David Deutsch: The Era of Man, Popper, and Western Civilization
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 10 ก.พ. 2025
- I had the pleasure of sitting down with David Deutsch in his lovely garden in Oxford a few months ago. Here’s our conversation.
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Timestamps:
1:01 - A tragic view of human history
7:04 - Why did it take so long for civilization to arise?
13:31 - Fallibilism
21:32 - Cultural relativism denies improvement
24:03 - Richard Dawkins and indigenous ways of knowing
26:49 - Chemical scum that dream of distant quasars
31:38 - The era of man
37:55 - People are unlike any other force of nature
42:51 - The dangers of regulating AI
48:09 - Are we running out of resources?
54:21 - Everything in existing educational theory is wrong
1:11:30 - When David met Richard Feynman
1:17:33 - Everyone is a Popperian
1:20:16 - Only progress is sustainable
1:26:00 - The biggest threat to Western civilization
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This in-person interview with David just feels different. Wonderful outdoor setting as well and timeless content. Great job, Arjun!
I think its green screen man :/
Thanks!
Thank you for supporting Arjun!
The worst thing about David is that his statements are so inspiring and thought provoking that I have to rewind because I got lost in thought
I think rewinding is the essential key to improve your understandment of anything. You can’t only go forward
Yep I agree. I usually listen to his interviews at least twice
same
When I read The fabric of reality I was in an airplane. I just started over immediately. No book has had that effect on me ever.
@danielnofal what about beginning of infinity?
What a fricking treat this was. I’d love to meet David someday, I’d travel just to see him speak
Lovely interview. I like how you let David speak without interrupting. Very good questions as well. Good setup visually.
1:01 - A tragic view of human history
7:04 - Why did it take so long for civilization to arise?
13:31 - Fallibilism
21:32 - Cultural relativism denies improvement
24:03 - Richard Dawkins and indigenous ways of knowing
26:49 - Chemical scum that dream of distant quasars
31:38 - The era of man
37:55 - People are unlike any other force of nature
42:51 - The dangers of regulating AI
48:09 - Are we running out of resources?
54:21 - Everything in existing educational theory is wrong
1:11:30 - When David met Richard Feynman
1:17:33 - Everyone is a Popperian
1:20:16 - Only progress is sustainable
1:26:00 - The biggest threat to Western civilization
Thank you so much
Thankyou!!
thanks
Worth comming here just for this nugget: "Only progress is sustainable"! Great job Arjun!
Wonderful interview! Always a joy to hear Deutsch and marvel at his mind and wisdom.
Thank you David you have had a profound impact on my life, helping me sleep at night 😴😁🥰
Arjun thanks a lot for the interview!!!!! My request is, try to make a series of videos on different topics with him, there's a lot to learn.
Every once in a while Deutsch explains things in a new way.
If falibalism is true how can we ever know anything?
“Although we can never know that we are right about something , we can know that we don’t have any additional criticisms about it.”
I have been asked this before and it is such a good response.
Chefs kiss
I didn't expect such a good podcast host with not as many subs as he deserves. Keep going Arjun!
14:56 this 2+2=4 bit was absolutely mind-blowing, right from the primary school example as ‘wrong’
11:40 bucket Theory and how learning as actually works
54:00 the issues with current education system, and how it misconstrues almost everything
1:00:00 how education of children is perverse. It aims to make kids all the same, so they can be creative later - a contradiction
1:02:00 disobedience has a deep connection with creativity
1:12:00 why physics has stagnated
1:15:00 why we can have hope for physics and educational theory
1:17:00 Darwinism is a philosophical theory
1:18:10 everyone Is a popperian in the area they’re really good and creative at
1:21:55 find a problem, fall in love with it, and live with it for the rest of your life
1:26:55 weapons in the hands of enemies of civilization in David’s biggest worry
1:27:50 David thinks AGI won’t require large compute. On the order of 2 GB in size
Public SCHOOLING ≠ EDUCATION -
"..the path most worn is often the most deceptive.."
Not sure if David is familiar with models of human development like Spiral Dynamics. But they do nicely explain, that while humans might have had the brain capacities, they didn't have the psychological complexity yet to "be like us." So the Spiral Dynamics colors/stages describe how humans and societies throughout history moved through increased complexity of circumstances, and thus evolved their ability to model and organize the world according to higher values, which too were being discovered. In a sense, both our circumstances and our psychology evolved overtime through these Spiral stages.
But what about group thinking, are you sure it’s not a logical farse.
Thanks, Arjun, for sharing. Keep up the work!
Hell Yeah!!!!!! Great work Arjun!
such a nice man and brilliant mind
Deutsch says he doubts John Cleese had ever heard of Popper. This is Cleese, in a list of his favourite books:
"To me, Karl Popper is the best philosopher of science of the last century. "
I corrected David Deutsch! Do you know how good that feels? lol
nice interview, and the ending was great 😂
He comes across better here than on Twitter!
Thanks for this. Love Deutsch!
excellent, good job. thanks!
Humans are gods. We weild power unfathomable, the potential untapped, the scales unknown. Our virility mixed with curiosity makes the physical reality open itself. The co-creative partnership we have with the cosmos, even if for a flicker or instant, is the playful vibrancy it needed. Like a newborn toddler we run around and break or make things, but we are at home ,always. No fear, rage rage against the dying night.
😅
The probable reason why clocks still use I, II, III, and IIII is because of symmetry on the clockface. A clockface has four ones (I, II, III, IIII), four fives (IV,V,VI,VII), and four tens (IIX, IX, X, XI) = twelve hours divided up into 3 sets of 4 of the same symbols.
great interview...
You can just see what a clear thinker he is.
Wonderfully optimistic interview!
Hear's to inhomogeneity 👍 ❤️
Genius...can you explain how to make a campfire, great intro, I’m sold! 🙈
Great interview!
This was both amazing and delightful to listen to. Thanks David and Arjun for sharing this.
Open question to anyone here - what problems do you have and how are you trying to solve them creatively right now?
My problem that bought me here is the quest of finding a career choice….i have figured out that i need to find something that maximizes value for the maximum number of people…but i still am thinking.
@@IkanshBansal good luck to you! hope you find the journey meaningful
Fantastic! 👏
Excellent!
Amazing work 💯
David's view of history is Eurocentric and incomplete. Yes, he is right that Europe lacked progress until the greeko Roman civilization but there were other civilizations with rational thought flourishing during Europe's insignificance period for example the Indian, Chinese, and Egyptian civilizations. Progress occurred there at an astonishing pace and much of the technology we take for granted was developed there and digested into Europe (Trade with India is the reason behind the Gold Standard across the world)
The enlightenment he speaks about has happened several times in many different geographies across the world with more if not equal progress.
True
Excellent. 😁
I think the reason that for hundreds of thousands of years there was no progress is because, they didnt have explanatory models for their discoveries. Perhaps the knowledge to "improve" something was either implicit, or accidental. In other words they were able to recognise improvements in terms of end results (pragmatism) but not able to reason about the internals / the knowledge that makes it an improvement due to it being accidental or implicit. By implicit I mean some cognitive subsystem may internally hide the knowledge where its inaccessible to lend itself to a broader explanatory framework - the latter is something that makes creativity a universal thing rather than a special case thing.
Thanks for your efforts here Arjun! Absolutely loved this.
Finally.
I hope you find another calling now.
The 'nerve' that pigeon had to try and interrupt Deutsch's train of thought. 🐋
what is the author that is referred with "papa" in the transcrips. i cant hear it out
Karl Popper
Ima call him karl papa from now on 😂
@@TheSinghisking4ever😅
wow f great podcast
"There will be no more great physicists". Feynman didn't know why though.
There has been infinite cross fertalization before “ civilazitation” in nature and among peoples as well
The fire example was a 3/4 fail lol
Why does David D say if he invented an AGI he wouldn’t tell us?!
Also, how could it be only to gigabytes? I agree it will be a qualitative invention requiring little RAM but won’t it require a plug into an LLM so it can express itself?
Asking cuz I’m trying to build an AGI
Some African countries had access to the steam engine before the Chinese and they let it rot once they kicked out the British, we cant begin to talk about bad ideas until we completely change the way we think.
Imperialism sucks
10:19 54:34 1:21:56
💯
Sufficiently smart and agentic tool AI (even without getting to AGI) could allow this reality 1:25:00 ~ish, for all of us to have more time freedom to explore our curiosity. I worry about our scarcity-minded politics not allowing this.
Q: "explain why human history is long period of complete failure?"
Lack of scientific progress isn't due to lack of creativity, but a priority. With respect to indian subcontinent, earlier generations had little interest in material aspects of life. There was immense importance to religion, rituals and attaining enlightenment. This is partly the reason for lack of scientific progress.
those are static societies & are rigid and vulnerable to outside threats, like how the British invaded Bharat. Today, we live in a dynamic society where knowledge can grow from anywhere in the world, as explained by David Deutsch in The Beginning of Infinity.
F inspiring
Who is Popper?
Emile Durkheim, “Crime is society’s norm”
Far too many ads!
The history of the beginning of England's wealth, wool and canals is incorrect. See Erik Reinert's brilliant book: How Rich Countries Got Rich and Why Poor Countries Stay Poor. Henry VIi brought in a new protectionist taxation system to England which changed England from being an exporter of raw wool to a manufacturer of woollen textiles.
When physicists discover epistemology for the first time…
Good lord. Maybe some people really should stick to their areas of expertise... O r is Davy trying out for the position of ' rational Jordan Petersen'...
To be fair though, I only lasted about 20 minutes, so maybe he redeemed himself in the end, but from the intro and what I watched, he certainly seems the type specimen of 'ivory tower academician'.
Judaism and Christian religions have there foundations in creating and controlling the future. Why do you think belief is such an important thing in those religions. You are not going to influence future if you cant believe what is not yet and not believe what is unless you are compelled to.
I like hearing David’s thoughts on most things. Shame he’s a rabid racist towards Palestinians though. He can’t see the woods for the trees on that particular issue because he’s blinded by bias
Looks like you'll soon have Elon Musk!
This feels like a mockumentary.
Canals did create prosperity for the Romans as well. The wealth of England very much rested on the colonies.
Disapointing.
Fire is as old as Homo Erectus.
Language is the key Meme replicator of Sapiens.
Writing is the accelerant.
Institutions emerg from the compound of these.
The emergence of institutions may be the problem? Ossification ?
Yes, in a way we are asked to kindly follow a gentleman into the wilderness, who by his own admission has not mastered fire.
Deutsch's unsupported certainty that nothing much happened for several hundred thousand years is more likely missing evidence; or worse deliberately ignoring several thousand or more unique & effective languages that developed worldwide.
A more apt headline would be 200,000 years of experimental oral coding.
An effective Pidgin or cross cultural trade language can be quite effective with as little as 500 words. These Pidgins arise on every side of contacting language groups.
Ultracrepidarianism
Who is offering opinions on topics they know little about? Perhaps anonymous sesquipedelians ?😅👌
I find this way of thinking dangerous and destructive.
Mission Accomplished ✅
@@nahumflores7182 why?
@@danielnofal challenges his mindset 😅 change can be threatening ! Fallibilism ? We all like to think we absolutely know everything, all of the time.
@@bernardofitzpatrick5403 he is certainly not saying we will know everything, he actually says we will always have more to learn. But he does say that the world must be understandable, which is much better than giving up.
Thanks!