philosophical
00:21:09.160 There are interesting parallels. As a physicist
00:21:16.040 I'm interested in what the laws of physics tell us is so
00:21:20.600 rather than in philosophical reasoning about things unless they
00:21:27.160 impinge on a problem that I have so yes I'm interested in for example the
00:21:33.000 continuity of the self you know whether whether if there's another
00:21:38.440 version of me a very large number of light years away
00:21:42.760 in an infinite universe whether and it's identical
00:21:46.440 is that really me are there two of me that one of me
00:21:50.920 I don't entirely know the answer to that and it's why I don't entirely know
00:21:56.200 the answer to whether I would go in a Star Trek
00:21:59.320 transporter but the modal realism certainly involves a lot of
00:22:08.200 not physically. I'm open to the idea that non-physical things
00:22:13.320 do exist like the natural numbers I think exist
00:22:18.280 there's a difference between you know the second even prime
00:22:23.240 which doesn't exist and the the infinite number of
00:22:33.480 so I think that there is more than one mode of existence
00:22:40.920 but the theory that all modes of existence are equally
00:22:46.200 real I see no point in that so the overlap between
00:22:51.560 Everett and David Lewis is I think more co-incidental
00:22:58.200 than illuminating. Now Tyler's asked David there about
00:23:03.880 David Lewis David Lewis wrote on the plurality of worlds
00:23:09.160 and I've talked about this before in my own multi-verse series
00:23:13.320 well David Lewis's notion of other world is a purely metaphysical
00:23:21.160 notion okay he was purely philosophizing in the abstract
00:23:31.240 logically possible other universes of which the physically
00:23:34.840 possible ones the multi-verse is just a tiny tiny subset
00:23:39.400 but of course the physically possible ones are the scientific ones
00:23:42.760 they're the ones we know about by conjecture and experiment
00:23:51.400 universes into existence which is what David Lewis did so it's the
00:23:54.600 difference between the metaphysical but David Lewis's
00:23:58.040 version of the many worlds and Everett's purely physical
00:24:03.160 version of the many worlds that's the difference philosophy versus physics
00:24:07.320 to a large extent so if the universe is infinite and if David Lewis is
00:24:12.120 correct should I feel closer to the David Lewis copies of me
00:24:16.120 the copies or near copies of me in this universe or the near copies of me in
00:24:20.680 the multi-verse it seems very crowded all of a sudden
00:24:24.760 so something that whose purpose was to be economical
00:24:29.320 doesn't feel that way to me by the end of the metaphysics
00:24:34.040 it doesn't feel like that to you well how as Wittgenstein is supposed to have
00:24:44.840 it would feel as if after 13 minutes Tyler talks about the
00:24:52.440 multi-verse not feeling correct and so David quite rightly says there
00:25:00.040 you know and Wittgenstein has this thing which in fact again to go back to
00:25:04.360 David Wallace emergent multi-verse you know what would it
00:25:08.120 what would it look like if it looked like the earth went around the sun
00:25:12.440 okay what would it look like because lots of people say of course
00:25:16.040 that it looks like the sun goes around the earth which it does
00:25:20.440 but what would it look like if it looked like the earth went around the sun and
00:25:23.960 of course it looks exactly the way that it does
00:25:27.640 what about the alternative view that it's a big sprawling mess
00:25:31.560 we're not capable of understanding an integrated theory
00:25:35.080 there's maybe some Darwinian principle operating across some different kind of
00:25:39.000 multi-verse our universe persists just because it works well enough
00:25:43.240 a bit like a bad used car we're never going to grasp it there's not a unified
00:25:50.200 incomprehensibility of the universe and possibly multi-verse
00:25:54.360 so we would both agree it's incomprehensible to your cat right
00:25:59.240 it's sorry it's incomprehensible to your cat or to the local raccoon yes
00:26:07.720 i don't think that's true no dogs understand human social i do know
00:26:18.120 but it is fixed knowledge and it is not the kind of knowledge that constitutes
00:26:24.440 understanding is always explanatory so you know you can write a book
00:26:30.360 on canine behavior and look in chapter 37 and it will tell you
00:26:37.880 what a dog will do when such and such happens to it
00:26:43.960 and sometimes it will say some dogs will do this some dogs will do that
00:26:49.720 there is no such book for humans because chapter 37 will be blank
00:26:55.960 it will it'll say humans are going to do something that neither we nor you
00:27:06.680 Tyler asking about whether or not the universe is incomprehensible and we've got
00:27:10.360 this thing here about well you know the cat doesn't understand the
00:27:13.960 universe the dog doesn't understand the universe so why
00:27:19.320 should we expect that we are much better at all this is this very very common
00:27:24.440 misconception needlegrass tyson has been doing a
00:27:27.720 great job of pushing this recently you know you won't he won't let go of it
00:27:30.760 therefore I won't let go of it this idea that we're just on the continuum of
00:27:34.680 intelligence with everything else and some things can
00:27:38.120 understand the universe to a greater or lesser extent maybe the dog
00:27:41.400 understands things a little bit better than what the insects do which
00:27:46.040 understand better than what the bacteria does but this is all a
00:27:48.200 complete and utter misconception those animals don't
00:27:51.560 understand anything they might have some knowledge but the knowledge is there
00:27:56.120 encoded in their genes the knowledge of how to behave
00:27:59.640 they can only behave in such a way that the genes permit them to
00:28:03.640 but that's not us our genes do not contain information
00:28:08.920 about making podcasts or about building rockets and going to the moon that's
00:28:13.640 not in our genes but anything that a dog does you would be able to find within
00:28:18.200 its genes okay even if it's playing with the ball
00:28:22.120 the gene for chasing things around would be there somewhere
00:28:25.960 other to pursue something but there's nothing like that when it comes to
00:28:30.600 explanatory knowledge being able to take the laws of nature
00:28:36.200 and to model them inside of our own minds that's not in the
00:28:39.400 genes that is done via a completely different mechanism it's not fixed
00:28:45.160 it's not fixed it's open to open ended improvement
00:28:49.480 progress error correction of course that's what explanatory knowledge
00:28:53.160 allows us to do a human mind is completely unlike anything
00:28:59.240 that the brain of a dog is able to do or any other animal for that matter
00:29:04.440 i feel i can predict humans better than cats often but to chimpanzees
00:29:08.280 understand in your view no one knows they they show
00:29:21.400 there there's some really nice experiments on wild gorillas
00:29:26.600 by Richard Byrne who's both a theoretical and and very practical
00:29:35.720 animal behavior expert and he was wondering how
00:29:45.240 culturally inherited behaviors from one gorilla to another
00:29:50.600 so one thing is the first answer is very slowly
00:29:55.480 it takes absolutely ages months and months for a gorilla
00:30:00.680 to be able to copy another gorilla's behavior well enough to do something
00:30:10.840 wavehand and that sort of thing but to to copy a complex behavior like
00:30:16.360 required to open a difficult kind of nut which no other animal can open
00:30:22.280 this is why they have memes because that's a very useful ability
00:30:30.840 ingenious experiments or rather observations he he didn't
00:30:36.040 he didn't interfere with the with the gorillas he did some observations
00:30:42.200 to try to determine whether they understand why
00:30:46.360 they are doing each particular action and you know it involves
00:30:51.400 you know i don't know what it involves grabbing with both hands and twisting in one
00:30:55.160 way and then pulling another way and then and so on
00:30:58.040 apparently these gorillas are prone to a certain injury
00:31:03.000 which disables their thumb and so they they can't move their thumb which is
00:31:08.120 which is you know quite disabling for them just as it is for us
00:31:12.440 and the thing is when you've disabled your thumb one of these
00:31:16.760 motions becomes irrelevant and the others become less effective
00:31:22.120 but the gorillas which have learned how to do the thing
00:31:25.560 will make the motion the ineffective motion again and again
00:31:29.720 every single time and he explains this better than i do but
00:31:35.240 that's like human beings borrowing at high interest rates right
00:31:38.360 they'll do that many times it's not just like it you know you
00:31:44.120 you might like to draw analogies but it's not the same thing
00:31:48.120 when human being repeats a behavior that another human being
00:31:56.280 thinks is unwise or counterproductive or will not achieve its purpose
00:32:03.080 and you ask them or you show them they will have
00:32:07.880 an explanation which you might not like it may be stupid
00:32:12.120 but the ape perfectly well wants this thing to work
00:32:24.520 and David mentions Richard Byrne who did experiments on chimpanzees and all
00:32:28.680 gorillas i think and the the concept there's behavior passing again
00:32:34.040 there's nothing particularly impressive about these creatures
00:32:37.480 unless you're easily impressed okay and you think that
00:32:40.760 having a repertoire of a few hundred words is good
00:32:44.760 but again they're not explaining anything they're not bringing new
00:32:49.000 knowledge into the world they're not conjituring
00:32:51.480 explanations it's not like we're just another run on this
00:32:55.240 continual ladder to ever greater intelligence that's not what's going on here
00:33:00.600 we are qualitatively different we are off-axis as i like to say
00:33:04.840 we are on a different ladder and that ladder is something that we can climb
00:33:09.560 unlike with the chimpanzee whatever its intelligence is is fixed and in so
00:33:13.000 far as we have intelligence that has to do with what
00:33:15.960 knowledge we have and we can improve the knowledge that we have
00:33:19.240 and we can improve the ways in which we create knowledge over time as well
00:33:26.600 and of course the the other thing that i need to say at this point is
00:33:30.200 our knowledge has this capacity for universality
00:33:35.240 our minds do what that means is that we can model
00:33:39.320 anything that's out there in the universe in abstract space and physical
00:33:44.200 space we can come to a greater understanding of it
00:33:47.080 and although title will raise the objection that many people do
00:33:50.520 which is that they just might be something that's incomprehensible that's
00:33:53.640 beyond us to understand i think of later on he's going to bring up
00:34:01.080 how certain engines work but this is just a i think it's an appeal to
00:34:06.280 personal disinterest in those things if you spent time and try to solve the
00:34:09.720 problem then perhaps you could come to a deeper understanding personally of
00:34:13.240 these things and some people do have a good understanding of these things
00:34:16.280 for example how electric motors work or how internal combustion engines
00:34:20.600 work some people do some people don't it just depends on what
00:34:24.600 your area of interest is the fact that i can't understand
00:34:28.520 how to play the piano at all let alone complicated pieces
00:34:32.920 does not mean my mind is an universal if i was to sit down and really
00:34:35.720 apply myself i wouldn't want to i'd have to be coerced into doing it
00:34:39.320 then i could but the fact that i don't have an understanding of how to play
00:34:42.680 the piano does not change the fact my mind is still universal
00:34:47.080 it's like saying that my computer isn't a universal computer
00:34:50.920 simply because it's not being used right now in order to play a computer game
00:34:55.240 it's making a podcast instead we do one thing at a time and we take
00:34:58.920 interest in certain things and not interest in other things this is not a
00:35:06.360 and of course the best refutation of all of this stuff
00:35:10.840 this idea that we just might not understand something
00:35:15.400 or the laws of physics they might be incomprehensible the universe might
00:35:18.360 ultimately be incomprehensible it's nothing bad as David says
00:35:22.280 perfectly logically equivalent to believing in god and the atheist out there
00:35:30.280 rationally rejecting god while simultaneously thinking
00:35:34.840 only the aliens are capable of understanding the laws of physics
00:35:37.960 or no one ultimately is capable of understanding the ultimate laws of physics
00:35:42.040 there's precisely the same as believing in god god just it's this thing that
00:35:45.400 stands for there's something ultimate out there that we can't possibly
00:35:52.680 we're replacing that with well the laws of physics are ultimately this thing
00:35:55.720 that we can't understand and there's beyond the capacity of
00:35:58.600 humans to comprehend all the aliens are all the artificial general
00:36:03.080 intelligence or the super intelligence use all of these things are just
00:36:06.840 logically equivalent and you can go down that road
00:36:09.720 but you believe in the supernatural that's all you're just changing the labels
00:36:13.400 instead of saying you believe in god you're saying
00:36:16.600 I believe in the ultimate laws of physics being incomprehensible
00:36:20.600 in the same way that the theists believe that the omniscient, omnipotent
00:36:24.760 creator of the universe is too much for puny human minds to understand
00:36:29.800 you can go that way you're all in the same category according to us
00:36:33.560 we're the ones who are saying no it's all comprehensible
00:36:37.000 eventually not right now at any given point in time there will be open
00:36:40.360 mysteries open problems and isn't that great because that gives us
00:36:46.680 but it is eventually all comprehensible it just takes time and effort to
00:36:55.080 but if you want to sit there and on the sidelines and say no
00:36:58.600 this thing x is the thing that we can't possibly understand where x is
00:37:02.600 god or the laws of physics or the super aliens fine
00:37:07.080 we disagree okay because here the two the reason why we've been able to
00:37:14.520 universal minds that can explain anything that can be understood
00:37:19.160 which is everything and the only reputation of that is
00:37:22.280 and appeal to the supernatural okay let's keep going
00:37:25.240 when human being repeats a behavior that another human being
00:37:33.400 thinks is unwise or counterproductive or will not achieve its purpose
00:37:40.200 and you ask them or you show them they will have
00:37:45.000 an explanation which you might not like it it may be stupid
00:37:49.240 but the ape perfectly well wants this thing to work
00:38:02.040 that's it's a thing that's that's very hard to take on board
00:38:14.440 and we're not used to the overt behavior of humans
00:38:21.960 being unintentional humans have they have tend to explain themselves
00:38:32.440 even irrationally and they act according to their explanation
00:38:38.440 whereas there's no evidence that any other animals have
00:38:42.760 those explanations okay 18 minutes yes so we've got this idea there that
00:38:53.160 other animals doing unwise things and an animal that does the same thing
00:38:56.920 over and over again hoping for a different result and not getting it
00:39:01.080 is going to do that regardless because they can't learn in the way we can
00:39:06.680 and crucially they won't have an explanation we will
00:39:11.160 even if a person doesn't unwise thing even if they're doing the same
00:39:14.680 behavior over and over again it's leading to failure
00:39:17.320 if you were to question them they'd have an explanation it might be a false
00:39:19.960 explanation it might be a bad explanation but they would be able to give
00:39:22.600 you an account of why of why they're doing what they're doing
00:39:27.160 most physicists don't believe in the average interpretation yes that's a
00:39:35.720 explain it's a sociological phenomenon though not a
00:39:41.480 scientific or philosophical disagreement it's something has gone wrong
00:39:46.520 just like something went very badly wrong with philosophy as a whole
00:39:51.000 in the 20th century and and you know we're still seeing the ripples from
00:39:55.720 that with with postmodernism and and woken and what have you
00:40:01.800 why were you a bit you're using an argument from elimination
00:40:05.160 so all the other views out there which personally I don't find convincing
00:40:08.680 as an amateur but I can certainly see why you might reject them to me they
00:40:12.600 look arbitrary those you reject but the other physicists who are as
00:40:17.960 trained as you are some are as skilled as you are
00:40:23.240 feel the same way about the many world's view so what is the sense I
00:40:27.480 I don't think that makes your intuition better than theirs
00:40:32.040 yes I don't think that so it did not a matter of intuition
00:40:43.320 positivism instrumentalism and such like bad philosophical theories
00:40:49.960 towards the beginning end of 19th century and beginning of the 20th century
00:40:53.960 and this caused a knock-on effect on on on physics it it almost had the same
00:41:03.800 effect on relativity but Einstein rebelled against it at the
00:41:07.720 last moment as it were and said no it really is true
00:41:11.880 that there's space-time is curved it's not just that
00:41:15.480 that our brains think that it's curved or something like that or
00:41:20.840 all that the predictions come out right there really is a curvature in
00:41:26.120 space-time by the time quantum theory came along
00:41:29.480 a couple of decades later positivism instrumentalism and so on had taken
00:41:40.840 were taught when they were students they were intimidated
00:41:44.360 by their professors telling them things like if you think you understand this
00:41:50.760 you don't there there is no such thing as what really happened
00:41:56.200 if you if you ask how did the electron get from here to here
00:42:01.080 you're asking an illegitimate question there is no such thing as how it got
00:42:09.160 that it got from here to here now when you're taught like that and
00:42:13.320 intimidated by those kind of things coming from on high
00:42:21.320 will some will quit some will take that on board and do the same to their
00:42:26.600 students in turn and some will think no that's ridiculous
00:42:31.720 come on there is there is a thing and then they discover that there's an
00:42:35.560 average interpretation so the only thing that I would add to
00:42:44.520 28 minute mark about about why there is a majority of
00:42:49.880 physicists who endorse the multiverse is just to recognize that
00:42:55.400 this is only an issue in physics mainly in theoretical physics
00:43:02.280 although any any physicists who of course takes an interest in quantum
00:43:05.800 physics will have an opinion on this small will defer to one
00:43:09.960 explanation or non explanation or another it seems to me in my
00:43:15.320 conversations with some physicists anyway that the least
00:43:22.120 the version of quantum theory that causes people the
00:43:27.000 least amount of embarrassment for one to another word is
00:43:30.200 instrumentalism shut up and calculate the idea that you don't want to
00:43:35.480 have an opinion at all on how to understand quantum theory you just say
00:43:40.920 it works and I can use it to calculate what's going to happen in these
00:43:46.280 experiments I can use the formalism I can do the maths
00:43:49.960 and that is the sophisticated macho skeptical way to do things
00:43:55.400 so with noticing that this approach only happens in physics
00:43:59.480 and only happens in theoretical physics really in quantum theory I mean
00:44:04.520 I did geophysics for a while their physicists they don't deny that the earth
00:44:09.240 exists they don't deny that there are things in the ground that the
00:44:17.400 once you analyze you know the outcomes of these experiments
00:44:21.400 you know the resistivity survey of the ground tells you
00:44:25.560 that there is a copper ore in the ground there's a copper ore in the ground
00:44:30.520 they're not going to deny that that's what the the instrumentation
00:44:35.640 as interpreted using the mathematics if that's what it tells you then that's
00:44:39.880 what's really going on the astrophysicists don't deny that
00:44:44.600 well these calculations that say that there's a galaxy off in that particular
00:44:49.480 direction well that's just a way of speaking that's not really a galaxy
00:44:52.920 there okay the formalism allows us to predict that that's where the light
00:44:56.040 is coming from but that's not really going to be a galaxy there's no
00:45:00.440 sense in which we can talk about there really be a galaxy there
00:45:04.440 no one would talk this way even within physics let alone chemistry and biology
00:45:08.280 we admit the reality of these entities that are causing
00:45:11.560 the results of these experiments it's only quantum theory
00:45:15.080 okay it's only quantum theory let's face it even even even a standard model
00:45:19.400 I mean you know they don't deny everything do they
00:45:22.600 they don't deny the existence of the fundamental particles they don't deny
00:45:26.280 the existence of the electrons but they they deny the existence of
00:45:34.920 these are the entities which exist in places that we cannot observe
00:45:38.920 call them other universes and this idea of the unobserved
00:45:42.600 in sciences just extremely common I mean this is this is the way science works
00:45:46.360 we can't observe the center of the star but we need to invoke the
00:45:49.640 existence of the center of the star and fusion reactions going on there
00:45:52.280 which we can't observe to explain what we do observe the light coming from
00:45:56.280 a star or the sun we we can't be there to observe the big bang
00:46:01.080 but we observe the effects of the big bang we can't be there to observe
00:46:04.680 dinosaurs but we observe fossils so we have to invoke
00:46:07.320 the existence of things we can't observe and you know the the
00:46:12.040 Everett multiverse the universe is in that apart from the one that we
00:46:17.960 are in right now that we occupy those other universes exist but we can't
00:46:22.120 observe them you know big deal that that's just the way that physics
00:46:26.680 that's just the way that science works it's explaining what we see what we observe
00:46:31.080 in terms of what we cannot observe or do not observe
00:46:35.400 why do so many professional philosophers not think so much of
00:46:39.240 Karl Popper oh that's a so you know you've just asked me
00:46:51.000 about metaphysics within physics what why do so many people
00:46:56.200 physicists talk nonsense about metaphysics and and so on now you're asking me
00:47:03.960 why do so many philosophers make make and I said I didn't really know
00:47:09.800 now you're asking me why do so many philosophers make make mistakes I don't
00:47:13.720 know I've heard a variety of theories about this
00:47:18.120 but I don't know and I haven't thought all that much about it
00:47:22.120 but it is definitely the case the philosophy took a really bad turn
00:47:27.800 just over a hundred years ago and hasn't really recovered
00:47:31.160 professional philosophy I mean but say when I read Popper if I look at the
00:47:35.240 areas I know best that he wrote on poverty of historicism
00:47:39.000 open society and its enemies I find I agree with a very high percentage of
00:47:43.720 his conclusions so I'm inclined to like him but I don't think those are
00:47:50.600 rebutting crude Marxism he's very bad at steel manning his opponents
00:47:55.160 and on a lot of the pages I just don't find that much insight even though I'm
00:47:58.600 very sympathetic toward the conclusions so maybe he's just thought
00:48:02.120 that great a thinker and that's why most philosophers
00:48:05.400 don't follow enough with him I would believe that
00:48:10.920 if the critiques that I read of him bore any relation to
00:48:16.440 to his theory the critiques of him are extremely crude and basically
00:48:22.120 misunderstand everything I it's funny you should say
00:48:27.160 I I think that he's very good much too good at steel manning opponents
00:48:33.160 and this this relates to your first criticism that he's
00:48:36.440 he's too obsessed with refuting not just Marxism but
00:48:42.280 like every every bad philosophical theory that has gone before
00:48:47.560 he I think he puts the it into its best possible form
00:48:52.440 and then spends pages and pages and pages going into every
00:48:56.600 possible good aspect of that theory he often says you know
00:49:01.400 he's supposed to be the greatest critic of 20 centuries greatest critic of
00:49:14.200 he would have done better to explain his own theory
00:49:19.400 more and not refute not so much time refuting others
00:49:25.320 but it on the other hand it is his philosophy it's his philosophical
00:49:31.320 position that there is no such thing as a positive
00:49:41.800 and then you have criticism of their opponents of their of the opposing
00:49:46.200 conjectures you don't have positive arguments for your conjectures
00:49:51.960 it's a bit like you said you were criticizing me a while ago saying
00:49:56.600 something like I was only putting forward negative arguments well
00:50:00.600 that's what Popper would have us do you know because
00:50:04.760 the position that we hold ourselves and are putting forward or
00:50:11.560 advocating we're ready to abandon the the the the
00:50:18.680 thing that that an argument consists of is on the one hand a conjecture
00:50:29.320 the standard way of looking at so and so has got these floors
00:50:34.040 I have this conjecture which doesn't have those floors
00:50:37.240 okay that's that's the beginning of an argument
00:50:43.400 or they could say well it might not have those floors but it has these
00:50:47.240 others floors okay so that's how an argument can go
00:51:01.160 because that is an appeal to authority appeal to justification
00:51:06.520 and so on and and the popper is of the opinion so am I
00:51:11.400 that there are no justifications and and there are no authorities
00:51:15.400 okay so at the 35 minute mark or they're about we have
00:51:22.920 popper is might not be that great of a thinker after all the other philosophers
00:51:27.400 might not like him there's absolutely true the other philosophers don't like
00:51:34.440 but one one measure of him being a good philosopher might
00:51:37.640 precisely be that that he is disliked so much by people
00:51:42.840 steeped in the justified true belief of knowledge people
00:51:46.280 steeped in socialism people who think that there should be
00:51:50.760 philosopher kings people who just don't understand
00:51:54.040 his books like Tyler said that there that you know
00:52:00.600 yeah but all philosophy can be regarded as kind of like this in a sense
00:52:07.320 you're not going to get necessarily an entertaining reader depends on what
00:52:10.840 you're looking for I suppose you know some people say
00:52:14.680 David Deutsch writes in such a way that it's not an easy read
00:52:20.440 or pop is not easy read and yet but I sometimes I don't understand this it's
00:52:26.920 philosophers of course they love people like Wittgenstein
00:52:30.520 who to me is impenetrable and insofar as you can get anything out of him
00:52:34.440 you don't get much out of him there's not really much it's interesting there
00:52:37.400 any contradicts himself you know the early Wittgenstein the late Wittgenstein
00:52:41.080 much less even older philosophers okay once you get back to
00:52:45.400 Liebernetes and Descartes two philosopher quite like along with
00:52:48.840 humans but I'm sorry I think these guys are great but they're very hard reads
00:52:52.360 it's all hard reads and you really have to sit down and put a lot of
00:52:55.960 effort in to try and extract out anything that's worthwhile
00:52:59.720 because the language can sometimes be impenetrable
00:53:02.600 what Papa does as David has correctly said there is he
00:53:05.880 gives due to the people that he's trying to refute he's trying to
00:53:10.520 solve problems show you what's wrong with the traditional conceptions in
00:53:14.760 philosophy and if you look at just something like for example
00:53:19.160 the way in which he figures out solves the problem of
00:53:22.360 what democracy is okay what the purpose of democracy is
00:53:25.960 why democracy is a better system of governance than the alternatives
00:53:30.680 is because it's not about trying to figure out who should rule
00:53:34.440 okay which which other systems of governing a society
00:53:39.080 for example just installing a king as a tyrannical king
00:53:42.680 that's a solution to how should society be ruled
00:53:47.320 Papa says well democracy is not about that democracy is about figuring out
00:53:51.240 how to remove rulers and policies more easily and so he has to give due to
00:53:55.720 the common understanding and the common understanding is often
00:54:00.040 very very deeply entrenched in schooling and culture in the memes it
00:54:04.920 exists and so people inherit these traditional ideas
00:54:08.920 many of them stretching all the way back to play time but he stands up
00:54:13.400 against that and so it's very very hard it's very very much like
00:54:16.040 every I suppose it's a good parallel there that
00:54:19.000 ever it just says well let's just take literally what the experiments are
00:54:22.680 telling us what the formalism is telling us and what they're telling us is
00:54:26.200 the reality is just so much larger than what we
00:54:30.040 imagined we can't observe the vast majority of it
00:54:33.720 about what we do observe tells us that the rest of it exists I mean
00:54:36.840 just to take things literally rather than figuratively
00:54:40.280 rather than as a metaphor for what's going on to take the
00:54:43.400 mathematics as a metaphor and so that a lot of people
00:54:46.360 balk at that idea I suppose and maybe there's you know some professional
00:54:49.560 jealousy in the idea that ever it got there first
00:54:52.120 and explain this and the other physicists you know who is trying for so long
00:54:55.720 to figure out a realistic understanding quantum theory didn't quite get there
00:54:59.640 and a lot of the ideas were woo you know they were superstitious kind of
00:55:03.640 weird nonsense to a large extent so ever it solved it and maybe people were
00:55:07.960 unhappy about that and I think the proper suffers from the same
00:55:11.880 issues I mean what is the nature of knowledge how does knowledge grow
00:55:15.880 these are these are arguments that went on from millennia
00:55:19.960 no one made much progress and then proper comes along and he just solves it he just
00:55:23.640 tells us about conjectural knowledge and that knowledge doesn't have to mean
00:55:27.240 justified true belief you know everyone else before that was trying to figure out
00:55:31.240 well how do you justify your beliefs how do you justify something as true
00:55:36.360 and it's just went on from millennia and he comes along and says well
00:55:39.240 knowledge isn't that I can imagine that you know
00:55:44.280 very human philosophers are jealous now I won't go into the reasons why
00:55:49.960 but you know I think that there's that there's some extent to which this
00:55:53.000 this is happening with David Deutsch now maybe we'll save
00:55:58.440 for a distant episode but you know the the truth of the matter is that when
00:56:02.040 people make progress there is a professional jealousy
00:56:14.520 it's so simple what did I think of that well I'm not going to give
00:56:18.040 incredible like every it really is simple isn't it after
00:56:22.680 all you know all that ever is saying is we'll just take it literally
00:56:25.800 you know we're not going to we aren't going to consider why it is that the
00:56:29.240 equation say that the electron simultaneously occupies all these
00:56:33.880 positions and yet we know it can't occupy all these
00:56:37.320 positions so how do we try and get around there he just says
00:56:39.880 it says that occupies all these positions so it occupies all these positions
00:56:43.640 it really does it's just simple it's just parsimonious
00:56:47.000 cut through the nonsense there's your answer so too with
00:56:51.160 popper you know so too with just explaining a whole bunch of things you know
00:57:04.840 is it by confirming how much do you have to confirm how how long does it take
00:57:09.480 until you're confident in the truth of your theories if you're doing
00:57:13.320 experiment they just said we'll do away with all that
00:57:15.800 you know how we demarcate science from non-science
00:57:18.440 the experiment and if something's falsifiable then
00:57:21.720 we've got a testable theory and that's a part of science and if it's not
00:57:27.800 lovely and parsimonious progress and people don't give him credit why
00:57:31.560 don't people give him credit for that I mean they
00:57:36.520 falsification is not good enough on the one hand
00:57:39.240 or on the other or on the other it's not how science works
00:57:42.040 okay and then they go under the Jew him coin thesis and they immediately reveal
00:57:45.080 themselves as having never been popular in this place of course
00:57:48.200 which is usually the problem you know look I guess that
00:57:52.440 the other one majority like tireless is there that you know
00:57:55.560 it's not well respected among philosophers and that's broadly true
00:57:59.160 might be changing a little bit but it's because it's often not assigned in a
00:58:03.480 significant way in philosophy courses you know to the students
00:58:07.240 and so if the students aren't reading them they're not inclined to go on
00:58:11.800 lecturers and professors themselves and so it's an mystery therefore that
00:58:15.800 that he doesn't have the kind of academic social cashay that he
00:58:20.280 deserves I would say even though he's solving all these problems
00:58:23.560 okay that's enough defense of proper let's keep going
00:58:26.840 so if they are an eight-year-old who is not being physically abused wanted to
00:58:31.320 run away from home that child would have the right to do so
00:58:36.440 it's the same kind of question that used to be asked about democracy
00:58:46.520 that is people used to say in many kinds of dispute
00:58:53.160 only one thing can be done the different people have different views
00:58:57.480 someone A B C D E but only one of them can be done
00:59:01.480 and therefore the others have to be prevented from getting their way
00:59:08.600 and if you have a democracy then that all that means is exactly like having
00:59:14.440 a monarchy or a tyranny except that the monarch or tyrant
00:59:17.880 is 51% of the people so obviously when you have a democracy
00:59:23.000 51% of the people will vote to dispossess the 49% of the people
00:59:36.200 in isolation from other institutions that is exactly what happens
00:59:41.160 but if you institute voting as part of a sophisticated system of
00:59:49.880 error correction and institutions of criticism and you gradually
00:59:59.960 introduce it there it simply doesn't have that property
1:00:04.360 it doesn't happen so now you're saying well now David you will say
1:00:09.560 do you think that 51% of the people have the right
1:00:21.080 well it's the wrong question I mean there are circumstances where they do
1:00:26.280 it depends but what you shouldn't be asking that you should be asking
1:00:30.760 what institutions are determining the answer do they
1:00:34.920 respect human rights are they rational do they expect
1:00:39.560 impossible forms of knowledge to be in the hands of the powerful
1:00:44.360 okay so around the 50 minute mark we have Tyler asking a question about
1:00:49.080 you know should an eight-year-old be allowed to run away from home for example
1:00:52.600 and David gives a long answer which is basically about democracy it's a
1:00:57.400 comparison to democracy but the key thing that he says
1:01:01.880 is you have to ask about how this situation arose and that's what I would say
1:01:06.600 it's like well you know in acting the taking children seriously
1:01:12.760 philosophy is not one day you know an eight-year-old has been raised
1:01:19.400 in the traditional way the way that almost every child has been raised more or
1:01:24.360 less and the next day you just invent TCS for your family
1:01:28.920 that's not going to work that's a recipe for disaster TCS is
1:01:33.240 a sophisticated theory of raising children which would require
1:01:38.040 one to either gradually begin to enact it if the child has already been
1:01:48.440 enacted and have a good understanding of it it does not entail
1:01:52.840 enabling the child to just make every single error regardless of the safety
1:02:02.440 and with care raising a child without coercion it is not
1:02:07.640 and this is the common misconception it is not
1:02:10.520 as David talks about with freedom just absolute anarchy for the child
1:02:15.240 where there are there's no knowledge there in that family
1:02:20.360 or with that child in other words should you just let the child run away
1:02:25.240 on TCS the answer is no does that entail coercion?
1:02:29.720 No because you have hit the two being coercing them
1:02:34.680 every single day in some way shape or form causing them
1:02:38.360 to want to run away so that's your fault so far that you've created this
1:02:42.280 environment in which the child wants to run away from you
1:02:45.640 and now suddenly you want to blame TCS for not allowing you to stop them
1:02:51.000 that makes no sense okay so this is a complete number of misunderstanding
1:02:55.720 TCS is like physics it takes quite a bit of knowledge to
1:03:00.920 really grok what's going on with that philosophy like with any philosophy
1:03:06.120 like with any claim about how reality either is or should be
1:03:11.560 and it can't just be reduced to complete matter
1:03:15.480 anarchy for everyone all the time that's not what it is okay let's keep going
1:03:20.600 so if somebody was watching the earth from a distant galaxy with a
1:03:24.840 powerful telescope they would see the this planet alone among all the other
1:03:30.120 planets in the galaxy as far as we know you know maybe there are many
1:03:33.160 inhabited planets in which case they would all have this property
1:03:36.440 and none of the other planets do the ones which have explanatory knowledge on
1:03:41.000 them can deflect asteroids but if I were Nietzsche and I heard this
1:03:47.880 I would say you're making the importance of being explanatory
1:03:52.040 subordinate to some notion of the will to power I don't mean that in a
1:03:56.040 critical way but is that a misunderstanding well so power is a is an
1:04:02.520 ambiguous term usually and especially with these
1:04:07.560 with these romantic philosophers it means power over humans
1:04:12.280 no I don't mean that but Nietzsche also meant it more broadly right
1:04:16.200 well I haven't read that so I'll take your word for that
1:04:19.800 okay the the will to have an effect is part of the will to solve problems
1:04:27.560 so we are born with a repertoire of ideas which include
1:04:35.960 expectations and desires and so on which are horribly inadequate
1:04:41.800 and conflict with each other and conflict with the world as well
1:04:46.520 and but we have the ability to alter and augment
1:04:53.080 those theories and one of that one of the things we do
1:04:57.400 is we affect the world around us so as to make it more the way we want it
1:05:05.320 okay so Tyler there mentions Nietzsche's will to power which is this you know
1:05:11.160 supposed to be the motivating force in people and whatever the case
1:05:17.240 okay let's just not worry too much about the details the will to power is
1:05:20.520 that people want to be powerful maybe want to have power over the
1:05:24.120 universe whatever it's used as a pejorative it's as if this is a bad thing in
1:05:29.400 a way now there could be all sorts of bad ways in which power might be used
1:05:35.320 of one person over another but the idea that our explanatory knowledge
1:05:42.200 won't allow us to fight off the hostility of the universe in order to allow
1:05:47.800 us to survive and anything we care about to survive
1:05:50.280 but somehow this is the bad thing is wrong it's just a pessimistic view of
1:05:55.160 people as always you know this is just this common idea that anytime someone
1:05:59.960 comes along and says we should solve problem x
1:06:03.400 someone else will say well that's going to damage the environment
1:06:05.800 or it's going to have negative effects y and z
1:06:08.920 well yes of course for any particular solution new problems are going to be
1:06:13.640 created but that doesn't mean we should stop
1:06:15.800 and doesn't mean we should think ourselves evil because of the fact that
1:06:19.800 some of our solutions cause let's say pollution
1:06:22.760 the pollution that we're dealing with on a natural earth anyway is so much
1:06:26.200 worse than anything that we're going to create
1:06:29.000 people think about the natural environment as being this pristine clean place
1:06:34.280 that is hospitable for people but it's not it's not we'd learn this
1:06:39.640 via the beginning of infinity and that in fact the
1:06:43.320 universe is implacably hostile and we eCADM existence
1:06:47.800 only certain places on the earth and we have to use technology
1:06:51.000 in order to keep ourselves safe and if we can use our power
1:06:55.160 our power to create explanations in order to spread out into the universe
1:07:00.360 survive and make the place much nicer than what it is
1:07:03.560 supernovas aren't nice black holes aren't nice
1:07:06.760 inhospitable moons around distant planets aren't nice
1:07:10.360 if we can use our knowledge to create the technology to make
1:07:13.880 place hospitable for people of the future and even for animals of the future
1:07:19.000 then isn't that good okay some people will come along and say oh this is the
1:07:21.880 world of power well that's just a negative view of humans but
1:07:25.960 that's the zeitgeist that's been the zeitgeist for
1:07:29.320 well how long time now then they would do it to one of the few people
1:07:33.000 standing up against it okay last clip let's let's go
1:07:37.720 so if you call that power then it is power but I would rather
1:07:42.760 call it something that arises naturally in physics in the same way that
1:07:47.160 gravity does you you most will say gravity is a theory about power
1:07:51.560 well yes and no gravity is a theory about how the universe is
1:07:58.520 the asteroid is pulled towards the earth by gravity and pushed away
1:08:04.680 by explanatory power and if you want to understand
1:08:10.200 what makes asteroids and planets do what they do you cannot do it
1:08:16.120 without understanding explanations but you can do it without
1:08:20.920 understanding a whole load of other attributes of humans including
1:08:25.560 the ability to suffer and and the fact that we're a featherless
1:08:29.800 biped okay one minute one hour and five minutes and
1:08:38.840 that I don't think I've emphasized enough really that that knowledge is just
1:08:43.480 explained how knowledge exists and how working at the laws of physics as well
1:08:46.760 well you know this is this is just a subset of saying you know the distinction
1:08:50.680 between the natural and the unnatural is artificial we are part of the
1:08:54.040 natural environment we humans have evolved therefore
1:08:58.040 explanatory abrains which are capable of creating
1:09:01.960 running minds which create explanatory knowledge
1:09:04.440 unnatural they're just natural as well it's all natural
1:09:07.400 by the standard of it exists in the universe and it does a reason by natural
1:09:11.160 processes but of course if you say it's unnatural if you
1:09:14.920 say what we do is unnatural well then you you immediately go down the
1:09:19.000 road of saying we are indeed special we are these special unique
1:09:23.400 entities in the universe and that's true as well so on the one hand
1:09:26.920 natural just and out working at the laws of physics and if you want to
1:09:29.400 explain what happens to asteroids that heading towards the earth
1:09:32.360 are they're going to be attracted to the earth by gravity
1:09:34.920 or repelled from the earth by technology and explanatory knowledge
1:09:39.240 and so this is why explanatory knowledge as it turns out
1:09:42.520 is like I've said before it's almost like people are a
1:09:49.400 force of nature we are the thing that is transforming at the moment just
1:09:54.040 locally our planet and tiny parts of Epun but eventually the entire galaxy
1:09:59.240 eventually the universe we spread out and we
1:10:01.560 transform the rest of physical reality which makes us kind of like you know
1:10:06.440 gravity and this is why David says you know we shouldn't have this
1:10:10.680 we'd negative view that there's one part of nature
1:10:14.120 namely anything that we do that is bad and everything else being natural is
1:10:18.680 okay why aren't we natural why are we unnatural it's a very religious
1:10:27.400 bad part of reality when actually we're the thing that is trying to make
1:10:32.280 everything better we're not deliberately out there trying to make
1:10:38.760 given the way British elections seem to have been writing that the Tories win
1:10:42.360 every time does that mean the error correction mechanism of the British
1:10:54.200 so as you probably know I I favor the first pass the post system
1:10:59.000 in the in the purest possible form as it is
1:11:03.080 implemented in Britain I think that is the most error correcting
1:11:07.880 possible electoral system although I must add that the electoral system
1:11:13.320 is only a tiny facet of the institutions of criticism and consent in
1:11:19.320 general it it's it's just a tiny thing but it is the best one
1:11:24.280 it's not perfect it it has some of the defects of for example
1:11:30.440 proportional representation proportional representation
1:11:33.640 has the defect that it causes coalitions all the time
1:11:37.800 collect coalitions of bad but you have a delegated monitor with the
1:11:41.800 coalition right with the coalition saying the Netherlands which is
1:11:45.560 richer than united kingdom you typically of coalition governments some
1:11:50.120 parties in the coalition are delegated monitors of the other parties
1:11:53.720 parties are better informed than voters so isn't that a better paparian
1:12:02.360 if we're looking at particular cases we we're going to get bogged down
1:12:06.360 into what you attribute to what because we're not doing experiments
1:12:10.200 with these things we we had we don't have a control group
1:12:14.120 we don't we don't have a agreed upon method
1:12:18.040 of deciding what is being tested and and then we we test different things at
1:12:23.400 different times and and never under the same conditions
1:12:27.240 okay so just last point here that point on first pass the post you know people
1:12:31.640 who are in Australia as well as everywhere else I think
1:12:35.160 that there's some sort of virtue with proportion representation
1:12:39.400 this allows the minor parties to actually get a foot in
1:12:42.200 and to have some representation the problem with this is
1:12:45.880 as David points out what you end up with is coalitions
1:12:49.720 such that the third party has a disproportionate amount of power
1:12:53.640 and this leads to compromises and compromises
1:12:57.640 have an undeservedly high reputation among people
1:13:01.880 as David says in the beginning infinity a compromise is certainly better
1:13:08.280 but in the normal case where the whole point of politics is to
1:13:12.040 supposedly diplomacy is supposed to avoid violence instead of having
1:13:15.640 tribal warfare you actually have discussions and debates
1:13:19.960 if you have a coalition then what you've got is a major party and a minor
1:13:27.320 cause the major party to do things that they otherwise would not have done
1:13:31.240 and this seems to be unfair because that minor party has
1:13:34.520 substantially less votes than the first most popular party in the second most
1:13:38.360 popular party so therefore that small minority of people
1:13:41.880 end up getting legislation through that the second largest group of people
1:13:46.680 don't they don't get to try out what they want but it's often worse than this
1:13:50.600 it's often worse than this if you do have two parties in a coalition
1:13:54.280 this minor party then may not get precisely what it wants but what it will do
1:14:00.200 is affect the legislation of the major party
1:14:03.160 and affect the legislation of the major party in such a way
1:14:06.040 then instead of the major party getting its policy
1:14:09.800 enacted turned into a law let's call that policy
1:14:14.200 X that policy X never actually gets through to becoming a law it never gets
1:14:19.640 voted on instead the major party and the minor party do a deal
1:14:24.760 and they come up with a compromise that isn't X
1:14:28.840 instead it's it's some compromise to policy called Y
1:14:33.640 and this compromise policy Y I'm going to call it Y
1:14:36.920 isn't what the major party wants exactly it isn't what the minor party wants
1:14:42.120 exactly it's a mishmash of the birth and so when they turn it into a law
1:14:47.000 and it fails or something goes wrong then the major party doesn't learn
1:14:51.960 anything because they will say to the minor party and to everyone else in the
1:14:55.880 population that's not the that's not the policy we wanted in the first place
1:14:59.320 we told you the policy that we wanted but we were in coalition with the
1:15:02.120 minor party so we had to invent this other policy which we didn't
1:15:05.000 really want we thought it would fail we thought that X
1:15:08.520 was the policy that was going to work and the minor party says well we always
1:15:12.440 thought that we shouldn't have that policy Y either
1:15:15.400 we didn't want X we didn't want Y we wanted the policy that we truly
1:15:18.840 believed in but they never got enacted either
1:15:21.160 nothing that anyone believes in actually got enacted instead
1:15:24.440 the mishmash compromise policy got enacted and so when it fails no one learns
1:15:28.120 anything and everyone just retreats back to their original positions
1:15:31.400 the major party retreats to position X if X actually got enacted and tried
1:15:37.480 for a few years perhaps until the time of the next election
1:15:40.840 then the citizenry can decide whether or not that policy was a good policy or not
1:15:45.640 and then vote knowing that the policies and the thoughts and the ideas
1:15:51.400 of the people in that major party were actually worth voting for in the first
1:15:54.840 place and this is why first-past-the-post works is why a
1:15:57.720 two-party system is better than this multiplicity of parties
1:16:02.440 because if you have a multiplicity of parties you never actually get policies
1:16:06.280 being acted that any of them truly truly endorse
1:16:10.440 okay this was a wonderful conversation I really enjoyed
1:16:13.560 the the way that Tyler has gone about questioning David I think there's a whole
1:16:19.320 bunch of misconceptions there David's um uh David's
1:16:23.560 ideas like poppers like ever it's there very hard to
1:16:27.560 understand without um serious study but that study of course is
1:16:31.880 fun hopefully that's why Ritzen that I exist doing this is to try and
1:16:37.720 unpack some of this stuff so I hope that this was um
1:16:41.640 available to some extent thanks again to Aaron for suggesting this and I'll
