00:00:05.200 Ontological truth is a description of what is really there. It's an ideal. We can't have a perfect
00:00:12.240 description. We don't have a method for finding once and for all final descriptions of reality.
00:00:19.600 But this is a wonderful thing. It means the quest for knowledge is infinite as David Deutsch has
00:00:24.800 explained. We make progress forever. We don't find a final fact about reality and just stop and
00:00:30.800 say well that's it. No more needs to be known about this. We know everything there is to know about
00:00:35.440 this. That they, happily, will never come. We can always improve things. This means we must try to
00:00:42.000 show which of our ideas are wrong and how. And so this is the best thing you can do to help
00:00:47.360 progress along. You don't need to be a great philosopher, a quick thinking mathematician or a
00:00:51.440 creative scientist. You just need to be a critic. Critics have a bad reputation, probably from movies
00:00:58.240 or whatever. But they don't deserve it. There are two equally important ways to be in the world when
00:01:04.320 it comes to progress. You can be a creator and you can be a critic. We are all both of these at
00:01:10.320 various times and both are absolutely essential to creating knowledge. Creation can result in
00:01:16.640 improvements and that's great. Producing something, you can be exhilarating. But that again is just
00:01:22.960 a feeling. Just because you're excited about a new creation doesn't mean you've actually produced
00:01:27.040 anything of value. You can be wrong. You might very well be right about your new creation. You
00:01:32.560 learn fame or money or social cash aid. Solve your problem importantly. Your new idea might spread.
00:01:39.600 Some new art that's beautiful or more incisive might make you rich or famous. Some of you
00:01:45.120 scientific discovery to overturn an old theory could solve some problem previously a stumbling
00:01:49.440 block to progress and might improve the world. But sometimes new creations lead to dead ends.
00:01:56.000 That's just part of the creative process. Creating stuff that just doesn't do what you want it
00:02:00.480 to. Art that's not good. Music that no one will listen to. YouTube videos that no one will watch
00:02:06.720 are painting that everyone says is derivative. A scientific theory quickly slain by an experiment
00:02:12.880 that shows it to be wrong. A computer game no one wants to play. Criticism is how we sift
00:02:18.720 those good ideas from the bad. The beautiful from the ugly. The true from the false and the useful
00:02:26.160 from the useless. And this is true for ideas generally. In for your own ideas personally.
00:02:32.800 Criticize your own ideas and don't be upset when others criticize your ideas. They're not criticizing
00:02:37.680 you personally. You are not your ideas. You merely have ideas. You can discard ideas and you can
00:02:44.720 criticize criticisms. You can defend your ideas. That's good too. If you want to get better as fast
00:02:50.800 as possible. Create. Criticize and repeat. So where to make progress.
