With a Good Theory of Knowledge, You Can Decide What Else Is True David Deutsch’s theory is centered around good explanations 1:35 Naval: David Deutsch has this great view of the world where he belie...
It’s Mind Blowing That Our Minds Can’t Be Blown Humans can understand every idea given enough time and effort 2:33 Brett: Scientifically minded types say, “Perhaps we won’t be able to understand the ...
More Compute Power Doesn’t Produce AGI Even the most powerful computers can’t answer ‘why?’ 1:37 Naval: The artificial general intelligence crew gets it completely wrong, too: “Just add more compute ...
We Are Qualitatively Different From Other Species There is no continuum between humans and chimpanzees 1:32 Brett: You’re pointing out a minority opinion there. I think culture is still stuck in that...
Humans Are Exceptional Humans aren’t just a form of bacteria that overran the planet 2:17 Naval: Three out of these four theories have an interesting pattern to them. With good explanations in episte...
Genetic Evolution Was a Prelude to Memetic Evolution Ideas undergo the same evolutionary process as genes 2:24 Brett: Popper has a book called “ Objective Knowledge ,” and it’s subtitled “An Evolutio...
There Can Be No Final Theory of Gravity All we have are better and better approximations to reality 3:14 Brett: In almost all cases, you only ever have one theory on offer. In the case of gravity, th...
No Truth Can Be Justified ‘Knowledge’ is just our best guess at the time 2:14 Brett: Initial guesses at what ‘knowledge’ was all about amounted to what is known as the “justified true belief” vision ...
The Probability of Human Existence Is Infinitesimally Small From an evolutionary standpoint, it’s near impossible 1:23 Brett: Here’s another way to think about it that is mathematically frightening f...
Intelligent Species Have Risen Only Once on Planet Earth Creative intelligence wasn’t inevitable 3:07 Brett: Now, that’s one argument, and we have to be humble in the face of uncertainty here because...
The Poverty of Compromise Compromises test ideas no one ever thought were correct in the first place 2:57 Brett: This idea of questioning things that hitherto you thought were unassailable in a parti...
Innovation Requires Decentralization and a Frontier Technology has swung us towards centralization in the last decade 2:52 Naval: Innovation requires a couple of things. One of the things that it see...
Don’t Rely on Credibility Stamps The generation-long shift from institutions to individuals will be messy 1:43 Naval: There are a lot of institutions in our society today that rely on credibility sta...
One Einstein Is Worth A Legion Of PhD Drones Creativity goes from 0 to 1 and bodies aren’t going to solve the problem 1:21 Brett: China keeps graduating more bachelor of science and bachelor of engin...
Ideas Are the New Oil All the new fortunes are created with ideas 3:02 Naval: Humans have a history of conquest because we fight for the same exact resources, but even in human history the first expl...
Aliens Would Visit for Knowledge, Not Resources The only thing they will lack is the knowledge they don’t have 2:20 Brett: I think Stephen Hawking said that it was a mistake to broadcast radio waves ...
Aliens Might Just Be Too Far Away We may not be alone in the universe, just too far apart 2:13 Brett: We still have this problem of what DNA was doing for that approximately two and a half billion ye...
If You Can’t Program It, You Haven’t Understood It Evolutionary algorithms don’t produce living beings 0:42 Brett: These are all uncertain hypotheses, but we also have to keep in mind that ther...
Where Are the Aliens? The universe should be teeming with aliens 1:04 Naval: Let’s talk briefly about the Fermi paradox since we’re talking about aliens. For listeners who don’t know, Enrico Fermi wa...
Science Advances One Funeral at a Time Even the best get stuck 1:17 Naval: There’s some deep symmetry between multiverse theory and Feynman path integrals , right? Brett: You’re absolutely right. Fey...
Make Bold Guesses and Weed Out the Failures The best theories come from your imagination, not extrapolation 2:11 Naval: Going even further, it’s not just science. When we look at innovation, technolo...
Theories Are Explanations, Not Predictions The prediction comes after the explanation 2:31 Brett: There’s another example like this. You can do this with a saucepan at home. Put a beaker of water on ...
Rational Optimism Is the Way Out Pessimism is self-fulfilling 2:01 Naval: Professions in which you get your feedback from other members of that profession tend to get corrupted. When you see a journa...
Pessimism Seems Like an Intellectually Serious Position We’ve innovated our way out of previous traps 1:57 Brett: If you’re an academic, being able to explain all of the problems that are out there a...
It’s Easy to Extrapolate How Things Will Get Worse It’s harder to guess how life might improve 1:35 Naval: A lot of the theories as to why we’re imminently going to create an AGI are based in a naïve...
We’re All Equal in Our Infinite Ignorance The door is always open for new ideas 1:25 Brett: Induction says that prediction is the main reason science exists, but it’s really explanation. You want an ...
It’s Rare to Have Competing, Viable, Scientific Theories General relativity vs. Newtonian mechanics is a recent example 2:25 Naval: There’s also Solomonoff’s theory of induction . I don’t know if you...
Explanations That Reach the Entire Universe We can understand anything that can be understood 1:54 Brett: At the beginning of The Fabric of Reality , David Deutsch presents this idea that you don’t n...
Nullius in Verba Take no one’s word for it 2:13 Naval: The Beginning of Infinity is not an easy book to read. Deutsch wrote it for other physicists and philosophers. He has a certain peer group that ...
There Is No End of Science We can keep on making progress 2:06 Brett: Eddington’s experiment is an excellent example of what’s called a crucial test , which is sort of the pinnacle of what science is...
This Book Changed the Way I Think David Deutsch’s book expanded my repertoire of reasoning 1:57 Naval: I was pleasantly surprised a couple of years back when I opened an old book that I’d read a deca...
Good Explanations Are Hard to Vary They should make risky and narrow predictions 2:25 Naval: Brett, would you say that a scientific theory is a subset of a good explanation? Brett: Yes. They’re the t...
Good Explanations Are Acts of Creativity They’re not derived from looking at the past 2:01 Naval: There’s a phrase you’ll hear Brett and I use over and over again: “good explanations.” Good explanati...
Humans Are Unique in Our Ability to Understand Things Knowledge is in the observer, not the observed 1:27 Naval: The value is in the knowledge, and the knowledge is inside the observer and the creato...
It’s Impossible to Predict the Growth of Knowledge The laws of physics can’t predict the future 2:16 Brett: Stephen Hawking famously said, “ The human race is just a chemical scum on a moderate-sized...
People Are a Force of Nature We create knowledge that transforms the universe 2:40 Brett: Knowledge is what transforms the world. We can take some raw material that has no particular use and within t...
We’re at the Beginning of an Infinity of Knowledge Progress is inevitable as long as we have good explanations 2:18 Brett: The difference with The Beginning of Infinity is you’re getting a worldview....
Happiness 27:22 A collection of all my episodes on happiness. Live Long Enough and You’ll Become a Philosopher This podcast is a practical philosophy of health, wealth and happiness Naval: Let’s talk...
Read the Best 100 Books Over and Over Again Many claim to read, but very few understand 2:01 Naval: The Beginning of Infinity reminds me the most of Gödel, Escher, Bach in that it is very wide-rangin...
Science Is the Engine That Pulls Humanity Forward “Believe in science” is an oxymoron 2:13 Naval: Welcome, Brett , to the eponymous Naval podcast. The topic that we started out on was the timeless pr...
The Beginning of Infinity, Part 1 66:09 A collection of all the episodes on The Beginning of Infinity . Science Is the Engine That Pulls Humanity Forward “Believe in science” is an oxymoron Naval: We...
Groups Never Admit Failure You get a schism instead 2:07 Naval: Groups never admit failure. A group would rather keep living in the mythology of “we were repressed” than ever admit failure. Individua...
Making Something Social Destroys the Truth of It Science’s biggest breakthroughs came from unpopular people 2:27 Naval: Making something social destroys the truth of it because social groups need con...
Free Markets Provide the Best Feedback The alternative is feedback from whomever has the most guns 2:36 Naval: Marc Andreessen summarizes this nicely as “ strong opinions, loosely held. ” As a societ...
The Beginning of Infinity, Part 2 52:51 Part 2 of my interview with Brett Hall about The Beginning of Infinity . Also see Part 1 . With a Good Theory of Knowledge, You Can Decide What Else Is True Da...
To a Caveman Very Few Things Are Resources There was a time when coal wasn’t a resource 2:55 Brett: There was a story on ITV in the U.K. talking about how much supposed waste Amazon produces, that Am...
Knowledge Makes the Existence of Resources Infinite We’re going to keep creating new knowledge and new resources 2:30 Brett: Knowledge is the thing that makes the existence of resources infinite. The...
Is the Universe Discrete or Continuous? Quantum theory and relativity disagree 2:07 Naval: You said that we went from atoms in the time of Democrates, down to nuclei, and from there to protons and ne...
All Knowledge Is Conjectural Be skeptical of absolute certainty 3:16 Brett: All knowledge is conjectural. It’s always being guessed. It’s our best understanding at any given time. You’re right to say...
The Methods of Mathematics Are Fallible Even if the subject matter is not 2:43 Brett: If I compare math to physics: We have this domain called particle physics, and the deepest theory we have in part...
Science Is an Error-Correcting Mechanism It does not presume to predict the future from the past 2:03 Naval: Where do good explanations come from? There’s currently an obsession with induction , the ...
Science Expands Our Vision of Reality The multiverse is another step in this direction 1:31 Brett: Many scientists and philosophers have talked about the concept of a multiverse . But we’re talking a...
We Explain the Seen in Terms of the Unseen No one has ever seen the core of the sun 1:26 Brett: At this point people might object, “How dare you invoke in science things that can’t be seen or observe...
The Multiverse Experiments force us to acknowledge other universes 1:41 Brett: We have to come to a deeper understanding of what is going on in this double-slit experiment . If we fire either a photo...
There Is No Settled Mathematics Proofs are not certainties 2:54 Naval: There are two other scientific thinkers who I like who come to similar conclusions as Deutsch. One is Nassim Taleb , who popular...
Is Light a Particle or a Wave? God does not play dice with the universe 3:18 Naval: There’s a YouTube video in which Deutsch explains the famous quantum double-slit experiment , which is about partic...
Probability Is Subjective All physically possible things occur 2:05 Naval: Does probability actually exist in the physical universe, or is it a function of our ignorance? If I’m rolling a die, I don’...
We Can’t Prove Most Theorems with Known Physics Unprovable theorems vastly outnumber the provable ones 1:35 Brett: The overwhelming majority of theorems in mathematics are theorems that we cannot pos...
Every Theory Is Held Inside a Physical Substrate You’re always bound by the laws of physics 1:43 Naval: There goes my solution for Zeno’s paradox , which says before you can get all the way somewhere...