The Beginning of Infinity
David Deutsch, 2011. Status: reading, ch. 1. Started 2026.09.04. Updated 2026.09.07.
Why I’m reading this
I’ve had this book (among many, many others) on my bookshelf for many years, as a book that I would have liked to have read, but never having even opened. A few days ago, I was chatting with an AI researcher at a frontier lab who recommended reading the first 60 pages of this book, reassuring us that it would be challenging but worth it. It also coincided with my resolve to have more clarity of what my bet as an AI for Science researcher is, and to my great delight this book seems like a great sparring partner for the next several weeks (or months). In particular, some of the questions I have in mind approaching this book are: “How is scientific understanding different from prediction?” “What is a theory?” “Can scientific understanding be compressed into the substrate of computing?”
Questions I’m holding
Surprises
Claims ledger
- What is an explanation?: An explanation is a story as a chain of smaller explanations.
- What makes an explanation better than another?: The plausibility of the mini-explanations that one depends on, and the simplicity of the chain.
- Where does knowledge come from?: Knowledge comes from perception of experience.