00:00:00.000 Hello, so I'm home again now and in the comfort of home outside of the wind and so I can
00:00:16.800 So the last thing I talked about was the definition or as I say the explanation of what
00:00:24.800 is a person is according to David Deutsch. Those entities that can create explanatory knowledge
00:00:31.200 and I spent a vast amount of time on this but and I probably waxed it lyrical a little too much.
00:00:37.680 So I'm going to skip forward a number of pages and move towards the second half really of the
00:00:49.040 chapter. It's a very long chapter and I'm going to just jump over sections such as for example where
00:00:56.880 David distinguishes between explanatory knowledge genetic knowledge and there's a third type
00:01:02.320 which he calls cultural knowledge and cultural knowledge is of course the way it sounds.
00:01:06.720 It is the knowledge that is embedded within a culture in some way. It's this in explicit
00:01:11.440 type knowledge. There's also a sense in which other animals have cultural knowledge as well
00:01:16.320 and so we're going to come to see and this is the reason I'm passing over it. In chapter 16
00:01:22.080 a cultural knowledge of a sort that for example great apes have where they're able to
00:01:27.600 behave your paths and behave your passing is where knowledge can be passed on from one
00:01:34.880 generation to the next via a culture. So there are memes there that are being transmitted from
00:01:42.320 one place to the next but it's not explanatory. Now it's very interesting it's a nuanced
00:01:46.960 argument but it says that there are certain kinds of knowledge that can be passed from one
00:01:51.040 generation to another in great ape species that isn't encoded entirely in their genes but can't
00:01:57.360 be divorced from their genes either. Kind of like us but it's not explanatory and it's not universal.
00:02:03.520 We'll get there in chapter 16 so for now I'm going to skip over the part of chapter three
00:02:07.920 where it's mentioned. So now let's get to a new part of chapter three and David writes.
00:02:14.720 One might wonder whether the reach of people in general might be greater than the reach of humans.
00:02:19.840 What if for instance the reach of technology is indeed limited but only to creatures with two
00:02:24.960 opposable thumbs on each hand or if the reach of scientific knowledge is unlimited but only to
00:02:30.800 being whose brains are twice the size of ours but our faculty of being universal constructors
00:02:36.800 makes these issues as irrelevant as that of access to vitamins. If progress at some point
00:02:42.320 would it depend on having two thumbs per hand then the outcome would depend not on the knowledge
00:02:46.960 we inherit in our genes but on whether we could discover how to build robots or gloves with two
00:02:52.000 thumbs per hand or alter ourselves to have a second thumb. If it depends on having more memory
00:02:56.880 capacity or speed than a human brain then the outcome would depend on whether we could build computers
00:03:01.520 to do the job. Again such things are already commonplace in technology. So this is the argument
00:03:07.760 I hear frequently from popularizers of science physicists especially who are interested in questions
00:03:15.280 of astrobiology and whether there are aliens out there or not. And the argument is about the extent
00:03:22.000 to which the laws of physics as I mentioned in my last video the extent to which the laws of physics
00:03:29.920 might be incomprehensible to us but comprehensible nonetheless to some other kind of intelligent
00:03:36.240 life format there. So there might be these super intelligent aliens or indeed the super intelligence
00:03:42.720 of the form that the AI catastrophes are concerned about. So this is the Nick Bostrom flavor of
00:03:52.000 pessimist, technological pessimist who argues that the AGI could turn up or it's not an AGI really
00:03:59.760 I've written a blog about this. It's sort of a super AI, a conniving sort of AI that might decide
00:04:07.440 to take over humanity either because of benevolence or because it's simply uncaring and wants to
00:04:13.680 convert everything into paperclips and having been told to convert everything into paperclips
00:04:17.520 you know refuses to stop. Whatever the case there might be these kind of super intelligences
00:04:22.480 that are able to comprehend things in the universe, physical laws, that our brains don't allow us to
00:04:30.640 and they have a logistics plane there and that can't be possible because the only things that
00:04:35.680 can be augmented could be the speed and memory capacity and those things we already routinely
00:04:43.120 do. I'll continue David Speaks along similar lines now. He says, the astrophysicist Martin
00:04:50.720 Reese has speculated that somewhere in the universe there could be life and intelligence out
00:04:54.480 there in forms we can't conceive. Just as a chimpanzee can't understand quantum theory it could
00:04:59.440 be there are aspects of reality that are far beyond the capacity of our brains. I'll just pause
00:05:04.000 there and add a little personal anecdote. My father says exactly the same thing. He says that
00:05:08.400 attempting to understand God is like a chicken trying to understand a human and I've always found
00:05:14.640 this objectionable because of this idea of being able to comprehend stuff if it can be put into
00:05:22.320 words and so it can be put into words for a God or for a super alien intelligence in their
00:05:26.480 language then it can be translated into our language and we can understand it. Anyway we'll
00:05:31.440 continue with what David has to say here. David writes, but that cannot be so. For if the capacity
00:05:39.520 and question is mere computational speed and amount of memory then we can understand the aspects
00:05:44.080 in question with the help of computers just as we have understood the world for centuries
00:05:49.360 with the help of pencil and paper. As Einstein remarked, my pencil and eye are more clever than I.
00:05:54.800 In terms of computational repertoire our computers and brains are already universal but if the
00:06:02.000 claim is that we may be qualitatively unable to understand what some other forms of intelligence
00:06:07.840 can if our disability cannot be remedied by mere automation then this is just another claim
00:06:13.600 that the world is not explicable. Indeed it is tantamount to an appeal to the supernatural
00:06:19.360 with all the arbitrariness that is inherent in such appeals. For if we wanted to incorporate
00:06:23.600 into our worldview an imaginary realm explicable only to superhumans we need never have bothered
00:06:28.720 to abandon the myths of Persephone and her fellow deities. Of course there this is me speaking again.
00:06:36.000 This is wonderful so when in a discussion about these issues among scientifically minded people
00:06:43.760 you encounter this objection that a person is thinking trying to think hard and rationally about
00:06:49.360 these issues and whether or not aliens are out there and whether or not the world is comprehensible
00:06:53.120 and whether or not there's superintelligence out there. One thing to keep in mind is if someone
00:06:58.720 argues that there could be realms out there that are inexplicable to us but explicable either to
00:07:04.960 super intelligent aliens or to super intelligent artificial intelligence then what they're saying is
00:07:12.480 that there are realms regions of the universe laws of physics that essentially are as inexplicable to
00:07:23.360 us as a supernatural being would be and so the argument is precisely the same instead of having
00:07:32.080 God being the thing that cannot be explained by the human mind you're just replacing your supernatural
00:07:38.480 God with a supernatural alien or a supernatural technology they're serving exactly the same function
00:07:46.240 they're arguing that certain things can't be understood by human beings so let's continue
00:07:51.440 David writes so human reaches essentially the same as the reach of explanatory knowledge itself
00:07:56.960 an environment is within human reach if it is possible to create an open-ended stream of explanatory
00:08:02.320 knowledge there that means that if knowledge of a suitable kind were instantiated in such an
00:08:06.800 environment in suitable physical objects it would cause itself to survive and would then continue
00:08:11.920 to increase indefinitely can there really be such an environment this is essentially the question
00:08:17.200 that I asked at the end of the last chapter can this creativity continue indefinitely and it is
00:08:22.560 the question to which the spaceship earth metaphor assumes a negative answer okay so
00:08:28.400 now David moves into explicitly writing about the content of one of his TED talks this amazing
00:08:38.880 insight he gives that anywhere in the universe could be a potential hub of knowledge creation
00:08:45.360 of open-ended knowledge creation he says there's only three things that you need so I won't read
00:08:49.760 the entire chapter here I'll just pick out a few key points so he says what's needed for this
00:08:56.000 open-ended creation of knowledge is firstly matter we need to get matter and he also argues the
00:09:04.400 reason why we need matter is so that we can power everything so if we want to power our knowledge
00:09:08.480 creation we're going to need some form of energy and that requires matter and we're going to need
00:09:12.400 somewhere to store the knowledge that we create and that's going to require matter we're also going
00:09:17.760 to need evidence we're going to need to be able to find out about the world so the evidence
00:09:22.400 comes flooding in and so when we start to create our knowledge we need to test our theories
00:09:27.120 and the way to test our theories is by recourse to comparing our theories against the evidence
00:09:32.320 or we have competing theories to see which one is ruled out by the evidence that's the purpose
00:09:36.800 of evidence so these are the things that we need we need matter and evidence so he says matter
00:09:42.720 energy and evidence are just matteries energy right according to our science theory of general
00:09:47.360 relativity we can convert one into the other so that's no problem and he writes matter energy
00:09:54.080 and evidence are the only requirements that an environment needs to have in order to be a venue
00:09:59.120 for open-ended knowledge creation it's not amazing in other words just about anywhere in the
00:10:05.120 universe even intergalactic space where all of those things are at their lowest possible values
00:10:14.080 it's the least amount of matter of energy and evidence is out there in intergalactic space but
00:10:19.440 there is matter and energy out there and there is evidence coming in all you need is a moderate
00:10:24.640 size telescope as he points out so if we want to transform any part of the universe into a hub
00:10:33.600 of knowledge creation we can do so if we know how if we can figure out how I'm skipping a bit so
00:10:39.440 now he's speaking about once you have this matter energy and evidence what can you do with it
00:10:48.400 you can have an open-ended stream of knowledge creation what does that mean well it could mean
00:10:52.720 converting things into space colonies where people can be in order to create the knowledge
00:11:01.200 we might start at the moon so he writes setting up self-sufficient colonies on the moon and elsewhere
00:11:06.240 in the solar system and eventually in other solar systems we'll be a good hedge against the
00:11:10.480 extinction of our species or the destruction of civilization and is a highly desirable goal for
00:11:15.760 that reason among others as Stephen Hawking has said I don't think the human race will survive
00:11:21.920 the next thousand years unless we spread into space there are too many accidents that can be
00:11:27.120 fall-life in a single planet but I'm an optimist we will reach out to the stars end quote
00:11:32.720 David writes but even that will be far from an unproblematic state and most people are not satisfied
00:11:38.320 merely to be confident in the survival of the species they want to survive personally also
00:11:43.600 like our earliest human ancestors they want to be free from physical dangerous suffering skipping
00:11:48.240 a little in fact people will always want still more than that they will want to make progress
00:11:54.640 for in addition to threats there will always be problems in the benign sense of the word
00:11:58.880 errors gaps inconsistencies and inadequacies in our knowledge that we wish to solve including
00:12:03.680 not least moral knowledge knowledge about what to want what to strive for just going to pause
00:12:09.440 there this is another place that David Deutsch provides a parsimonious true and refined way of
00:12:18.880 getting at the heart of what morality is about so many people now are concerned about what are
00:12:26.400 the moral foundations of civilization they are concerned that if we or in many cases they're
00:12:32.960 concerned about giving up religion because if we give up religion then we have that we're
00:12:37.520 fruitfully free of a moral foundation others say well now that we've had religion we've tried
00:12:43.680 that now let us look for a new moral foundation once more David provides this third way
00:12:49.760 we don't have to be concerned about moral foundations in religious moral foundations and we don't
00:12:55.120 need to be concerned about secular moral foundations we don't have to be concerned about moral
00:12:58.640 foundations you'll get to a part about what morality essentially consists of and how to ensure that
00:13:04.880 we can continue to improve our morality and make progress in morality just as anywhere else
00:13:11.920 but here he's hinting about how morality is different to other areas now other areas are relevant
00:13:19.040 to making moral decisions but what morality is about so repeat what David has said there is that
00:13:24.240 morality or moral knowledge is knowledge about what to want what to strive for so it's about
00:13:33.440 the should it's about the future it's about what we are trying to achieve what we should want
00:13:41.680 we always have a very large possibly infinite repertoire of things before us that we could choose
00:13:48.160 to do morality is about which one should we choose do we need foundations for this we don't
00:13:56.160 what we need is a stance of error correction but i'm getting ahead of myself we'll leave that
00:14:01.760 for future chapters so let's continue David writes here is another misconception in the Garden
00:14:09.680 of Eden myth that the supposed unproblematic state would be a good state to be in
00:14:15.280 some theologians have denied this and i agree with them and unproblematic state has a state
00:14:20.560 without creative thought its other name is death this is fantastic this is the idea of utopias
00:14:29.840 whether they're religious utopias so i think people like Christopher Hitchens have complained
00:14:38.000 that heaven as it is normally spoken about in monotheism sounds like a terribly boring place
00:14:44.160 and i would agree um not only terribly boring it sounds awful you're under perpetual surveillance
00:14:50.800 apparently by this all-seeing god but nothing ever changes because everything's perfect
00:14:57.760 so to in political utopias this idea that we can finally once and for all
00:15:03.840 grock the alternate political system such that everything is working in its best possible way
00:15:11.440 it's most perfect way instead if we simply have an understanding that people are fallible so
00:15:20.080 the institutions are fallible and what we should be striving for is incremental improvement
00:15:24.800 things tend to go a lot better we don't tend to have bloody revolutions we improve things
00:15:30.000 where we can and we improve things slowly such that we can correct the errors when we make
00:15:34.480 missteps but striving for utopias is a bad idea striving for unproblematic states is striving
00:15:42.000 for somewhere where we do not have to correct errors anymore because all the errors have been corrected
00:15:46.560 and that sounds like hell rather than heaven or any kind of utopia let's continue with chapter
00:15:53.920 three david writes nor we ever run out of problems the deeper an explanation is the more
00:16:01.520 new problems it creates that must be so if only because there could be no such thing as an
00:16:05.600 ultimate explanation just as the gods did it is always a bad explanation so any other
00:16:10.320 purported foundation of all explanations must be bad too it must be easily variable because it
00:16:15.760 cannot answer the question why that foundation and not some other nothing can be explained
00:16:20.640 only in terms of itself that holds for philosophy just as it does for science and in particular
00:16:26.000 it holds for moral philosophy no utopia is possible but only because our values and our objectives
00:16:32.160 can continue to improve indefinitely we're about to get to the part that not only is the most
00:16:37.360 famous part of the chapter but it's possibly the most famous part of the book or the many famous
00:16:42.640 parts of the book but this this one really stands out so let me just read it he writes
00:16:49.520 Thus fallibleism alone rather understates the error prone nature of knowledge creation
00:16:54.720 knowledge creation is not only subject to error error is a common and significant in all
00:16:58.640 ways will be and correcting them will always reveal further and better problems and so the
00:17:03.280 maxim that I have suggested should be carved in stone namely the earth's biospheres in capable
00:17:09.200 of supporting human life is actually a special case of a much more general truth namely that
00:17:14.080 for people problems are soluble so let us carve that in stone problems are inevitable
00:17:22.480 it is inevitable that we face problems but no particular problem is inevitable we survive and thrive
00:17:29.200 by solving each problem as it comes up and since the human ability to transform nature
00:17:34.080 is limited only by the laws of physics none of the endless stream of problems will ever
00:17:39.920 constitute an impossible barrier so a complementary and equally important truth about people
00:17:45.920 and in the physical world is that problems are soluble by soluble I mean that the right
00:17:51.840 knowledge would solve them it is not of course that we can possess knowledge just by wishing for
00:17:56.960 it but it is in principle accessible to us so let us carve that in stone to problems are soluble
00:18:07.120 so this is very famous and people speak about this and sometimes as a criticism of
00:18:14.080 David's philosophy and it's in mistaken criticism David is a fallibleist
00:18:19.520 but they find this grating in some way that he's carved things in stone I think John Horgan
00:18:26.880 perhaps made this criticism or some others have done it in print as well this idea that one
00:18:33.120 would carve things in stone sounds somewhat ridiculous and religious but but I find it a quaint
00:18:41.600 idea and it's a way of emphasizing this magnificent dichotomy it also underpins construct a theory
00:18:50.240 a a a fully fledged scientific theory and so it's important to have these principles that
00:18:57.920 underline that underlie our rationality and our reason it doesn't mean that they cannot possibly
00:19:05.360 be criticized it doesn't mean they're not fallible it simply means that they're a good way in
00:19:10.800 order to arrange our reason in order to approach problems in an optimistic way so this provides a
00:19:19.760 basis not an unalterable foundation they provide a basis or a framework within which we can
00:19:28.160 operate it's an infinite science framework okay the idea that problems are inevitable and problems
00:19:32.960 are soluble so the criticism is more a criticism of a approach rather than the criticism of
00:19:40.560 David on this point I think is nothing but a criticism of approach or of style rather than anything
00:19:47.840 to do with substance so I'll continue that progress is both possible and desirable is perhaps
00:19:54.880 the quintessential idea of the enlightenment it motivates all traditions of criticism as well as
00:19:59.920 the principle of seeking good explanations but it can be interpreted in two almost opposite ways
00:20:04.800 both of which confusingly are known as perfectibility one is that humans or human societies are
00:20:10.960 capable of attaining a state of supposed perfection such as the Buddhist or Hindu Nirvana or various
00:20:16.080 political utopias the other is that every attainable state can be indefinitely improved
00:20:21.280 fallibleism rules out the first position in favor of the second okay so everything can be improved
00:20:27.520 there's no such thing as heaven or Nirvana or utopia now there proceeds to be some lengthy
00:20:33.680 discussion and it's worthwhile reading get the book and read the book but about the history of
00:20:39.680 the enlightenment and it's very interesting I personally find it very interesting because I
00:20:43.680 don't have to be interested in the history of philosophy but it's essentially about these esoteric
00:20:48.800 matters of the difference between continental French style German style enlightenment thinking
00:20:54.880 and British style enlightenment thinking and David points out that the continental style
00:21:00.240 seemed to be seeking final answers and utopias and the British style recognized the more fallibleist
00:21:08.000 nature of the human condition and human beings then there's another lengthy section which David I
00:21:14.080 think will date of definitely drew from in order to frame his TED talk it was the one that got
00:21:19.440 the biggest laugh if I remember where he speaks about the matter energy and evidence out
00:21:25.920 there into galactic space are all there at their lowest possible supply so it's completely empty
00:21:32.720 and then he says or is it that is another perochial misconception of people laugh because it's
00:21:37.840 so astounding it's outstanding idea that you know you're about to hear something astonishing
00:21:45.200 namely that even this implacably dark and empty place is going to turn out to be a hub of
00:21:52.000 a potential hub of knowledge creation that's fantastic so I'll continue after missing those two
00:21:57.840 significant sections he writes all people in the universe once they have understood enough to
00:22:04.240 free themselves from perochial obstacles face essentially the same opportunities this is an underlying
00:22:10.160 unity in the physical world more significant than all the dissimilarities I have described
00:22:17.760 between our environment and the typical one the fundamental laws of nature are so uniform
00:22:22.400 and evidence about them so ubiquitous and the connections between understanding and control
00:22:27.040 so intimate that whether we are on our perochial home planet or a hundred million light years away
00:22:32.640 and intergalactic plasma we can do the same science and make the same progress so with typical
00:22:38.960 location in the universe is amenable to the open-ended creation of knowledge and therefore
00:22:43.520 so are almost all other kinds of environment since they have more matter more energy and easy access
00:22:48.880 to any evidence than intergalactic space the thought experiment considered almost the worst possible
00:22:54.560 case perhaps the laws of physics do not allow knowledge creation inside say the jet of a quasar
00:22:59.120 or perhaps they do but either way in the universe at large knowledge friendliness is the rule
00:23:04.240 not the exception that is to say the rule is person friendliness to people who have the relevant
00:23:09.680 knowledge death is the rule for those who do not skipping some more and now I get to one of my
00:23:15.200 favorite parts of this entire chapter and something that I have prefaced previously in the last
00:23:21.200 two parts of this chapter so let me just read quite a lengthy section here now he writes
00:23:28.560 now I can turn to the significance of knowledge and therefore of people in the cosmic scheme of things
00:23:34.480 many things are more obviously significant than people space and time are significant because
00:23:40.720 they appear in almost all explanations of other physical phenomena similarly electrons and
00:23:46.720 atoms are significant humans seem to have no place in that exalted company their history and
00:23:52.000 our politics our science art and philosophy our aspirations and moral values all these are tiny
00:23:58.480 side effects of a supernova explosion a few billion years ago which could be extinguished tomorrow
00:24:03.360 by another such explosion supernova to a moderately significant in the cosmic scheme of things
00:24:09.200 but it seems that one can explain everything about supernova and almost everything else
00:24:13.920 without ever mentioning people or knowledge at all however that is merely another
00:24:20.320 parochial era due to our current untypical vantage point in an enlightenment that is mere centuries
00:24:25.760 old in the longer run humans may colonize other solar systems and by increasing their knowledge
00:24:32.160 control ever more powerful physical processes if people ever choose to live near a star
00:24:37.600 that is capable of exploding they may well wish to prevent such an explosion probably by
00:24:42.480 removing some of the material from the star such a project would use many orders of magnitude
00:24:47.600 more energy than humans currently control and more advanced technology as well but it is a
00:24:52.880 fundamentally simple task not requiring any steps that are even close to limits imposed by laws
00:24:58.160 of physics so with the right knowledge it could be achieved indeed for all we know engineers elsewhere
00:25:04.000 in the universe already achieving it routinely and consequently it is not true that the attributes
00:25:09.280 of supernova in general are independent of the presence or absence of people or of what those people
00:25:14.640 know and intend more generally if we want to predict what a star will do we first have to guess
00:25:21.360 whether there are any people near it and if so what knowledge they may have and what they may want
00:25:26.240 to achieve outside our perochial perspective after a physics is incomplete without a theory of people
00:25:32.800 just as it is incomplete without a theory of gravity or nuclear reactions note that this conclusion
00:25:39.280 does not depend on the assumption that humans or anyone else will colonize the galaxy and take
00:25:44.400 control of any supernova the assumption that they will not is equally a theory about the future
00:25:50.240 behaviour of people knowledge is a significant phenomena in the universe because to make almost
00:25:55.680 any prediction about astrophysics one must take a position about what types of knowledge will
00:26:02.160 or will not be present near the phenomena in question so all explanations of what is out there
00:26:08.960 in the physical world mention knowledge and people if only implicitly but knowledge is more
00:26:15.360 significant even than that consider any physical object for instance a solar system or a microscopic
00:26:21.280 chip of silicon and then consider all the transformations that it is physically possible for it to undergo
00:26:26.880 for instance the silicon chip might be melted and solidify in a different shape or it might be
00:26:31.120 transformed into a chip with a different functionality the solar system might be devastated when
00:26:35.760 its star becomes a supernova or life might evolve on one of its planets or it might be transformed
00:26:40.720 using transmutation and other futuristic technologies in the microprocessors in all cases the class of
00:26:46.560 transformations that could happen spontaneously in the absence of knowledge is negligible
00:26:51.120 is negatively small compared to the class that could be affected artificially by intelligent
00:26:57.360 beings who wanted those transformations to happen so the explanations of almost all physically
00:27:02.880 possible phenomena are about how knowledge would be applied to bring these phenomena about if you
00:27:09.040 want to explain how an object might possibly reach a temperature of 10 degrees or a million you can
00:27:14.240 refer to spontaneous processes and can avoid mentioning people explicitly even though most processes
00:27:19.840 at those temperatures can be brought about only by people but if you want to explain how an object
00:27:25.040 might possibly cool down to a millionth of a degree above absolute zero you cannot avoid explaining
00:27:30.640 in detail what people would do and then it's still only the least of it in your mind's eye
00:27:36.960 continue your journey from that point in intergalactic space to another at least 10 times as far away
00:27:42.400 a destination this time is inside one of the jets of a quasar what would it be like in one of
00:27:47.440 those jets languages barely capable of expressing it and we'd rather like facing a supernova
00:27:52.240 explosion a point blank range but for millions of years at a time there's some sorry that is the
00:28:00.800 best explanation that is the best description of a quasar that I have read and I have read a lot
00:28:07.280 of astrophysic books before yeah so let's continue the the survival time for a human body
00:28:15.040 we'll be measuring figure seconds as I said it is unclear whether the laws of physics permit any
00:28:20.560 knowledge to grow there let alone in life support system for humans it is about as different from
00:28:25.120 our ancestral environment as could possibly be the laws of physics that explain it there are no
00:28:30.160 resemblance to any rules of thumb that were ever in our ancestors genes are in their culture
00:28:34.640 yet human brains today now in considerable detail what is happening there
00:28:38.320 we're about to get to this amazing relationship between the laws of physics
00:28:44.960 and structures out there in the universe and our brains a connection is made here that has
00:28:49.680 never been made before so let me read David writes of the quasar jet somehow that jet happens
00:28:58.000 in such a way that billions of years later on the other side of the universe a chemical
00:29:03.520 scum can know and predict what the jet will do and can understand why that means that one
00:29:09.040 physical system say an astrophysicist brain contains an accurate working model of the other
00:29:14.640 the jet not just a superficial image though it contains that as well but an explanatory theory
00:29:19.680 that embodies the same mathematical relationships and causal structures that is scientific knowledge
00:29:25.680 furthermore the faithfulness with which the one structure resembles the other is steadily increasing
00:29:30.640 that constitutes the creation of knowledge here we have physical objects very unlike each other
00:29:35.840 and whose behavior is dominated by different laws of physics embodying the same mathematical
00:29:40.480 and causal structures and doing so ever more accurately over time of all the physical process
00:29:46.480 that can occur in nature under the creation of knowledge exhibits that underlying structure
00:29:50.560 wow that's amazing so he's just said picking possibly the most alien kind of environment
00:30:01.440 that we can presently think of a quasar jet where as far as we know theoretically it's powered
00:30:09.120 by a rotating black hole that's spinning so fast that the magnetic fields cause the material that
00:30:16.320 is spiraling into the black hole to be shot out because of the magnetic fields in great jets
00:30:24.960 and these jets as far as I remember the matter in those jets is accelerating away from the black
00:30:32.560 hole at close to relativistic speeds so it's kind of like a particle accelerator but
00:30:38.400 but it but it ridiculously high energy and so if you were to stand inside of that jet as
00:30:45.440 they've said it'd be something like experiencing supernova blows it'd be something like experiencing
00:30:50.640 a supernova blast whatever the case it is an environment completely unlike the human brain the human
00:30:58.000 brain is a wet 36 degree Celsius object rather complicated a quasar jet is millions
00:31:07.520 billions of degrees Celsius um traveling at relativistic speeds the human brain is not
00:31:14.560 they're completely different the quasar jet and the human brain and yet and yet what's going on
00:31:19.200 inside of that quasar jet is replicated inside of the astrophysicist mind in terms of the relationships
00:31:26.720 between the entities that are involved creating the phenomena so in the quasar jet what's going on
00:31:33.200 is a bunch of physical relationships between black holes magnetic fields light matter what's going
00:31:41.360 on inside of the brain is a bunch of relationships as well but these are abstract relationships
00:31:46.720 representing the physical ones that are out there and as we create more knowledge the model
00:31:52.720 the theory the explanation that's inside of an astrophysicist brain of what a quasar is
00:31:57.680 represents the quasar with ever greater accuracy so this is what scientific knowledge is
00:32:05.760 scientific knowledge is where we embody mathematical relationships we embody explanatory
00:32:12.640 relationships abstract ones inside of our minds that represent the mathematical and causal
00:32:20.800 relationships of things out there in the universe and as that increases as that improves or becomes
00:32:28.720 more accurate that's what we call the creation of knowledge well okay so that that's a really
00:32:36.480 impressive way of looking at things okay so now I'm going to skip a bit more but David also speaks
00:32:44.640 about how physical processes in general when we're trying to predict what's going to happen
00:32:52.320 we really have to consider the knowledge that happens to be present at any particular location
00:32:58.400 and he uses the quaint example of the SETI project and the RSC by telescope is it's in Chile
00:33:08.320 and it is part of the SETI project a search for extraterrestrial intelligence and in a fridge
00:33:15.520 at the RSC by telescope is a bottle of champagne which will be opened one day if they find evidence
00:33:24.560 of alien intelligence out there somewhere using the radio telescope so normally if you're trying to
00:33:30.160 predict if a gas-filled bottle is going to explode you use equations from physics equations from
00:33:39.040 chemistry we'll use something called the universal gas law universal gas law is PV equals NRT
00:33:46.000 P is the pressure V is the volume N is the number of miles R is the gas constant T is the temperature
00:33:50.720 and you can solve this equation and you can if you already know what pressure is required in order
00:33:57.680 to release the cork from a bottle well you can make a prediction about when that cork is going to
00:34:02.880 be released from the bottle if we start to heat the bottle up given its volume and the pressure that's
00:34:07.200 inside already and then pressure that's outside and etc you get what I'm saying you can make a
00:34:12.080 prediction of when the cork will flip off the bottle but if you're talking about that particular
00:34:17.040 bottle in that particular fridge then no amount of physics and chemistry and thermodynamics
00:34:23.760 expertise is going to allow you to make that prediction David writes of whether or not the
00:34:30.800 cork is going to pop out of the bottle he writes to predict it you have to know whether there really
00:34:35.280 are people sending radio signals from various soul systems to explain it you have to explain how
00:34:40.080 people know about those people in their attributes nothing less than that specific knowledge which
00:34:44.320 depends upon which depends among other things on subtle properties of the chemistry of the planets
00:34:49.520 on distant stars can explain or predict with any accuracy whether and when that cork will pop
00:34:55.680 so I basically reached the end of this fantastic chapter it's an amazing read the entire thing
00:35:01.920 is an amazing read I've taken something like two hours to read the entire thing so let me just
00:35:11.280 read the conclusion David writes about how as far as we know only here on earth is
00:35:16.960 there a hub of knowledge creation the nowhere else in the universe is knowledge being created
00:35:24.160 and knowledge is a cosmically significant thing for all the reasons that he's explained in this
00:35:28.640 chapter but the rest of the universe can become a knowledge creating hub just like the earth is
00:35:36.960 all it needs is a spark and he writes like an explosive awaiting a spark
00:35:43.360 unimaginably numerous environments in the universe are waiting out there for eons on end
00:35:49.200 doing nothing at all or blindly generating evidence and storing it up or pouring it out into space
00:35:55.520 almost any of them would if the right knowledge ever reached it instantly and irrevocably
00:36:00.960 burst into a radically different type of physical activity intentioned knowledge creation
00:36:06.640 displaying all the various kinds of complexity universality in reach that are inherent in the laws of
00:36:12.080 nature and transforming that environment from what is typical today into what could become
00:36:17.840 typical in the future if we want to we could be that spark well amazing um he has a section
00:36:28.480 at the end of every chapter that contains terminology I don't think I'll always read this I didn't
00:36:33.280 read it for chapter one I didn't read it for chapter two but I just want to pause and reflect on
00:36:37.920 some of the terminology used in this particular chapter as it will become relevant in subsequent chapters
00:36:44.080 so he defines a person if you remember this is from the last episode he defines a person as
00:36:50.720 an entity that can create explanatory knowledge he talks about fundamental or significant phenomena
00:36:58.080 as one that plays a necessary role in the explanation of many phenomena or whose distinctive features
00:37:05.120 require distinctive explanation in terms of fundamental theories
00:37:10.240 Perochialism is the making is mistaking appearance for reality or local regularities for universal laws
00:37:20.640 a constructor is a device capable of causing other objects to undergo transformations without
00:37:26.960 undergoing any net change itself a universal constructor is a constructor that can cause
00:37:33.600 any raw materials to undergo any physical physically possible transformation given the right
00:37:40.000 information so um this is for telling constructor theory there's a whole website now for
00:37:48.000 constructor theory www dot constructor theory dot org which you should visit there are some
00:37:52.800 fantastic videos there there are excellent papers that have been written um and this really
00:38:00.160 shows a huge amount of promise it's a new mode of explanation it's a new way in which we can
00:38:08.080 make progress in physics many people have recognized i think increasingly physicists have recognized
00:38:15.440 that string theory useful as it is mathematically beautiful that it might be mathematically
00:38:20.800 isn't making the kind of progress that people assumed it would have after this many decades
00:38:31.360 so whatever the case david's offering an alternative unifying theory this constructor theory
00:38:39.040 that has the potential to achieve not only some of the things that string theory might have
00:38:45.760 but could be a way of looking at many other kinds of science many other kinds of philosophy
00:38:53.600 this dichotomy between what it is possible to achieve what is in what is possible versus impossible
00:39:02.240 so i myself i'm looking forward to learning more and more about this i'm still still an amateur
00:39:08.320 in this area and so perhaps after the the beginning of infinity readings i'll attempt to tackle
00:39:16.480 some of the constructive theory okay thanks next time chapter four
