Episode 59: The Principle of Optimism (Round Table Discussion)
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Transcript
[00:00:11] Blue: Hello, welcome to the theory of anything podcast. We’ve got a big group today This is a roundtable discussion on the principle of optimism everyone want to say hi real quick
[00:00:24] Red: Hello
[00:00:26] Blue: Hello,
[00:00:27] Red: hi.
[00:00:27] Blue: Hello.
[00:00:28] Red: Hello everyone.
[00:00:29] Blue: Anyway, I’ve got a bad case of imposter syndrome here We’ve got some really smart people here But this must be a low -amplitude branch of the multiverse is all I can say because this is this is really Really exciting for me to talk to this many smart people Deutsche’s principle of optimism as probably most people listening know know all evils are caused by insufficient knowledge May sound a little trite to people. I’ve tried to explain it to people IRL and Yeah, I think trite is a good word for it. Maybe a bit like the whole live laugh love Thing or something like that, which you know that in itself might not be so such bad advice either I think the the the wine moms might be right there You know it actually comes from James Joyce and a rich rich literary history on that one. But anyway, I Optimism fringy to a lot of people as the kids would say but The way dutch puts it well in his words optimism is a cold hard far -reaching implication of rejecting Irrationality nothing else I Think that’s true. It’s definitely something that I got from the beginning of infinity and I think a lot of people here may Agree or disagree Well, we hope to explore different aspects of this Is dutch talking more about an attitude or something like a lot of physics. So we’ll we’ll get into that First I’ve got some introductions to do. We’ll try to get this through this real relatively Quickly, I hope might
[00:02:21] Green: take a half hour to do the introduction Well,
[00:02:24] Blue: I hope not quite that that long but I thought that I could briefly introduce each person if each person could could introduce themselves and then and then state what idea or podcast or or lecture or Whatever kind of initially initially like hooked them on to David Deutsch and and Put them on that rabbit hole for me. It was I think I was Pretty interested in the multiverse and putting putting putting out stuff on Facebook here and there and then someone Mentioned well, you got to check out David Deutsch. You got to read this book the beginning of infinity and I before I read it actually I went to the his Ted talk on chemical scum that chemical scum that dream of distant quasars and I mean, it just it just blew my mind. I still think it’s the best lecture I’ve ever Ever heard, you know the our environmental optimism in that lecture really was something I was I was interested in but then he seemed to have a way of explaining Optimism that wasn’t just like an attitude towards life. It was something that was more like a just a rational assertion about Reality and I just found that every time I listened to that lecture like new Connections my mind were made. I noticed new details that stood out to me and and still when I looked listened to it I get that so for me I think it was kind of the optimism that really drew me in to his his worldview and I’m still Still exploring that and learning from from his his stuff Anyway, first up. We’ve got This is in no particular order Sam Kipers
[00:04:19] Blue: It’s got some serious Credentials here who has written at least one paper with David Deutsch And I’m sure he has all kinds of other Scientific credentials that I I wish I knew more about Aspect of it of your work Sam I’d like to highlight is your work with the Oxford curl popper society, which I think in my estimation is one of the best YouTube series I’ve seen I love your like your your interviews with David Friedman Lee Smallen Carameletto beyond Lamberg just tons of amazing people seems like you haven’t put out an episode in a while Maybe maybe it’s not something you’re doing but Sam do you want to say hi and State how you initially got got introduced to David Deutsch?
[00:05:10] Orange: Yeah, sure who do First of all, thanks for having me. It’s great being here and Thanks for the kind words. That’s really heartening to hear that you enjoyed the series that we produced so much Yeah, as you said, I’m not really Working on it at the moment the popper society is in some kind of hibernation, but perhaps if we will Start it again at some point But yeah to the point of how I discovered Deutsch. I remember first hearing about him on Sam Harris’s podcasts, which must be back in 2015 or so where he spoke with Harris about AI and And the thing that struck me about that particular conversation Although it took me a while to to pick up his book afterwards is that he he was one of the only people who was talking about AI While having a natural theory about computation and saying things that appeared novel from What I’d heard before about the same topic like mostly people mentioned things about how AI was supposed to be this the super intelligent thing and how we could conceive of minds that are far greater than ours and There’s lots of arguments that run in the opposite direction which are arguments from Universality from computational universality saying that your hardware is essentially The same as that of any other the hardware of your your mind or if your brain rather is essentially the same as that of any other universal computers, so I Just thought there was an extremely unique argument and then gone into the books. It turned out that he said stuff relevant to my subject namely physics and Then I became enamored with the multiverse like you did So that’s that’s not one of my research areas.
[00:07:03] Orange: That’s the main thing. I work in in physics is donations of quantum theory and then the many worlds interpretation or rather Everettian quantum theory as I think we should call it
[00:07:15] Blue: Thank You Sam Okay, next up. Here’s we have Daniel Jordan my friend We’ve we’ve exchanged thousands of messages in the last five years talked about our lives Being a being a parent He knows all my deepest secrets, but let’s just keep those off the the podcast, please. I Smart as heck on epistemology Also an objectivist, so we’re gonna get a little different view so a follower of I and Rand I hope I hope you don’t object to me Characterizing you that I like that. That’s a fall I or yeah, however you want to put it so Daniel you want to say hi?
[00:08:06] Red: Yes So thanks for having me on Peter Yeah, it’s as far as your your question earlier about how I got interested in David Deutsch it was obviously through you because Well, I know what it’s like to discover a Thinker that kind of blows your world apart and your optimism Well, your enthusiasm for Deutsch was really over the top and very infectious and so of course with a little bit of prodding. I eventually got into Reading Deutsch, I’ll have to admit openly that I’ve only done the audiobook version, which is a sad Excuse Compared to just reading the actual material where you’re always gonna get more out of it. So at some point in time I’m gonna return to reading The beginning of infinity and fabric of reality in actual book form because that will help me A great deal but do it As far as my estimate of the man and his mind, it’s I rate him very highly Certainly the principle of optimism is one of those aspects of do it which is very attractive I have a an interest in the history of philosophy and ideas and I think that even among intellectuals who Take what they they will explicitly advocate for a view of man that is Pro man or sounds optimistic They are oftentimes undercut by a view of reason that is let’s say They don’t view reason as fully efficacious With respect to man’s life To the role that it plays Whereas with David Deutsch He’s above all else.
[00:10:08] Red: I think he’s an advocate of reason and that’s what attracts me to him because I think that If somebody ever had any doubt of the efficacy of reason It’s going to seriously undercut their view of man their view of the future And that that is what underpins pretty much every Let’s say theory of pessimism as opposed to optimism. So yeah, do it is an incredible Mind and there’s not a lot of thinkers in the history of Philosophy original thinkers in philosophy that actually have such a pro human Aspect to their thinking and that’s something that I absolutely cherish even if I disagree on other aspects of let’s say Deutsch or or Popper epistemology, but we don’t have to get into that today because it’s just kind of irrelevant We we get to the same basic place, which is cherishing reason understanding the value of it to man and That is what’s going to lead you to come out on the side of optimism. I think ultimately
[00:11:25] Blue: Well putt, thank you Daniel I I find that when we I know that Deutsch himself was Influenced at least somewhat by iron Rand if I’m not mistaken and I know often that when we speak about Epistemology or related issues. It seems that we’re kind of using this different language to sort of express the Same things. So yeah, we definitely there’s definitely a lot of overlap. I think thank you I next up Mika reading really nice to meet you. I Mika has been contributor here and there to the Facebook group that I started on on David Deutsch I was kind of excited to realize that To check out his his old podcast, which is I think it’s just called Christian transhumanism
[00:12:17] Purple: Yeah, Christian transhumanist podcast. Yeah.
[00:12:19] Blue: Yes. Yes, which is very very very cool podcast there were I just listened to your interview Relistened I should say to your interview with with Deutsch this morning and I got a lot out of it Probably one of the better which interviews out there. I would say and that’s that’s big praise. I Because there’s a lot of good ones, but and then I loved also your interview on with Frank Templar who Says called the the perhaps controversially the the original forest rander and then I saw that you retweeted Bruce’s podcast on or the one we did a couple episodes ago on Religion and so, you know, it’s kind of how it goes if you if you tweet tweet our podcast out you get to be on it I think right Bruce Anyway But Micah or Micah, maybe you’d like to say a little bit more about about yourself
[00:13:20] Purple: It’s it’s Micah, yeah My family has pronounced it all kinds of different ways though, so I’m very used to To that but yeah Yeah, thanks so much for having me It’s it’s great to participate in these conversations. Yeah, so my kind of Background I guess So I’m the Executive director of the Christian transhumanist Association, which is kind of a unusual thing for most people to hear about and I’ve recently done a a master’s in Philosophy of science and religion at University of Edinburgh and so dealt with So epistemology there and kind of history of ideas and so forth that relate to this, but I guess my introduction to Doge probably was actually through Tipler and There’s such an overlap in their ideas. It’s interesting. I don’t know who influenced who but But yeah, I think that Tipler led me into To do it and I think in reading his work over the years and kind of revisiting it a Number of times what really I found compelling was the the sense of optimism and then also the sense of an idea about what? Persons are and what personhood actually means and that resonated with my background and my tradition that and it kind of I Felt gives a sort of technical definition to an idea that has been understood in a maybe a more metaphysical Sense and so yeah, that’s been my kind of my entry into this and then I’m very interested in Deutsche’s ideas about AGI and how that might relate to The human mind and so forth.
[00:15:21] Purple: So yeah, I’m I’m interested in this from all kinds of angles and I guess That you know has gotten me very interested in popperian epistemology and so forth So yeah, it’s great to be in this discussion
[00:15:34] Green: By the way, I would mention that he seems to be a decently large name in amongst Mormon transhumanists I went to lunch with the leaders of the Mormon transhumanists and they brought him up and talked about I’m like, oh, yeah I’m friends with him
[00:15:50] Purple: We’re good friends going way back. It’s it’s kind of a to be in a kind of religion and Transhumanism space is a is a unusual thing. And so We’re all very conversant, you know between between different kind of strands of that Thank you, Micah
[00:16:10] Blue: next up we have somewhat of a Unknown for me Main thing I heard her vey you you cla classia. I’m sorry if I’m Buturing your your name But he is I Smart as heck. I that is that much is I do know from his comments on the in the Facebook group He’s French, but but please don’t hold that against him He he did reach out to me and said I’m kind of I Trying to be a little bit snarky there because he he did reach out to me and say ask if he was too snarky For the for the Facebook group because he’s French and and I’m I’m a West Coast American and he just wanted to make sure that we could handle the snark, but I think we can I’ve loved his Contributions, I
[00:17:07] Green: usually cry for a few minutes after each comment. He makes to me
[00:17:12] Blue: Herve do you want to do you want to tell us how you got into to do it?
[00:17:16] Teal: Yes, for sure. So I was born in region France and I now live in Montreal, Canada So I’m trying to correct from from being too French is a transition period for me Have a science background, but I know I work in financial risk. So I had to put my For a long time my science in the background and as many of you I guess I went into those those books those readings starting with Roger Penrose Douglas of Statter Dawkins and All of which led to this. I don’t know if anybody remembers about that. They were called the new atheists and And all of it was a bit of a letdown eventually and there was kind of a low power Optimism in all of this was even a bit pessimistic I found and then randomly I heard I think a bit like some I Heard some Harris interview Deutsch and I think he did two interviews with him at different intervals, but the first one that was the first time actually I heard Sam Harris being lost or Unable to to come back Actually from what Deutsch was saying and I think it’s camp camp Peters, which I don’t know if anybody knows him camp Peters He said once that Deutsch was a bit of an acid test and I clearly felt it with with some Harris and then again a bit later. He also derailed Tyler Cohen Interview where Tyler Cohen was unable to I Guess really understand what what Deutsch was saying. So I felt well who’s that guy? so I started looking into it started reading his books and Discovered a new form for me a new form of optimism and but one with a Actually a very big engine.
[00:19:20] Teal: I would say something really powerful a lot of And and then I had people who helped me understand whether they know it or not and among them it was a Chiara more leto for for the knowledge aspect. I think she she was a good read for that Sam here Whether he knows it or not helped me a lot with the notions of time and many worlds. So thank you Sam and Vaden and Here and then with their podcast were also a great help to help me understand a lot of details and Bruce, of course and And so far yes, which has been a true a very helpful Thinker for me especially on when you have to think about Poly anism About tourism effective on tourism artificial intelligence all the things that can be very popular these days and Is thinking is really a good test for these things and help you maybe Have a better grasp on those notions and how you can criticize them That’s it
[00:20:35] Blue: Thank you, Herve Next up we have we
[00:20:38] Green: pronounce your name Herve. How do you pronounce it?
[00:20:42] Teal: Yeah, and they went an accent because if you remove the accent herb, it sounds like a sexually transmitted disease Very cool
[00:20:51] Blue: Okay, and next up another another kind of dark horse for me, honestly I mean, I don’t know much about him other than his comments are just when I read what he says on Facebook I kind of think you know Maybe I’m not so crazy after all. He just says expresses himself. So wow I don’t know if he’s a garbage man or a PhD, but he is Smart guy Bill were gold were golf ski Really nice to have you on here.
[00:21:22] Brown: Thank you, Peter I might perhaps be the old man of the group my I’m 55 my first Encounter with David Deutsch was actually his 1985 paper. I have a yellowing copy somewhere that I’ll find as I unpack my Boxes in my new house From 1986 and I read that paper at the time and I had a thought which I think has Come to fruition as I was reading it. I was thinking of Vigner’s comment about Feynman. He’s he’s the second coming of Dirac only this time human and I thought David Deutsch, he might be the third Dirac. So that was 1986 and I read that paper with interest especially When Penrose’s 1989 book the Emperor’s New Mind came along because it set the two up in stark opposition This church touring Deutsch thesis versus what Penrose was saying essentially about consciousness And then it kind of fell off my radar. I graduated in 1990 and I Had intended to be a theoretical physicist, but the environment was not all that great at that moment Eventually a super collider was canceled and jobs went away and I ended up in finance. So when on 1995 I guess this Fabric of reality came around.
[00:22:55] Brown: I thought wow, here’s this Deutsch guy again It was just blew my mind So I read the book got to the last page and then went back to the first page and read it again immediately And then went back to Barnes and Noble and bought every copy of the book that was there and started handing them out and Created a discussion group of five or six folks You know, it’s your friends Always love you when you show up and say here’s a book and you have to read it and there’s gonna be a quiz in two weeks But like you clarify which paper it is you’re referring to from 1986 the 1985 paper. That’s the That’s the quantum computer paper.
[00:23:39] Green: Okay. Okay,
[00:23:40] Brown: and So that was terribly it at first I ran I thought oh that’s interesting It’s it’s obvious that Turing was being silly talking about Classical computing devices, but it wasn’t clear that it mattered and Deutsch came along and explained exactly how it did matter and so I read fabric of reality and Really took hold of it immediately went out and bought conjectures and refutations and the open society and its enemies so I could delve into popper and And start down that past I’d say if there was one thing that gave me pause even though I had You know in interest in interpretations of quantum mechanics I have a whole stack of papers of and books on interpretations of quantum mechanics proceeding that I still was not willing to buy into the ontology of The many worlds interpretation and it just kind of hung there for a while. I found it interesting but not compelling until Do each started to talk about fungibility and then it all clicked for me it it Compacted the ontology sufficiently for me to say, okay, this makes sense and
[00:25:01] Blue: that’s that brings us pretty much to the present Wow, thanks, Bill. That’s a great story next up Vaiden Maserani Hope I’m not butchering that too much But he’s from the increments podcast and all I can say if you don’t listen to the increments podcast Please reevaluate your life. I mean just At least go and subscribe right now. Check it out. I’ve learned so much from from his his discussions with Ben on on there And I I love especially your your your series on conjectures and refutations and I went back and read After listening to each episode. I would read the read the chapter from conjectures and refutations or the essay from From the book and I I got Help me so much to to you know delve a little little deeper into poppers Ideas have Aiden. How did you get into Deutsch?
[00:26:07] Pink: Yeah, well, it’s great to be here. And it’s so nice to know that The little conversations Ben and I are having are reaching people and helping them work through the material themselves Yeah, so I got into Deutsch the way that I think a lot of people on this call have which is via Sam Harris I kind of come from a new atheist background and I’m always looking for kind of interesting new ways to to view the world and to think through problems And then so I just kind of went headfirst into beginning of infinity and I think for I was trying to think about this as other people are answering and I think for me It wasn’t so much any one particular idea is just like The sheer quantity of interesting things that were packed into those pages Um, it kind of felt for me like every other page I was just being walloped by a totally new way to think about something that I thought I already understood And what was interesting is that? You could almost take each idea and understand it in isolation and it would serve you quite well but then when you start bundling up all the ideas you realize that he’s building a completely coherent worldview which challenges a lot of the Dominant orthodoxies that we all kind of swim in Unthinkingly I guess and so what happened to me was I ended up just kind of finding myself arguing with people around me about things like environmentalism and proportional representation and ai -dumerism and Bayesianism and anti -humanism and it wasn’t that I Thought I am a Deutchen.
[00:27:47] Pink: It’s just that every time I would get into these arguments I just kept having to return to beginning of infinity to see How Deutchen was thinking through it and that just drew me further and further in And then I started switching over to popper and and that happened Maybe five or six years ago, and I still haven’t reached the bottom of it There’s just always seems to be more to understand more to explore and it really does This kind of sounds a little corny to say but it really does feel like you’re continuously at the beginning of infinity And that’s what I love about it so much is it’s just such a rich and interesting and dare I say fun worldview to explore Um, and it makes you a tiny bit of a contrarian and I like the contrarianism And I like being a bit of a fly in the ointment Whenever I can and so for all those reasons I’ve just been drawn into it and um, it’s been just a great experience working through a lot of these ideas, um live on air with with ben and seeing how he thinks about it differently and I’m just engaging with the ideas because that’s one of the things that Both Deutchen popper teaches is that you don’t want to just passively receive ideas you want to actively Engage with them and I hope that’s what we’re going to do in this conversation today On the discussion of optimism. So I’m really looking forward to seeing where the discussion goes and excited to be here Thank you, vaden.
[00:29:05] Green: That was great
[00:29:07] Pink: bruce do you want to
[00:29:09] Green: Okay, so should I go ahead and start please
[00:29:12] Pink: do
[00:29:12] Green: okay so, um, let me actually give so What I’ve done is I’ve collected a series of criticisms of the principle of optimism now It’s not because I disagree with the principle of optimism. In fact far from it It is specifically the principle of optimism And the overall optimistic nature of deutch’s worldview that attracted me to it And you might even say to me that’s the most important aspect of his philosophy um But I I naturally try to find the best criticisms I can of every theory And I feel like that is a important, you know from preparing an epistemology That’s an important part of trying to understand the theory is to understand its problems and then to solve them so I’ve made an attempt to go through and find the criticisms of The principle of optimism and the intent here is is to try to get a more nuanced view of it so that I understand it better
[00:30:11] Blue: and that was first can we just State very clearly what what the principle of optimism all evils are caused by insufficient knowledge
[00:30:21] Green: Yes one and a lot of things i’m going to ask about are actually the concept of All problems are soluble, which is not the same as the principle of optimism But he ties them together ones in chapter three of beginning infinity ones in chapter nine He kind of references back to the ideas in chapter three when he’s building his principle of optimism So in a lot of times people take exception to That aspect that comes before it a kind of precursor to it So the thought occurred to me the the idea for this podcast actually came up a while back While I was listening to brett hall’s um tocast Episode 82 he’s doing an interview with david doigt and he’s having it has a chance to ask david doigt Questions that’s been on his mind and to try to get clarification And brett asks a question about the relationship between Undecidability and the idea that all problems are soluble now. I won’t go into all the details of the discussion Definitely a worthwhile discussion go actually look up that episode and listen to it But uh, here’s as best I can quoting brett. He says problems are inevitable, but problems are soluble so he’s this is Him quoting that idea that’s from chapter three of beginning infinity His phrasing of it and then he says and here I’ve heard over the years people push back against this especially the second part that problems are soluble so this leads to a discussion which I’m not going to include about godel’s argument and Him and doigt discuss this and then he has this line that he says this that I’m going to read That really got me thinking So he says one line of discussion.
[00:31:57] Green: I’ve often pursued here Um, correct me if I’m wrong. So when when he’s arguing with people over the idea that problems are inevitable But the that they’re soluble One argument that he often brings up is that this says but this vast class of undecidable and unprovable statements Which must vastly outnumber the provable statements They are in a sense uninteresting because that’s not what the claims of science physics, for example consist of They can’t possibly have any effect on our world They aren’t going to help us solve problems as you would say Are they interesting in any way now? This really made me stop and think for a second As someone who comes from a background in computer science and having studied computational theory a few times I’m well aware that if we could solve Uh The halting problem if we could solve the problem of undecidability that would be super interesting result Like that would be groundbreaking really interesting There if you were to look up in in wikipedia Um, there’s a list of undecidable problems and they actually keep lists of things that they’ve reduced to The halting problem and they’re problems that we wish we could solve that we had an algorithm for but we know It’s impossible to make an algorithm to do it includes things like deciding whether the Diofantine equation I don’t know if I pronounced that right has a solution in integers or if ray tracing Is um ray tracing determining if a ray Beginning at a given position and direction eventually reach a certain point or not. I mean these aren’t uninteresting Problems that we’re talking about That got me thinking and I thought okay, so why is brett referencing interestingness here?
[00:33:41] Green: Well, the reason why is because in david deutch’s book beginning of infinity. He says and I quote I conjecture that in mathematics as well as in science and philosophy if the question is interesting Then the problem is soluble and then later. He says inherently insoluble problems are inherently uninteresting Given those quotes it sort of made sense to me what brett was trying to get at right? He’s reasonably he’s understanding that if undecidability is an insoluble problem That it should also therefore be uninteresting now, um, deutch goes on to contradict him on that in the podcast he he actually Hawks about for example, how undecidability may factor is interesting because it may factor into problems about Physics and I don’t remember the exact examples that he uses But but he actually does point out that It could be quite interesting So this got me thinking what is actually the correct? Formulation of the idea of problems are inevitable but problems are soluble. I hear it with different caveats attached sometimes sometimes with the interestingness and sometimes with If not forbidden by the laws of physics things like that I wanted people’s take on that. What is the what is how would you look at this? First of all anything you want to say about this and then really what I’m looking for is What’s the correct way to formulate this precursor to the principle of optimism?
[00:35:08] Pink: I’ll chime in just bruce. I’m maybe not going to answer your question directly, but it’s had a slight side comment and I’m Uh, maybe just looking for a bit more clarification. Um, so I’m not totally convinced that inherently unsolvable problems Are inherently uninteresting and it’s only because I’m thinking about How people become fascinated about paradoxes say so like the paradox of who shaved the barber you could argue that’s inherently unsolvable problem But yet people seem obsessed about it and like Hofstadter wrote a book all about it and so Is it actually true to say that if something is intrinsically unsolvable then people will just lose interest because I kind of you The fascination with paradox is a bit of a counter example to that
[00:35:57] Green: interesting, okay
[00:35:59] Red: I think that when you’re talking about paradoxes If you’re if you’re on a paradox, it’s it often means you’re you’re very close to to stumbling or solving an actual problem um, sometimes the paradox is It’s not even there. It’s just a way of of Reconceptualizing a problem If so, it’s it’s difficult for me to talk about, you know, whether these things are ultimately interesting or not But I don’t see Um, but this is necessarily going to be a problem for the philosophic principle of optimism You can come across Certain aspects of reality that simply are and are unchangeable by the very nature of things And perhaps there’s certain things that we could never know There might be physical barriers to knowledge There might be horizons to what we could test because we couldn’t disprove a theory And it puts it into this camp or category of well, this is a problem. We can’t really decide whether it’s true or false um Doge is pretty explicit Well, he is explicit about the fact that he says the problems themselves are soluble And they’re interesting But how many problems did people think we could never solve until we solve them? And how could we know with certainty? Going into a problem whether it’s solvable or not
[00:37:33] Brown: It occurs to me that the problem is not just The word interesting but the word problem If something is a mathematical theorem, for example That produces a result that you don’t like say arrows and possibility theorem Is that a problem? You know It is the fact that two is an even prime number a problem because I want all my primes to be odd, you know So Whether something’s a problem now for something like the traveling salesman problem you you want to solve the problem But you you don’t have an algorithm You can then go look for approximate solutions and that is a very rich vein to mine And it has been mined extensively so Finding an approximate solution given that an exact solution is not possible is an interesting problem. Whereas banging your head against So Well, or you can go off and decide that the dragon you want to slay is p equals mp but um There are different ways to take the result and to echo what daniel was saying, you know Are the laws of physics a problem? No, they constrain What’s possible and what’s impossible and we we operate within that framework? We might ask how the laws might be different And that could be a productive line of inquiry but A fact itself is not necessarily a problem
[00:39:10] Pink: Yeah, I think you could actually go even further. I really like what you said in the sense that to learn that a problem is Unsolvable is in some sense a solution to the problem, right? Absolutely, like if you if you discover that you cannot Find a linear time algorithm for the traveling salesman problem Well, then that just allows me to walk away and solve other problems and almost put that into the box as as a solved problem And so it’s only those who insist on trying to get around a Law of physics or a law of computation It seems like it’s a problem for them But if you take a rational mindset once you find out that something is impossible like induction or perfect Proportional representation Then that’s when you change your tactics change your approach and change the thing you’re working on So it’s only maybe a problem for the the stubborn or the dogmatic but not the open -minded and rational
[00:40:01] Teal: I think it might be a question In me about when he’s saying that every problem has a solution And that we can find the solutions to any potential problem that we see Is there maybe a maybe a just a rhetorical element to it? I’ve been saying well he is going against A line of thought which which says that whole realms are completely inaccessible to our thinking And he’s going against that so maybe he’s kind of pushing Forcing the trade here in a way and it’s another way of him Of saying you know that our repertoire of knowledge is is potentially infinite But that’s another way of saying it that maybe We should not be taking to to meaning that every problem is soluble because It’s actually not true and he knows that
[00:40:58] Pink: could I just chime in one more time I’m painfully aware that I don’t think we’ve actually answered the direct question that you asked us bruce But I realize I actually Forgot what the first criticism of the principle of optimism was would you mind just quickly summarizing what? You extracted from the conversation from Brett hall just so it’s kind of fresh in my mind
[00:41:20] Green: Okay, so first of all it’s not a criticism of the principle of optimism, but the precursor Problems are inevitable, but problems are soluble So Brett is often encountering people who would say no, that’s just not true Problem not all problems are soluble and then they’ll use undecidability as an example of an undecid - as a problem that is not soluble because david doigt in his book Says I conjecture that in mathematics as well as in science philosophy if the question is interesting Then the problem is soluble inherently insoluble problems are inherently uninteresting It was natural for Brett to assume that the idea that problems are inevitable, but problems are soluble would imply that uh the That undecidability the problem of undecidability must therefore be an uninteresting problem And yet it seems to actually be quite an interesting problem Um, there’s different ways you might go about this Right, so in the interview doigt points out that knowing that saying similar to what you guys said that Knowing that something is undecidable that might in some sense be your solution
[00:42:31] Pink: That was what I was going to say exactly. Yeah,
[00:42:34] Green: or you could you could guess so somebody used the example of um T equals mp from computational theory Well, the fact that we can’t decide that let’s say that that is an in fact an undecidable problem I don’t think we know that for sure, but let’s say that it is um We can still guess that p does not equal mp and we could be right about it Right, so in this case, you just treat it as a scientific theory and You attempt to refute it. You can’t find refutations So it doesn’t really stop you from solving the problem just because it’s undecidable and yet There is something here Brett has misunderstood What problems are inevitable but problems are soluble means because of the way things have been phrased. It’s a reasonable misunderstanding What I guess what i’m looking for is what’s the what’s the correct way to understand Problems are inevitable, but problems are soluble and I think your answers have been kind of partially dancing around what that might mean in different contexts
[00:43:34] Orange: Yeah, I would say that the thing which Deutsch probably Finds important and it’s which at any rate I find important is that there’s nothing which stops the growth of knowledge there’s no problem which when we encounter it will be the end of progress and It’s that there’s one sense in which Interesting problems are always soluble business. There’s nothing which will eventually lead to the end of the growth of knowledge There’s no problem which will Be in the way of that
[00:44:04] Green: So if I had at the time I first heard this interview if I had if Brett was interviewing me I think what I would have said is Well, actually there’s two caveats, right? There’s problems are inevitable, but problems are soluble, but in context That would be so long as they’re not forbidden by the laws of physics and and also That they’re interesting. So I think I I couldn’t find this example But I swear somewhere I found an example from Deutsch where he said the problem of how many hairs are on Caesar’s head You know when he led this campaign may technically be insoluble that who cares, right? It’s completely uninteresting Um, so I guess I would have seen it at the time as there’s two caveats there Am I wrong to think of it that way? Is that is that or is that an appropriate way to understand the full nuanced version of this statement?
[00:44:57] Red: I think that makes sense to me Bruce like You know, that’s an obvious horizon to our knowledge that we could never solve We’re never going to find an answer to that. There’s no way we could We could infer the number of hairs on Caesar’s head
[00:45:14] Blue: Well, unless we Simulate the entire universe in a quantum computer, right? Like uh frank tippler kind of a thing or something I mean, it might be possible. Who knows,
[00:45:24] Red: you know, let’s put it this way. I mean maybe The way to think of it is that you have a context of knowledge Which is what it is and you should always work to expand that context of knowledge And you will find that some problems that you think are insoluble today When you integrate some new facts Uh about the world you might come back to those problems and see them through entirely different contexts different eyes You might find that that problem is soluble uh, but if doaches You know, he When you read his articles about the principle of optimism I think the important thing to bear in mind is that there’s the full context of his writings It’s not just I agree. It’s not just these simple phrases divorced from the rest of the context, right? He is basically saying You know, this progress is is endless And it’s directly connected to Human life It’s it’s not divorced from that. It’s not focused on knowledge Which uh, it’s just knowledge for its own sake It’s a it’s a boat acquiring knowledge to make things better uh for us and so If you come across something that doesn’t seem like it would even give you Additional explanatory power or be valuable to you you might want to use that In terms of guiding what you do find interesting He’s basically saying I think in essence that If you come across a problem that is also Seemingly unsolvable to you or maybe he thinks it’s unsolvable because of a law of physics Maybe he’s saying That there’s an element of this which shouldn’t be interesting.
[00:47:16] Red: I don’t know Or maybe it’s not going to be as interesting to a rational Pursuit of other knowledge or other things that you could be interested in But I do agree with him that the What sam said is that the point is the process itself is never going to end Um, you’re always going to continue to find Uh new things to continue to integrate into your context of knowledge and you don’t know where that’s going to lead you It’s just never ending
[00:47:45] Green: So let me use an analogy here. Um, let’s say that there’s a problem that you can’t Solve but you could solve if you could travel faster than the speed of light Well, you can’t travel faster than speed of light at least not according to our best current theories So I guess I did not understand the idea of Problems are soluble to include something like I want to travel faster than speed of light because that is in fact forbidden by the laws of physics One might look at undecidability in the same way in the sense that computational theory is an extension of physics It’s it’s what the laws of physics allow you to compute Yes, it would be interesting if you could solve it that would probably be very very very interesting if you could solve it But it is in fact forbidden by the laws of physics at least by our current understanding of the laws of physics I think that’s how I probably would have tried to answer brett if he had been interviewing me and asked me that question
[00:48:41] Red: Well, and it’s also wishing against reality
[00:48:44] Green: Yeah
[00:48:46] Red: Right because there’s nothing rational About trying to leap beyond your context of knowledge and speculate on things that you can’t know or at least you If you’re if your context of knowledge leads you to believe you couldn’t know it It’s you know, it’s no longer science. It’s it’s becoming science fiction or fantasy, which is fine if we know that that’s what we’re doing And that could be interesting but It’s still not a soluble problem So I don’t know if that contradicts what do it is saying about Soluble problems being interesting, but maybe that interest itself has to be placed into a context
[00:49:25] Pink: Okay. Yeah, I just want to add one thing which is that I think one of the strongest ways you can solve a problem is to End up with the impossibility result saying the problem is intrinsically not solvable So for example, if my problem is I want to figure out how To make the square root of two a rational number And I beat my head against a wall for 40 years trying to figure it out And then someone shows that it actually can’t be done Well, that’s a solution to the the problem, right? It’s not a contradiction in what deutch is saying that all problems are solvable because He’s not saying that anything you set your mind to you will eventually do The solution to the problem of how do you? Make the square root of two a rational number is that it can’t be done And this is it seems to me what? Both popper and deutch are building upon with their Claim that laws of physics are prohibitions, right? They state what can’t be done So very often the solution to a problem will be a conclusive statement saying that it for some reason or another can’t be solved But that’s a solution. That’s not a contradiction. That’s that’s a solution
[00:50:31] Purple: It it seems to me that if if we take that as as the case that Learning that something is impossible Then is a resolution to it that that it implies something like um That Thinking it was a problem in the first place has some kind of error built into it has some kind of misconception they’re the the desire for You know a certain a certain mathematical fact to be true is Flawed maybe in an ethical way even The desire to travel faster than the speed of light is flawed in some way It’s not clear to me what that way is But it raises the concern which I think was voiced earlier that Some of what this principle of optimism is doing is actually rhetorical and it carries a rhetorical way that is Maybe reaching beyond it’s The actual kind of statements it’s it’s making about reality
[00:51:42] Green: Any final comments for me move on to my next question
[00:51:45] Pink: One final comment, which is that I think It is irrational to pursue something which we now know is impossible Um, but I don’t think it’s irrational to pursue something before we know it’s impossible So trying to go faster than the speed of light before Einstein came around is I think a totally reasonable endeavor It only becomes unreasonable after Einstein and after we know it it can’t be can’t be done So I just want to make a distinction between pursuing say Um, a method by which we come up with a Rational representation of the square root of two I think that’s a totally reasonable thing to pursue when we don’t have an impossibility results But it’s only after we have that impossibility result that it becomes I think irrational
[00:52:26] Teal: And then maybe we could think just to add final thought like The principle of optimism and this problem with insoluble problems Um, we could think of a problem That is that has no answer Possible answer and that will be the reason why we’re entirely wiped out and that would be maybe a reason to To doubt the principle of optimism.
[00:52:51] Green: Oh interesting answer. Okay. I’m going to come back to that. That’s a very interesting answer so Many of you mentioned the interview of sam harris except where sam harris interviewed david doige So i’m going to take um One of the criticisms that he raised that and then i’m going to try to steal man it I I feel like there’s a there’s a legitimate hidden criticism here that maybe was used with examples that came across kind of cheesy pun intended um so First of all in chapter three doige says it is inevitable. We face problems, but no particular problem is inevitable We survive and thrive but solving each problem as it comes up And since the human ability to transform nature is limited only by the laws of physics None of the endless stream of problems will ever constitute an impossible barrier so um sam harris Kind of working from that idea He says as best as I can quote him trying to type quick as i’m listening to an audio Knowledge confers power without limit This is sam summarizing doige’s view or is limited only by the laws of nature and then He goes on to say anything that’s not limited by the laws of nature is achievable with knowledge and doige says yes I call that the momentous dichotomy So then sam asks How isn’t this just a clever tautology similar to the ontological argument for the existence of god? And they actually discussed that for a little while, but let me try to explain How I understand sam’s criticism here Um, he says why might certain transformations of the material world be unachievable even in the presence of a complete knowledge?
[00:54:31] Green: merely by the contingent the contingency of technology or other proclial things where you are your geography things like that We don’t just have the necessary Maybe we just don’t have the necessary tools and everything on an island uh, he gives the example of someone with an uh Appendicitis and you know how to give him an apodectomy But it just so happens on an island that’s Where everything on the island is has the consistency of soft cheese. That was why I used my pun um Under these circumstances, even though you have the knowledge how to save the person you’re not going to Um, and the person’s going to die So he says why mind every space we occupy occupy not introduce a gap a gap of that kind And then he goes on to say I’m still trying to just steal man sam’s position The fishiness I was detecting is more a matter of emphasis We could have could have a complete understanding of nature yet contingent facts would preclude Us to do anything with that knowledge But that contingent fact then therefore just becomes one of the laws of nature So you might say well the reason why we couldn’t save the guy with the apodectomy Is because we didn’t have the knowledge how to transform the atoms in On the island into metal tools And which actually raises that or hints at that as part of his response. So it was in fact
[00:55:57] Green: A element of the law of nature’s after all But isn’t that just then become a circular argument or or you’re smuggling in something That really just makes this similar to the ontological argument So sam’s point seems to be that there may be no difference Um, then simply then saying this then simply saying all problems that aren’t soluble are in some sense a limit of the laws of physics by tautology So thoughts on that what tell me what you think about sam’s criticism here as as best as I can try to steal man it um and So likewise when doge says inherently insolvable problems are inherently uninteresting I can see how that might be true, but it might be thought of as a tautology In fact mark bryos actually argued this or brought this up to me once um You might say look it’s the very fact that it’s insoluble that makes it uninteresting But then this is just a tautology then all you’re saying is well. Yeah, I mean of course If the problem’s insoluble, it’s in some sense uninteresting But that no longer that statement no longer has content I think sam’s arguing that that these statements Could they be seen as just tautologies that don’t have any actual content? Okay, there there we go That’s that’s my setup.
[00:57:13] Red: I have I have one critique that comes to mind um If you’re saying anything of content that refers to reality Everything you say is tautological Can anybody think of a piece of knowledge? That is not tautological like if I say that a triangle has three sides And then the internal angles add up to 180 degrees that’s a tautology. Why is that a problem?
[00:57:40] Green: So I I don’t think I would normally I mean I see what you’re saying But I don’t think I would normally have caused that called that a tautology. Usually when I’m thinking Using something of being a tautology What I mean is I’m just defining it that way from the beginning. So there’s no particular reasoning behind it Um, this is just the way I happen to be defining my terms Well,
[00:57:59] Red: I I see what you’re saying, but we know that dutch has his reasons for coming to that Right, like it’s a principle that he’s derived um From a host of observations and experience to say that I mean like I can only say more from my point of view as as an objectivist that There’s something that that we believe or I would seem you’d have to believe if you were an objectivist that all of the things that we produce That are valuable to human life are produced ultimately by human reason They’re they’re a product of knowledge and that’s kind of another way of saying Or a different aspect of what dutch is saying. I think, you know, the problems are soluble while they’re soluble by acquiring more knowledge um if you live on an island of cheese and You you wanted to solve Uh, a certain problem that for some reason Being on that island prohibits you from doing it doesn’t disprove the general principle Which is derived from the full richness of reality It’s not a thought experiment that david dutch has set up In isolation from his total context of knowledge. We don’t live on islands of cheese Right, the the thought experiment there. I don’t think disproves the principle Which is that You know, if he had to acquire some means of surviving on that island He’s only going to have one way of doing it which is through his reason And there’s no other means available To them
[00:59:43] Green: So let me maybe I was a little bit sloppy how I try to set that up and to be honest It’s a little hard to steal man Sam’s argument. Sam’s not doing you a favor there
[00:59:54] Unknown: Yeah Um,
[00:59:56] Green: I feel like there’s a legitimate criticism here But sam and and I might even be reading in things that sam didn’t even intend like i’m Taking his words and then an idea is jumping into my head and maybe that’s not even what sam intended, right? but I think What I understood sam is getting at if I were to get at the the core of his criticism It would be something like this You’re going to have problems that are insoluble And it won’t it. Yes, there is some sense in which You know, if you had the right knowledge it would be soluble So using the example of the appendectomy If you had a machine that allowed you to transform the atoms of the island into the necessary tools You would then be able to solve the problem. So there’s a certain sense in which The laws of physics don’t ban you solving this problem In that if you had certain knowledge you could solve the problem You just don’t happen to have that knowledge But I think what sam’s getting at is and deutch almost really agrees with him on this That the very fact that you’re in that situation Um, you’re not going to have the knowledge, right? The knowledge could exist at some future point, but you’re not discovering it before this guy’s dying Now that’s actually a fact of the laws of nature, right? It’s not there’s a certain sense in which the laws of physics are Saying this guy is now dead and that is an insoluble problem now because the laws of physics are declaring it. So
[01:01:32] Green: Um, granted in a different circumstance with different knowledge that would no longer be the case So I think what sam is getting at is there’s a certain sense in which the very fact that the problem is insoluble Automatically makes it something the laws of physics or the laws of nature deny you Um, therefore, what is the actual content? Of this theory of this statement. I think is what sam is asking Maybe
[01:01:55] Teal: we could ask maybe we could ask sam, uh about this at some point because I’m thinking if the guy dies but if Helping him is not is not a contra included contradiction with the laws of physics There exists a world in which The guy doesn’t die Could be the case, but then that wouldn’t necessarily solve the problem because that’s that’s always true So it would always be true that some extremely unlikely event
[01:02:27] Orange: Will of necessity happens somewhere in the multiverse and it saves you But that is not the same thing as being able to Save the person on the island that being said, I mean, it’s still true So bruce, I’m not sure to what extent you agree with this, but it’s still true that if if you have the knowledge You could save the person on the island. Totally the knowledge includes knowledge of sample how to transform the atoms on the island and How to perform the surgery etc
[01:03:01] Green: I don’t say i’m disagreeing with that either by the way It seems to me like he’s actually agreeing that that is the case
[01:03:07] Brown: it it seems to me that uh, a more general formulation of what sam is saying is that uh deutch’s formulation is implicitly assuming that the binding constraint is knowledge and not resources in Attempting to solve any particular instance some parochial problem. So One might look at the If a supernova explodes and we have the knowledge of how to Save life from a supernova, but we have neither the resources Or time which is itself a resource to construct a solution and that comes back to the laws of physics We have certain reaction rates in order to Build whatever shield we’re going to build and so forth Then we’re going to lose um, but that’s So in that case it’s the resources That are available within a given time frame that constrain our ability to solve the problem I do think that sam’s Example is pretty awful. I would simply take the guy’s leg Break it off and use his bone Which i’d snap in in a spiral break in order to make a knife With which i’d cut out his appendix while you know tying off clamping off his leg Done
[01:04:32] Orange: If you’re ingenious enough that you can actually solve this particular issue I mean, you know that that I wouldn’t endorse that particular method Yeah, why not bring up your own leg buddy?
[01:04:48] Brown: Well, maybe so
[01:04:49] Orange: maybe so Or maybe there’s an animal and I can break its legs it and then use use their bones as As tools for the surgery or something also, uh, it comes to mind that like Before we know before we solve the problem We we don’t know whether it can be solved. So either we find like in the case of the undecidability issue approve that We we can’t have an algorithm for example in the undecidability case to Uh solve the problem Or we just have a solution And and then we know that there was a solution Uh, so there there’s also this aspect of if you preemptively have a theory that says that the problem isn’t soluble Then it tends to be a very bad explanation. It tends to be a very generic explanation, uh, which which is almost certainly Something you can just ignore because of that so uh This this example of the island is a little bit Artificial in that sense like we don’t we don’t actually know the details of the island. We don’t know What uh resources there are and I feel like Harris would keep making it so that The island is you know, he would keep saying okay Well, you know, maybe I can use an animal and he would say oh, but there are no animals in this particular island
[01:06:10] Green: Right. He’s definitely trying to find a thought experiment to make a point with Yeah,
[01:06:15] Orange: but which is artificially constrained by him. He’s kind of just like in the trolley problems Where we ask questions about which lever should it should be pull the lever if we kill uh fewer people or whatever There’s always the assumption that we can’t turn them whoever has set up the trolley problem And make sure that he never does that again, for example Like we were kind of in a very constrained world where we’re taking Just as a as a given certain facts about the situation But very often those those things which you assume About the situation are as unnecessarily Constraining and the real world isn’t like that. For example, the real world isn’t like this island The we there’s no reason to assume that The kinds of things we want to solve in hospitals the kinds of diseases that we want to eradicate Are constrained in the way that Harris wants this surgery on the island to be constrained
[01:07:12] Green: I’m not even sure there’s an actual island in the world that has everything as the consistency of soft cheese, right? I mean like this is clearly going out of its way to Be a thought experiment that uses an almost outrightly silly example If
[01:07:27] Red: if you’re trying to disprove a principle that’s derived from reality as it is And then assert that well if reality really wasn’t like that then would what you’re saying be true Well, you could do that endlessly.
[01:07:43] Orange: Yeah, and in some sense, that’s the content of the theory It’s like our world is not like Harris’s example So it could have been that the world was like Harris’s example Uh, it logically could have been but it’s a bad explanation and some of the content of the Uh, the dichotomy the it resides there It resides in the difference between this artificial world and the the real world with its complexity and with Its attribute that it allows us to solve the things that we are interested in
[01:08:17] Purple: Yeah, I think um, the the point about resources is actually significant. Um Deutsch makes a great effort to demonstrate that Virtually anywhere in the the universe there are sufficient resources Um to to do these sorts of things with with you know, maybe one possible exception about In a supernova something like this, but um, and and he Even in the case of like thinking you need particular materials and so forth he addresses this by kind of redefining Um resources in terms of knowledge. So he talks about having wealth, which is um, you know Which I think is correct, right the the amount of resources you have Is a property of of the knowledge you have about how to use what what is available basically But but yeah, it does seem to be Um contingent on the kind of cosmos we find ourselves in And so it it’s not a strictly logical statement It actually is in some sense an observational statement about the the universe
[01:09:31] Pink: I just want to chime in um So I I think I understand like the Maybe the emotional undercurrent of sam. Um, Harris’s critique, which is something like Uh, well no matter what happens on the island us dutchians can just uh Define the outcome as being either some Law physics, which uh says that you don’t have enough resources at that particular time Or we just um make our definition of of knowledge So expansive as to explain whatever whatever I think
[01:10:01] Green: that’s exactly what he’s saying. Yeah
[01:10:03] Pink: And that’s like what uh the ontological argument for the existence of god is is trying to do But the reason why I don’t think that is Terribly valid critique. Well, uh twofold one is that I think in this artificial world that sam has can cocked it It is the case that uh the person just didn’t have enough knowledge to to solve the problem and then everybody Everybody presumably dies, but I don’t think the principle of optimism is terribly interesting in this in specific Instances as much as it is interesting when you’re dealing with entire classes of problems like the class of poverty sorry, um the problem of poverty or reducing war or or something of that matter Because where where I think the content of the principle of optimism lies Is that it basically gives us a stopping criterion it says Work on this problem until either you solve it or you learn that it can’t be solved But until you reach one of these two states, um, there’s still discoveries to be made um, and furthermore if I was on this island with and I had ruptured appendix I would hope that the person who’s trying to save me Has the principle of optimism just running in their head constantly, right because that’s the person who’s going to tirelessly Keep trying to figure out new and interesting ways to to save my life um And so that’s why I don’t think it is a tautology Because I think a tautology is something where by definition You can’t derive any interesting conclusions from it So a equals a is a tautology because you gain nothing from that statement is empty, right?
[01:11:40] Pink: All triangles have angles which sum to 180 degrees is not a tautology Because one it wasn’t obvious before we discovered that fact that that fact was in fact true And two it leads to interesting questions like under what conditions is that not the case So when you move from euclidean geometry to non euclidean geometry all of a sudden that that breaks So the statement that all Angles in a triangle sum to 180 leads to more interesting questions similarly The statement that all problems Are soluble unless you meet the law of physics Also leads to actionable interesting conclusions For example, maybe I just cut off this guy’s leg and use his bone as a knife But that could actually work And that’s probably something which wouldn’t have occurred to somebody Who doesn’t have the principle of optimism running in their head as they’re trying to save this this person’s life So for those reasons First I think that it’s most interesting when you apply it to universal problems like Problems that aren’t tied to a specific scenario, but hold more universally and two it leads to Different actions someone who’s thinking about this will act differently in the world. That’s why it has so much force
[01:12:53] Green: Okay, thank you. That was actually a really good answer that I think leads into my next question also Sam bringing up You know the world world isn’t like this So first of all when I heard this interview The thought that actually leapt into my mind at the time was that the idea of problems All problems are soluble. So first of all, like I said, I understood it as having certain caveats unless the laws of physics forbid it and There are certain uninteresting problems that wouldn’t be soluble, but they would be uninteresting So I wouldn’t care anyhow But I think I also understood that concept and the principle of optimism as applying to The societal level not necessarily to individuals now To what vaden just said I would want an individual to have that in their head that all problems are soluble I would want them to not give up on trying to solve problems I think there’s a great deal of benefit of believing all problems are soluble Even if you’re trying to maybe falsely apply it to individuals But it does seem like even in context when when dois describes us in his books He doesn’t seem to be applying it to individuals. He seems to be talking about How could our society overcome its problems as they develop? Um, now, maybe I’m out of the night there. Maybe I was wrong to think of it that way And I actually would love to get people’s feedback on that But I think that’s how I would have answered sam I would have said sam you’re trying to apply this to individuals And there was never even a tent to do that in the first place
[01:14:32] Green: Yes, there are individual Problems individuals have that might turn out to be insoluble within a certain time frame people’s thoughts on that Is this a possible answer to sam or am I wrong?
[01:14:45] Pink: I totally think that’s an answer to sam Yeah, doi just not saying that every problem will inevitably be solved in all circumstances Just that in principle, um, it’s solvable unless there’s some physical reason why it’s it’s not But uh, but yeah, there’s nothing that’s like a naive optimism that says anything you set your mind to it You will inevitably do because reality Isn’t set up to be nice to us Um, it’s just a it’s a stopping criterion. It says keep going until one of these two conditions are are met. Okay
[01:15:14] Orange: Yeah, well in a way it does apply to individuals As well I mean it applies to problems and people and individuals are The people who solves problems. I mean at the end of the day if you say there’s some kind of societal progress And you can point to a person who who solves the problem But but the way in which his phrase doesn’t really refer to people just refers to the problems. It just refers to things independent of the specific individuals that live today, for example, it refers to uh knowledge and The problems it can solve So it’s in a sense. It’s more the people are kind of abstracted away We we are the beings that solve the problems The fact of the matter is that there are problems and that knowledge would solve problem
[01:16:02] Green: Yes, so
[01:16:03] Blue: it seems like we’re talking a lot about the principle of optimism as a uh, sort of a theoretical thing But do it seems to also advocate optimism as a Really an attitude towards life At least that’s that that’s what I what I get. I mean, I’m pretty sure he’s not just talking about a Sunny disposition and in a very superficial way, but he is talking about you know A view of humans and and our relationship to this world How do others see this relationship between the the the theory that that problems are soluble and and Human human life. I guess
[01:16:49] Brown: I think what they didn’t just said is Excellent and uh Very pithy, which is that the principle of optimism is really a stopping criterion And I think another way to recast that that would make it seem more precise Is to think of it not at the Pistemological level, but at the methodological level It’s saying continue trying as vaden said continue trying to Solve a problem until you find out that either you can’t solve it or you have a solution in hand Or maybe you’ve discovered that there’s an adjacent problem Which is the problem that you you’ve clarified your position and now you want to solve a different problem so All those possibilities are present, but I find this a lot in philosophy It’s part of the problem I have with postmodern Critiques for example is that they’re occurring at a epistemological level when really they should be occurring at a methodological level and that was something that uh Popper clarified Over and over and over again seemingly to no avail amongst mainstream philosophers I’m just curious if this Reminds you guys It’s just another way of recasting it.
[01:18:06] Red: Does anybody know the serenity prayer? Right god grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference
[01:18:19] Blue: I can see the connection. That’s a that rings true
[01:18:22] Purple: I think I think deutch has actually referenced that. Um, I I couldn’t point to it, but I I think so Which implies a certain Yeah, it’s it’s not just a statement about the world It’s sort of a statement about how we should orient ourself to the world and that’s the kind of To the point peter was was bringing up the the idea of you know, this is supposed to be an attitude About how you approach life something like this. I think that is implied um, I was looking through um the uh, deutch’s chapter on optimism and beginning of infinity and he uses um, a number of times he used the word expectation Which seems to be adding something to This idea about optimism. So for example, he talks about the the, um, Kennedy’s moon landing mission and he says, um Something about the obstacles there none of that prevented rational people from forming the expectation That the mission could succeed and he’s kind of hedging it, but it seems like he feels like expectation is actually some something, um He here, right? There is a there’s a sort of load -bearing attitude In our expectation about the problems that we’re actually tackling Um, so I I like the idea of the methodological and so forth But I feel like he actually is implying something about an attitude towards the world That goes beyond those things
[01:19:56] Green: By the way, just when I mentioned my possible solution to sam that it applies to societies Let me actually give a quote from david deutch that is why I thought that From page 193 of beginning infinity. He says but if progress ever depended on violating a law of physics the The problems are solid this phrase the problems are soluble would be false I took that as Not referring to individuals, but not my personal problems But the problems that we as a society as a whole Are facing that because it’s about progress not about me trying to solve my personal individual problem necessarily But
[01:20:39] Orange: with the laws of physics also don’t refer necessarily to you like it doesn’t say That uh, we can’t record this podcast like there’s no law of physics stating that today at 745 Pm it will be impossible to report this podcast just as a law of physics. So in that sense You you again get the individual Ability to solve problems back just because there there’s there’s no good explanation for why At least generically why that should be the case
[01:21:16] Green: Yes, look, I would agree good point. Okay, let me um talk about just Lee Cronin has something he made called assembly theory And I don’t see as assembly theory as in any way at odds with deutch’s theories And if somebody does think it is bring that up But at least in my very limited knowledge of assembly theory what I have seen seems like it actually ties quite well into deutch’s theories I Um Now as I understand assembly theory and I may not understand it right It seems to say that knowledge and complexity can be thought of as a kind of search process. There’s a Fabulous like fabulously large number of possible configurations. I think he uses for adams I think he uses that it’s end of the 23rd number of universes worth and Most of them are not useful So to find the useful ones requires a search through this assembly space using an evolutionary search basically Um, I’ve made a similar argument in my podcast in the past So what he really says then and this is why he emphasizes time so much is by the way Why sodia likes what he says so much because she emphasizes the mystery of time quite a bit Is that basically is that one of the laws of physics One of the limits the laws of physics place on us Is that it takes a certain a minimum amount of time To reach certain Places in assembly space basically reach a certain piece of knowledge You have to know about einstein’s physics before certain types of problems can be solved things like that Okay, this is again.
[01:22:55] Green: This is my understanding if somebody understands assembly theory differently than me speak up This is just what I came away with from the minimal amount of listening to him Um, so the path to that knowledge may be winding and indirect kind of though stanley talks about this in terms of novelty search um, but The knowledge may exist out there. You may be able to reach it, but physics may place a time limit on you And I that’s something that I feel like seems like is one of the emphasis that Lee cronin breaks up quite a bit um, so let me use this so sam made the the point about uh sam harris’s example being unrealistic and The universe isn’t that way, but let me try to now give a more realistic example since I agree sam’s Example isn’t the best Sam’s harris’s example isn’t the best there’s two sam’s that i’m talking about here imagine Something like this a piece of the sun kicks itself out.
[01:23:56] Green: It’s hurtling towards earth Um, and it’s going to destroy all life on earth That would be an interesting and insoluble problem And the reason why is because is not because it’s insoluble ultimately like if we had the right knowledge That would be a soluble problem But because we don’t currently have the knowledge There’s just no physical way it would literally violate the laws of physics To find that knowledge within the space required for the two hours for this piece of the sun to roast the earth and kill everybody So in this would be then a more realistic Example and if you really think about this in terms of many worlds, this is something that does happen Right, I mean like there’s some version of us that started this podcast and part way through we received a a Alert that we’re all gonna die because the sun just kicked a piece of itself at us And there just isn’t time to actually resolve the problem Maybe comment on this and maybe we can start with sam because this this is a more maybe realistic version Well, maybe it’s not if it’s not you sam kipers as the physicists tell me But this seems like it would be a more realistic version of sam harris’s criticism
[01:25:11] Orange: Yeah, so that we can’t solve the problem in time
[01:25:15] Green: Uh,
[01:25:15] Orange: I suppose it could happen. I mean it could also say More improbable things which as I said previously would also have to be true such as All the air molecules molecules in the water in the room Collide with one another and use containers we combust and we can’t finish the podcast either That is very unlikely, but Must happen somewhere in the multiverse I’m sorry to say. Yeah, somehow that doesn’t really Seem like an issue to me
[01:25:49] Green: Okay, and let me just point out that this doesn’t actually go against like if we’re seeing the idea That all problems are soluble unless they’re denied unless they’re forbidden by the laws of physics This isn’t really breaking that rule So this this isn’t a counter example per se, but it does cause you to really sharply focus on what it means
[01:26:09] Orange: Yeah, it is still true that you could solve the problem if you have the knowledge For example,
[01:26:13] Green: yes, it is still true. You can solve the problem if you had the knowledge Absolutely, yeah
[01:26:18] Red: I thought of another concrete example for what you’re trying to do right now bruce, which is even less Uh, extraordinary. I mean It’s not just knowledge that we need but we need Capital we need
[01:26:35] Teal: resources like
[01:26:36] Red: if somebody was just trying to solve the problem of producing abundant and clean energy The knowledge of building nuclear fission reactors in and of itself is insufficient without the knowledge of the engineers You know the contractors And it wouldn’t be possible without the resources to build it And we might think of resources in a sense of well, of course, we have the resources here on the planet, but The limiting factor to the resources is actually also It’s knowledge based. It’s reason based. It’s our capacity to master nature because nature isn’t giving us any resources apart from that which We can bring under our own control through our own effort Which is multiplied by our capacity to reason and to solve these problems You might find that there are problems Uh that seem to be insoluble given certain restraints But I think the the essence of the principle of optimism is to say that If they’re solvable they’re going to be solved by reason And as you said, it’s it’s not that um your example doesn’t uh doesn’t present an issue for it It’s just a good way to outline and focus on Uh, you know, what what are the limitations? There’s lots of potential limitations given certain time constraints, but Uh The way past any of those constraints is more knowledge and there’s no other way to do it
[01:28:20] Green: By the way, all this talk reminds me of nevels on the beach the book about The end of the world where we’ve set off a nuclear bombs and There’s a nuclear fallout. It’s coming to australia. I don’t know if anybody has ever seen that movie or read the book It’s a famous book But they’re setting up a potentially realistic scenario Where it’s literally impossible to save humanity And it follows the last group of humanity as they are waiting for the end basically a very scary book Very pessimistic book too
[01:28:54] Pink: um, yeah, so I wanted to chime in because I think uh We can actually make a stronger critique than you’re making, uh, bruce and that was what I was thinking about, um Last night, so you’re kind of imagining a parochial situation where there’s just not enough time or knowledge to solve it and we all die Um, but I think a worse thing that could happen Is that we actually discover Like an evil law of physics, um a law of physics, which uh says something like I’ll just make one up that obviously Who the hell knows if it’s true or not, but um something like all conscious life Eventually has to go out or if that seems implausible Maybe take the heat death of the universe, which I know you’ve talked about on the podcast before and I know that’s Uh potentially a contentious A science, but if we just assume that that’s true then I think So do it has a momentous dichotomy and Parfit has his Like repugnant conclusion and you could call it like a calamitous explanation or something Where it’s a lot of physics which inevitably says we all have to die or suffer Um, I think in that circumstance We would just have to bite the bullet here and say yes, that’s that is going to happen But
[01:30:08] Pink: I think of this is kind of interesting because uh the flip side of the principle of optimism coin is that if we do discover such a law of physics, which is um evil Then there is no room at all for optimism anymore It’s just radical pessimism nihilism and acceptance Um, whereas if you had never heard of the principle of optimism and you discover such a law Then perhaps you could still have some some sort of optimism in that circumstance. So I guess I’m curious to to um Kind of do this worst case analysis with the panel and see uh what they think about, um The outcome where we discover a lot of physics which, um We wish we hadn’t discovered.
[01:30:55] Green: So I was actually going to raise heat death for exactly the purpose that you just did So thank you for doing that for me. In fact, let me actually do a quote from david deutch Um related to that before people answer your question. This is in beginning of infinity. Um Part of the quote will come from page 450 in part from 324 If there are bound on the number of computational steps that a computer can execute during the lifetime of a universe If there is then physics will also impose a bound on the amount of knowledge that can be created Knowledge creation being a form of computation if progress cannot continue indefinitely Bad philosophy will inevitably come again into the into ascendancy for it will be true So deutch and then in that context particularly the first quote, which was on page 450 He does bring up the fact that if heat death were true Then it would be wrong the principle of optimism would be wrong But
[01:31:51] Pink: would it be wrong? It would I think it wouldn’t be wrong at all. It would be just Uh acknowledging the other side of the coin, which is that if there’s a lot of physics Uh, there’s nothing you can do about it, but that’s baked into the principle of optimism. Isn’t it? Yeah so in the article that was uh circulated, um by peter Uh, deutch kind of conflates the two so he says what I call the principle of optimism Is that all evils are caused by lack of knowledge and then uh two sentences later He says I’ve argued that there’s no limitation other than the laws of nature on our ability to eliminate evils by creating knowledge Um, so yes, there’s a distinction between the two, but he does kind of use them. Um in uh in conjunction with each other
[01:32:31] Teal: Hold on Yes, just because it just reminded me that uh lee cronin and his assembly theory dancing around david deutch reminded me of The the podcast of fedon and and then about david chapman We discovering popper slowly That was for for those who listened to the podcast about david chapman But just a mention of cronin there, but I wanted to say that I think I still see this principle of optimism as a moral principle More than anything and that the duty I see this as our duty to to understand that that Nothing is forbidden if it’s not forbidden by the laws of physics And our duty is to understand that we can scale our knowledge and and the reach of our knowledge And that we need to do it as fast as possible Knowing that indeed we may be too slow and then We may get wiped out because we were too slow But at least we did all we could to get there as fast as possible, but we failed But that’s more like how I see it like a really like a moral principle more than anything else
[01:33:44] Red: I do agree with her that it’s there’s a huge ethical Uh part of the theory, but I just wanted to comment on The idea that there could be let’s say an evil law Let’s say that from a certain human perspective The second law of thermodynamics Is an evil law because we discover well it it might lead to the heat death of the universe or whatever, but Is that evil because if the universe didn’t Uh work that way. I don’t think that we would be here either I don’t see how we’d be getting our energy from the sun. I mean, I don’t even know if there would be suns I’m not that knowledgeable about physics, but It seems to me that that same evil principle also makes our life and everything that we love and value possible
[01:34:32] Orange: It would be evil in the sense of there being a problem that couldn’t be solved So it would be something which regardless of the amount of knowledge that we would have We could not get rid of it. We could not get rid of the The problem data Yeah
[01:34:47] Green: vaden had commented it wouldn’t necessarily violate the idea that all problems are soluble except for those denied by the Laws of physics hits right about that But it would be a violation of the principle of optimism in terms of there’s an evil that we can’t get rid of
[01:35:01] Red: Is it evil if the same fact gave rise to our life as we know it? And will also be the cause of our Well, maybe not our death because we might be long gone, but say the universes or conscious life or Some such thing So i’m just saying like to me it I don’t know if I I just don’t know if I see it that way to me. That’s not positive enough
[01:35:26] Pink: Yeah, like I I agree that the word evil might be strong It’s maybe important just to add that deutch essentially defines evil as anything that causes human suffering or reduces our possibility To flourish and so under that definition say a volcano would be evil But under the more kind of common sense like hitler’s evil definition than a volcano Perhaps wouldn’t be but But I think it does make sense to define evil in this context as just that which Causes suffering or reduces possibilities of human flourishing in which case the second law of thermodynamics While it brought human flourishing into existence Would also be able to be described as evil in the sense that it would cause suffering after it’s brought people into existence It
[01:36:07] Green: might be helpful here to make a distinction between the second law of thermal dynamics and heat death I know people tend to equate those but heat death is a specific cosmology That makes assumptions that may or may not be true about the second law of thermal dynamics so like the omega point Did not violate the second law of thermal dynamics at all But it didn’t also didn’t have heat death. So it’s really heat death. That would be the evil not the second law of thermal dynamics
[01:36:35] Orange: Yes, yeah, and there’s many other cosmologies that also don’t have a heat death like There is the cosmology of barber Which doesn’t have a heat death, which it’s a completely relational cosmology and Barbers theory the only thing that would matter would be the ratios between Different energies like between work and heat say So you could basically endlessly perform Work you could do useful tasks even Though entropy would be increasing as well
[01:37:10] Green: So his theory he actually calls entropy
[01:37:14] Orange: Yeah, his theory. He has something which His basic argument is that if you think of the universe as a box then You would get something like a heat death from The second law of thermal dynamics just because the box is thermalizing But the universe isn’t a box. It’s an open system. It’s The whole setting um, I’m not intimately familiar with how the rest of the argument goes but it’s It he makes a compelling case
[01:37:50] Green: All right, any other questions or comments on that?
[01:37:54] Pink: Yeah, a question maybe for you bruce because in the conversation where you talked about heat death um I may have been misreading you but it sounded like uh, if it was true, it would really bum you out That was part of the impression that it would definitely Um, because I don’t find that at all and this might just be my new atheist training that like Just the fact that the movie is going to end doesn’t mean that I’m not enjoying the movie while I’m watching it You know, but it seems like you say that at
[01:38:20] Orange: the end of the movie
[01:38:20] Pink: Oh Well at the end of the movie that’s I may want it to go on but um, but just the fact that something is finite doesn’t Reduce the importance of it the thing or the the meaning I extract from the thing um, and I think hitch somewhere talks about like The only thing worse than knowing that the party is going to go on after you leave is knowing that the party is never going to Um, and and you have to stay forever. Um, and so I think there’s uh Uh Negatives on both both sides, but I just curious to know a bit bruce Why it would bum you out so much and if that is related at all to your views on the principle of optimism
[01:39:01] Green: Okay, so let me take the quote that I just quoted from david deutch Um, if is there a bound on the number of computational steps that a computer can execute during the lifetime of the universe If there is then physics will also impose a bound on the amount of knowledge that can be created Knowledge creation being a form of computation and then the second quote if progress cannot continue indefinitely Bad philosophy will inevitably come again into ascendancy for it will be true So that seems like both of those follow naturally From there being a bound on progress, which is what we’re talking about if we’re assuming that heat death cosmology is true So i’m taking this from the standpoint of it bums me out That uh, that there’s literally a bound on progress. It’s not just that my life is bounded because then I could use the argument that vaden just used But literally There is a bound on progress because knowledge creation does not go on to infinity It stops at some point, which also means that there are in fact really interesting problems That are basically every interesting problem will become insoluble at some point You can solve them up to a point But there is absolutely a limit To what you can actually solve because you’re going to run out of computation You’re going to run out of knowledge growth Progress must come to an end It’s like literally now declared by the laws of physics that progress must come to an end It’s really that thought that bums me out
[01:40:31] Orange: Yeah, and also meaning that there’s parts of the world that we will never understand as a consequence
[01:40:36] Green: Yes, so it’s not explicable. The universe is for the most part inexplicable Because you just can’t grow the knowledge necessary
[01:40:43] Purple: Yeah, I just uh bruce when The episode we did talk about the omega point. You made an interesting comment about um The the role of suffering in this kind of situation right where if We are doomed To the heat death if knowledge creation is finite It’s not simply that our knowledge creation comes to an end It’s actually that everything we gain will be slowly and painfully lost So there is no in in this kind of a cosmology. There is no positive experience that is not Met with a negative that is not Also increasing the amount of suffering and I I thought that was a really I don’t know if I quite stated that correctly But I thought that was a really profound point
[01:41:32] Green: You did and now here I’m making an extrapolation that you could argue with right Um So I was trying to hold hold to a more solid answer to vaden’s question So take it as first of all, there’s the statement that if heat death’s true Then we know for sure that knowledge creation must come to an end and progress must come to an end Then there’s a second extrapolation that is a little more Challengable, which is that every good thing must now be inverted with something worse, right now you could challenge that you could say everybody Commits suicide on a certain date or the big rip actually happens And so you never actually reached the second half of the bad side. So I wasn’t going to emphasize that second half I think that one’s a little more speculative But I think the first part is not speculative heat death if it’s true if we’re starting with the assumption It’s true Then it absolutely means Knowledge creation comes to an end and progress becomes impossible at some point
[01:42:31] Pink: I guess the at some point is doing a lot of work for me Like if it’s 13 billion years from now, I just have a tough time getting too animated about it to be totally frank But despite just being my uh parochial timescales that I’m uh dealing with
[01:42:47] Red: I think philosophically it’s kind of irrelevant because We all are gonna die And it doesn’t reduce Our happiness in the here and now. Yeah, exactly
[01:42:59] Purple: So as a transhumanist I might probably disagree with that
[01:43:04] Orange: Yeah, it seems like a bad thing that we’re gonna die for the multitude of cases
[01:43:08] Red: The the laws of physics that made your life possible are the same thing that are gonna probably take you out at some point I’m just saying that like in so far is uh Our ability our capacity to deal with reality if we discover something about reality that we dislike It I don’t think it undercuts the basic premise that uh That life is good, right? I mean you’re sad to lose it because life is good I
[01:43:36] Orange: was about to say, yeah, I If it wasn’t good, then it wouldn’t be the problem. But it’s so a good thing has to end that seems bad
[01:43:44] Purple: Yeah,
[01:43:44] Teal: but there’s uh, there’s life ending. But there’s also other stuff ending like uh um love uh also ends And the fact that it ends does not diminish like you have love story with someone even if you’re immortal even if technology allows you to live forever it may be that um relationships also still end And I think you come back to to that question of things ending but still having value though they end
[01:44:16] Pink: Yeah, and I want to tweak what sam just said um because I don’t think the claim is that um good things must inevitably end I think it’s that if a good thing ends that doesn’t make it not a good thing um The fact that good things end, uh, isn’t necessarily enough to make that good thing no longer a good thing
[01:44:34] Orange: Yeah, I think in the context of the heat that it’s just that if everything eventually has to end that seems horrible If all if all life is doomed to end and the growth of knowledge stops then That’s a bad thing and also just on the issue of mortality it’s Given That life is good. It is nice. It should be longer and I don’t see why it should ever You know whatever be a finite length given that we can keep extending it Given that there’s no law of nature that a life can’t continue on forever It seems like a travesty that we have to die
[01:45:13] Pink: Yeah, I mean, I agree. I would prefer not to die. Uh, for sure. Okay. I’m not pro -mortality. Yeah for sure
[01:45:19] Orange: Yeah, I mean the the way thing is some people do disagree with about this So I wanted to be sure that that wasn’t the argument Yeah,
[01:45:25] Pink: well, so one thing I could see happening is if we grant everyone ever lasting immortality that People will still die, but just where it’ll all be always be by suicide And so even there I think that if you grant people immortality, you’d still have people choosing to To end the good thing um on their own volition. I wouldn’t expect to see just Unlimited infinite amount of people. Um, but who who knows of course. I’m just speculating Yeah,
[01:45:55] Orange: well, I mean in that case Imagine someone living in the far future and they’re immortal It seems far more likely that they would want to say Freeze themselves in time like maybe their computer programs living on some very hard to destroy hardware In that case seems more likely that they would freeze themselves for some duration So whatever is bothering them in the present is resolved Uh, rather than killing themselves, which has a much, you know, so more severe impacts on utility Yeah, that’s
[01:46:27] Blue: fair point fair point
[01:46:28] Green: So Greg Egan wrote a book that I liked called diaspora Where um the the final chapter of the book you find out that the great ancient race that that basically they had finished living Life that they had reached the end where they had done everything they cared to do And so therefore they had all terminated themselves at some point not like all at once So I thought that was a an interesting ending to the book that kind of is what we’re talking about There’s a a fictional take on that Um, Vedin’s question to me was was about my subjective state. Why does it bum me out? I actually think sam’s done a pretty good job of describing why it does like if heat death is true I do think that’s a pretty big bad thing okay So the summary of principle optimism is all evils are caused by insufficient knowledge now Somebody challenged me on this. I think it was mark. Um, Rios But don’t quote me on that and my apologies to him if it wasn’t him The challenge was something like this that sometimes individuals have positive economic payouts That benefit themselves at the expense of others This is why greed and selfishness exist in the first place because crime Does in fact sometimes actually pay Um, this is why people are sometimes evil You might even say evil has a sort of logic all to its own Based on that then the challenge was is it really the case that all evils are caused by insufficient knowledge? Aren’t some evils in some legitimate sense caused by People behaving badly because it benefits them
[01:48:05] Orange: Uh, well, we don’t have the knowledge to make them behave differently
[01:48:08] Green: Okay, that seems like a fair answer to
[01:48:11] Pink: that I would add that That’s what we said about the history of all mental health illnesses too, right until we figure out how to treat them So, uh, I totally agree with sam that it’s it’s a question of neuroscience and Pharmacological care and whatever future technology we have that improves upon the current tools we use
[01:48:32] Orange: I actually don’t agree with
[01:48:33] Pink: that. Oh, okay. Nice.
[01:48:35] Unknown: Nice.
[01:48:35] Pink: Uh, Please elaborate especially if I mischaracterize your your position
[01:48:39] Orange: Um, you know, I don’t necessarily I mean it could be what you said. I’m just I don’t necessarily have that in mind. For example, it could be that We are able to make people behave more productively by changing economic incentives That that would be one way in which we could change behavior like maybe the people who are now committing crimes would really prefer to set up businesses but it’s too hard for them specifically to set up a business because of red tape and We could Have fewer criminals if there were less red tape that that’s the kind of thing I had in mind when I Said that we we don’t know how to to change their behavior currently, but uh, that’s not to say I I disagree necessarily with what you said it’s But that’s not the thing I had in mind specifically
[01:49:26] Pink: Totally. Yeah fair point. Um, yeah, I believe there’s a role for improving economic incentives and also, um anti psychotics, for example Uh, yeah,
[01:49:35] Green: let me ask this question a little bit more straightforwardly though So the statement is all evils are caused by insufficient knowledge now in this case We can imagine that there are certain criminals that exist that are going to disappear as knowledge grows In fact, that seemed like a very reasonable thing to assume In terms of economics If nothing else our knowledge will increase on how to catch criminals And therefore there will be fewer criminals because the economic incentive eventually Asymptomically goes to zero. Okay But is that really the same as saying all evils are caused by insufficient knowledge?
[01:50:12] Purple: So there’s a there’s a way of analyzing it from the criminals perspective Which I think deutch would say then the the problem from the criminal perspective is That the criminal has insufficient ethical knowledge to understand That this action doesn’t make sense and um Does the
[01:50:34] Green: sense like let’s assume that the reason why crime exists is because it actually does make sense given That person’s actual current knowledge state that they live in
[01:50:44] Purple: but but deutch has made a claim that ethical principles actually impose um severe constraints so that if you were to behave in um unethically that it actually imposes a an a epistemological consequence on you that um is undesirable and so he made the the statement that if you were on a Desert island You will face, you know, you have resource constraints or whatever that you need to tackle You need to understand the the laws of nature so that you don’t do something Stupid in regard to the laws of nature You also need to understand ethical laws because you need to understand not to do something unethical so he’s Which I think is an interesting statement. I would love for him to explain more But he seems to feel that that there are actually ethical consequences that are immediate that uh that someone even in the absence of of other people would actually um experience
[01:51:52] Teal: and we say that he strongly believes from what I understand that um Ethics and and such also beauty are built in They are objective and their emergent properties of the laws of physics Yeah, I think that’s correct So from there it makes sense. I mean what he says about evils Being caused by a lack of knowledge because if knowledge were absolutely all discovered Then we can assume that Most ethics would have emerged or everything would have emerged and everything would be more Would be less criminal or less evil or maybe not in absolute terms, but since he strongly believes in that built in Nature of beauty built in nature of ethics. I think it makes sense
[01:52:53] Green: All right, peter go ahead and ask your questions
[01:52:56] Blue: Okay, actually, I’m just going to combine two of my questions into one here because I think they’re kind of interrelated Uh, first it’s it seems like deutch’s take on optimism is quite uh interwoven with his criticism of the precautionary principle Which I agree with but then I also there, you know have found in in life quite good to try to mitigate risk and to basically live a cautious Life what is the difference between being cautious and following the precautionary principle And two my other kind of I think I think interrelated question deutch’s ideas on optimism also Seem to be related to the idea that good guys or will most likely create knowledge faster than the bad guys How do we know that’s true? I mean, I think I think it probably is but it seems like something at least a lot of people have have doubts on and how How would you explain that to to someone?
[01:54:07] Pink: Yeah, well, I think the question about uh being cautious Uh, and how that compares to the precautionary principle is an interesting one and to me the big distinction is that um The precautionary principle basically encourages people not to try things Uh because the outcomes could be bad. So it’s best not to try it in the first place. Um And that’s very different than than trying something cautiously, right Uh, or or trying something knowing full well that what you’re about to do may have unintended consequences which you haven’t foreseen and therefore it’s best to make your change but do it dare I say incrementally and so I see the the significant difference between the precautionary principle and um, consciousness is like the Was it peter teal zero to one? um, the the big jump is whether or not you try in the first place and then Once you’ve made that step Then it’s I think very appropriate to try things um cautiously depending of course on what it is you’re trying and what the potential negative outcomes could be
[01:55:12] Brown: uh Deutch has repeatedly made the point. Um, I think most recently in the ai risk talk that um We know that stasis is bad If if we stay in the constant state eventually some unforeseen risk is going to get us. So he’s Always made the point that we need to race ahead and acquire as much knowledge and as much wealth um In terms of wealth being the ability to enact transforms and having the resources to do that, um As quickly as possible one of his go -to examples is uh The case of uranium in 1900 uranium was just a metal that people didn’t have very much useful Then it became an existential risk So then we decided to limit our use of it now co2 is the existential risk And we really should be using our uranium to mitigate the co2 risk. So we don’t know What we should not be doing. I mean, uh, what’s on the table at the moment is research in ai Which seems an even it’s like Seems the even more generic problem of banning the tire because someone might rob a bank in a car There is always going to be this question with the precautionary principle of What to slow down or what to ban? because Things are going to come at us out of uh left field so Unless we have an explanation a detailed explanation of why we should not do something Then we should assume that we should Continue to grow our knowledge So a good example would be gain of function Right, so should we engage in gain of function? Well, it would be great to learn about how viruses work But maybe we shouldn’t be doing it at biosafety level too.
[01:57:12] Brown: So if we know that we can’t convince everyone to Take adequate safety precautions, then we might have a moratorium on it if we can move into a regime where people Take adequate safety precautions then the knowledge would be very good to acquire I wonder
[01:57:31] Green: how That’s a really well stated. I’m really curious what other people think of what he just said so When I have been discussing things online with other yoyjin’s There’s definitely a really strong stance against the precautionary principle Although it seems like it we’re sometimes schizophrenic over what we mean by that um bill the way he just described that He is understanding it as it’s actually okay to put a moratorium on things in some circumstances just not forever Do other people have a problem with that or is that something that most of you would agree with?
[01:58:11] Teal: I think as long as The the break that you put is a rational decision Or at best as we know It’s a rationalist decision and not something that’s completely irrational as it is Most of the time that we can afford to take it slow knowing that deutch very much insists on speed so That’s how I understand it
[01:58:36] Pink: Yeah, I mean I have no problem with that obviously depends on what it is. We’re saying we should Put the moratorium On but yeah, I don’t know if like active research into improving chemical weapons would be a good thing um, for example, and I think you could easily view this as just a form of knowledge that certain areas of inquiry Uh, will more than likely lead to negative outcomes and therefore it makes sense To regulate them. Um, of course this can go too far and I’m not advocating We do this. I’m willy -nilly and I’m always much more in favor of of open exploration and research Etc, but I wouldn’t want to be Naively saying that every single thing That people choose to research will should inevitably Be allowed to proceed. I think it’s easy to come up with examples where we want to pull pull the brakes and so So I I see no problem with with with that and I also don’t see That it is inconsistent with deutch’s worldview. I think he would and I would just view that as a kind of institutional or cultural knowledge
[01:59:45] Blue: Okay, and how about how about the uh, why why are we so convinced that good guys are Wouldn’t good guys be more likely to follow the precautionary principle than bad guys
[01:59:57] Teal: I almost tempted when he says that the good guys Are are faster and increase their knowledge faster than the bad guys I’m I always want to tie back to the fun criterion in a way and Because those guys are bad guys. I think the way he describes it Sometimes our people are not in alignment with others. They’re not sufficiently aligned to get good collaboration access to resources access to whatever So it’s a bit like when he describes different criterion of being A state in which you’re explicit and explicit knowledge are in alignment That uh, no idea is supporting another your kind of state of flow It’s easy from there to maybe think which is a I don’t know. It’s not a very solid theory I think but it’s to think that bad guys May suffer from Various alignment problems that may be a handicap
[02:00:56] Purple: Thank you Yeah, I think that’s that’s the implicit um idea I was thinking about um Do I just toyed with the idea that um that ethics is about shutting down the growth of knowledge or Or or rather the inverse that that what is unethical is that which inhibits the growth of knowledge and uh tippler had a similar idea which was um something like evil is the the The violent suppression of ideas rather than to address them on the idea level something like that and So there is I think This Um concept that if you are an evil person um Then you are Inevitably at some level involved in suppressing ideas and so you are going to be suppressing the growth of knowledge and example that might be that um criminals need um if they need if they want to coordinate they need to actually have trust Among their their criminal organization And um and yet they are going to be acting in an untrustworthy way towards the uh larger society and so there has to be this disparity between the kinds of Ways they encourage ethical behavior internally versus uh the the kinds of ways they encourage ethical unethical behavior externally something like this And that disparity requires some kind of authoritarianism at some level some kind of way of shutting down um the spread of uh for example empathy between uh The people internally internal to your criminal organization and the people you’re robbing something like that So you’ve got to impede People’s ability to to grow in knowledge and particularly ethical knowledge And that is ultimately going to have knock -on consequences for your epistemology as a whole. I think that’s the idea there
[02:03:06] Pink: I have a question for the panel if uh if people aren’t running out of steam Yes, please So we’ve been talking a lot about optimism, but I’d love to talk about its uh ugly stepsisters pessimism and cynicism a little bit um And in particular i’m curious to know what people’s thoughts are in terms of what is the difference between pessimism and cynicism And a second question and one that i’m maybe slightly even more interested in is Uh, what’s the relationship between cynicism and skepticism? Because obviously skepticism is a good thing uh cynicism is a bad thing, but they seem um quite related And I think there’s a methodological component of this as well In the sense that if i’m uh talking or debating or conversing with somebody Um, and they’re asking all sorts of interesting skeptical questions. It’s a lot of fun Uh, but then if the conversation proceeds a little bit and then you realize that you’re actually talking to just A cynic who is going to hate on any answer you give and it doesn’t really even matter what you say because they’ll inevitably Find something wrong with it. Uh, that’s the point where I typically just step away from the conversation Um, but it’s hard to tell at first.
[02:04:20] Green: It’s so
[02:04:21] Pink: Yeah, so I’m curious what people’s uh either opinions are from a philosophical perspective or just a personal perspective telling the difference between um cynicism and skepticism and how these relates to uh pessimism and optimism overall
[02:04:35] Brown: I think uh I don’t really like the word skepticism because the connotation I think has evolved from more neutral to negative More in line with cynicism. I I think what’s important is To have a critical stance We want people who have a critical stance, but that means you’re engaged in a process and in a in a dialogue and a discussion whereas uh skepticism or cynicism is Basically standing on the sidelines and taking potshots something um And I’m reminded of dutch’s paper on experimental tests which highlights the point that you can Throw tomatoes. It’s someone’s theory, but if you don’t Show up with an alternative explanation.
[02:05:31] Teal: It’s
[02:05:32] Brown: all you’re doing. So, um criticisms are helpful and can accumulate and and lead us to have a list of new problems but um, it’s much less interesting and uh productive than someone showing up with an alternative That might lead to a clarification or synthesis
[02:05:59] Teal: Yes, uh, to me the difference between cynicism and optimism is that optimism is uh It can be seen as a as a moral duty more than anything else not like really like a perception or judgment call and what the situation is but as a As a moral duty as a way to behave yourself in the world really and um and cynicism is for me is the it’s just It’s just a flat line renouncement so That’s about how I see this cynicism. It’s just a A call to inaction basically
[02:06:36] Pink: Some people would regard skepticism as a moral duty as well. I’m thinking particularly of Michael Sherman’s skeptic magazine and um, I had my year and a half skeptic phase where I was quite critical of alternative medicines and stuff. Um skepticism Yes, but but cynicism. No. Yeah, nice.
[02:06:54] Green: So cynicism To me, this is kind of an epistemological difference So vaden you gave the example of the cynic how they’re not really fun to talk to whereas the skeptic Might be even though they might on the surface initially appear to be um no different So it comes down to um Is the person Actually trying to make progress solve problems. Are they trying to understand are they trying to under Stand or do they already have their mind made up about a certain Theory in this case for the cynic Maybe the theory is is that the whole world sucks and There’s just no way to get around that fact or something along those lines um Once you sort of detect that the person is not really that interested in the overall critical discussion They just want to be critical Because of whatever their underlying theory is that makes them want to be that way I think that’s the point where you start to realize. Uh, this isn’t that interesting
[02:07:58] Pink: So totally I just to add to that um the uh The answer that I kind of drew it for myself that I’m not totally sold on is that Both cynicism and skepticism they’re both critical But the cynic is deploying criticism as a means of destruction to destroy to unbuild to tear down Whereas the skeptic is using criticism as a tool of construction to try to poke holes Not to destroy the theory but to test its weak spots and hopefully try to Improve improve it exactly and it’s like you could see this distinction Manifest itself so clearly in the difference between um critical rationalism and critical studies completely different means of deploying criticism where the latter is just about Hating on every philosophy that’s not its own But I wouldn’t characterize critical rationalism that way, but yet they’re both deploying criticism just for for different means and different ends
[02:08:55] Blue: Well, here’s a here’s a related question. Why is Hesimism and cynicism so attractive To people, you know, at least where I live it seems like about 95 of the people I know think the world is going to end and We’re not any better off than our ancestors and You know progress is an illusion yada yada Like even scientists who you think a scientist would be the most likely to be Optimistic they’re all about solving problems and but oftentimes they’re the least optimistic they think that They’re conclusive that cynicism and pessimism are basically Supported by science at least that perception Is is is out there and and why is this why why is it so attractive?
[02:09:49] Teal: To me it takes a lot of effort to be an optimist a lot of effort a lot of learning a lot of thinking and I think Being pessimist is really
[02:10:00] Pink: like the lazy way Oh, yeah, I was gonna say my answer might irk some people in the audience. I don’t know but But I think evolutionary psychology gives a bit of a lens into this in the sense that The person who is Preparing for the worst all the time That like that obviously confers Evolutionary benefit is it’s obvious how that that would but the optimist it’s it’s less clear And so it does make sense that evolution would inculcate into us a pessimistic bent Which is overcomable, but it’s it’s difficult like I think it’s such a fascinating problem why pessimism and cynicism is kind of the default and it’s hard to be optimistic like it it could have been the case that Optimism was the default and it’s hard to be pessimistic But I think for evolutionary reasons it it wouldn’t have conferred as much survival benefit So that’s I know that evolution psychology isn’t a huge Area of interest for for many Deutschians or they think it’s flat out wrong But I do think it offers a lens into into that question.
[02:11:01] Green: So I think that Vedin’s answer is a as an answer at a certain level of explanation That One that’s talking about evolution But there’s got to be a more proximate explanation, right as to even if even if I’m accepting which by the way Vedin I do but even if I’m accepting evolutionary psychology in a case like this Um, you know, why is it at an individual level? People choose to be pessimistic Even if it’s their genes or evolution that primed them for that. They still have their own reasons
[02:11:36] Pink: But do you think they’re choosing? I don’t think it’s a choice I think it’s uh, it’s an outlook that they don’t even realize they have an alternative outlook available to them
[02:11:45] Green: So I think the word choice you can make it disappear depending on how you want to define it Even if you don’t want to define it as a choice There there’s something appealing about it that leads them there And one of the things that I’ve wondered about is it does seem like it makes a really pessimism makes a really easy meaning me Um, if you’re looking at Greta Thunberg, you know, is she getting something out of going around being a world -class pessimist? She absolutely is and that was why in my episode on religion I said, do you think she would take it as good news if somebody explained to her why We’re not actually in danger of having the world end from climate change. She wouldn’t right? There’s there’s some really Very obvious positive benefits. She’s getting out of her life. And I’m not just talking about Being famous or something like that. Although that might be the case Even if you’re a complete unknown you get certain positive benefits Emotionally inside over feeling like you are the hero that’s trying to stop this great apocalyptic from coming And I think that’s an easy appealing way to find meaning in one’s life
[02:12:53] Purple: So I I think there’s something both more proximate and kind of more pervasive Happening which is You know, if pessimism maybe is a response to sort of getting burned like you you try something and it maybe it backfires it Not not only fails, but actually like brings about worse consequences um Then then pessimism would be a kind of natural response and a sort of way of protecting yourself from getting hurt again right if if you try to Um climb up a hill and instead you fell down and broke a bone. Well now you’re going to be more pessimistic about your ability to climb hills and and maybe you develop a strong pessimism about that Um, and I think this has happened to our society um because uh going into the 20th century we had a lot of kind of philosophies of optimism and those philosophies were Kind of drove a lot of the the catastrophes of the 20th century though the war war wars and the cold war and so forth Seemed to be the consequences Of optimism. So I think for a lot of intellectual people a lot of people who’ve kind of reflected on that culturally um Pessimism is the way that we avoid those kinds of disasters and so I think um, yeah, I think uh from that kind of perspective optimism um Maybe a naive optimism, but a kind of optimism has a lot to answer um For a lot of people. I think that’s where um, you know large portions of our society are at Are you saying
[02:14:48] Orange: that that’s reasonable or that that’s just a description of where people are at?
[02:14:55] Purple: I’m just saying that’s a description. I think that’s how um It works in our culture to to a large extent. I I don’t think it’s reasonable But I think the reason it’s not reasonable is because we actually Have to tackle at a deeper way. What what kinds of optimism? Makes sense and and some of the optimism that we had going into the 20th century Was an irrational form of optimism that did need to be rejected. We just need to disentangle those things
[02:15:24] Pink: That there are a lot of say, um optimism charlatans on offer all of the self -help gurus and the um the various people that the decoding the gurus podcast takes down and so um to add to what micah just said like you could imagine someone who Is maybe pessimistic for a bit Uh, then has a change of heart and and reaches towards one of the many different forms of optimism on offer and then finds it’s rather vacuous and doesn’t Accomplish too much and then back to the disparaging pessimism, but not only that but it’s a Might leave someone with the impression that all optimisms are are Equally vacuous and so uh, so you just want to add that not all optimistic philosophies are Equal and so if they haven’t discovered uh, do it you’d optimism and just the The robust approach of doge and pauper They they may have uh founded optimism that doesn’t uh offer nearly as much
[02:16:25] Brown: Yeah On the other hand is to get back to the previous point that was made the idea that it’s somehow in one’s self interest to be More pessimistic because people can get something out of it. It the opposite also seems to hope where if you are the more optimistic uh kind of person then That can also be a great benefit to you for example economically I imagine that many people who founded companies were optimistic. So For me that argument doesn’t quite work like there’s something extra that that’s necessary there to explain the prevalence of of pessimism and I don’t I don’t quite know what it is. It’s it’s a little bit mysterious to me So to some extent it it has to do with the general anxiety people feel towards the enlightenment that that still seems to be a widespread Sentiments that people have that the it wouldn’t put it like that but at the heart of it there is some kind of resistance still to enlightenment institutions and Enlightenment thinking
[02:17:33] Pink: Yeah, that’s a really fascinating point and it made me realize that um like There are the Greta Thunbergs out there. Um for sure. Uh, let’s call them like radical pessimists But then I think there’s a lot of people For whom They’ll see an article about how climate change is destroying the world Or what have you and they won’t really read it. They won’t internalize it too much But they will maybe like it or reshared a little bit and it’s almost just like unconscious pessimism which In any one individual person you might not uh to be able to detect But you can detect it At a cultural or societal level based on what means tend to go viral quite rapidly through a a mean pool and That is a really deep and interesting question. Like why why do people have this like unconscious? passive form of pessimism which they might not even know they have it’s just more in what kinds of uh news they gravitate towards Or what kind of uh means they will uh recirculate without
[02:18:41] Green: There’s a performative aspect to it. Oh
[02:18:44] Pink: for sure. Absolutely. Great point. Yeah, great point
[02:18:46] Brown: I think uh that pessimism Is very directly related to What we’ve discussed, which is a lack of knowledge That the type of people who have a pessimistic mindset Or feel good in their pessimism Are using that as an comforting SAV over their lack of agency To change that state And so it’s comforting to them to take their own parochial problems and universalize that and say well The world is going to hell in a handbasket anyway This is the human condition This is the type of thing that hoffer wrote about in the true believer and The books that followed and uh was much discussed At mid -century by popper and others pranowski it’s Seems to be being rediscovered now 70 years later This whole discussion around what it mean. What is the psychological state that results in people’s? um desire for Uh a pessimistic outlook a nihilistic outlook or a collectivist outlook. They’re they’re trying to hide from themselves and so It is a problem. I think that we can cure by imparting knowledge to people and knowledge provides agency
[02:20:16] Pink: Uh bill your comments. Just maybe um reflect on the fact that there’s an interesting um parallel between optimism and action And pessimism and inaction so If you take a very extremely pessimistic outlook that the world is always out to get you Then what’s the point of trying to do anything right because you’ll always be thwarted Whereas if you take an optimistic outlook that Uh problems can be solved, but you actually have to go out there and do it Then that encourages is action and so you could even just imagine A population That differs only in their willingness to to act or not act and so people who are naturally lazy or Perhaps just don’t want to do very much might just gravitate towards a philosophy which Allows them to justify that and conversely those who attend to to start companies like sam said And go out there and actually try to improve Their position in the world in the world around them They may gravitate towards more of an optimistic mindset So I guess I just wanted to to make the point that it might not be philosophy first and then action second It might be like a person’s innate disposition to act or not act then leading to them Finding a philosophy which uh can can justify that
[02:21:39] Orange: It could be but it was partly just in the culture um My favorite example of this is if you have you seen the tinder swindler by chance Is that
[02:21:49] Pink: the the uh netflix documentary? Um, yes
[02:21:53] Orange: Again, did you say the end the tinder swindler? I always have a slightly hard time pronouncing it but I hope I pronounce it right there like a
[02:22:00] Pink: con man who uses tinder to con con people yes
[02:22:04] Orange: and uh, so spoiler warning for people haven’t seen it that there is a pardon in a documentary where this person is found out and he It there are news articles about him one of his victims Someone who thinks that he is her boyfriend reads one of these articles and then concludes that You know her her Boyfriend is actually trying to swim the world out of money and has already done so and in received something to the sum of a couple of Tens of thousands Of euros from her a person in question is dutch Uh, which is relevant later on um, what she decides to do is that she She has knowledge of retail. She used to work in retail and she knows that this guy has an enormous amount of Very expensive brand clothing Which she tries to get her hands on so she sticks with him throughout this whole ordeal Saying well, you know, you can still trust me the media is turning against you people finding out about or seem to be finding out about your past but obviously the line and then at some point he hands her These expensive clothes to sell so that he can still have some kind of cash income because obviously his His source of money has disappeared and The the nice thing about the this particular Kind of ingenious act of getting back the the money somehow is that At some point this woman says well, you know, how am I gonna swing lyr? Swing all the tindler swimwear and she actually is in this very creative mindset where she wants to go out and solve the problem and As I said, this person is dutch. I think that is an incredibly dutch thing to do.
[02:24:06] Orange: I have other kind of admittedly You could say they’re Here say stories about this kind of thing, but it strikes me as incredibly dutch thing and It’s something that seems to be in the culture that people want to go out and solve these kinds of problems Um, so that that’s another aspect of this. I mean again, I’m not sure if I have a complete theory of why these kinds of attitudes are part of the culture It it again, it could have something to do with the fact that the enlightenment That basically began in the Netherlands and that this has left traces in the culture till this day but yeah, there’s something about these philosophies how they spread and how people respond to them and respond to problems in general that is influenced by By their culture and by the extent to which their society has integrated the values of the enlightenment I have a quote
[02:25:08] Blue: from from dutch that I think relates to some of the some of what what’s been said here Uh, people seem to like the idea that they are living in a time of momentous challenge where the stakes are exactly like or analogous to what The stakes were in the second world war where it was good against evil Where if evil wins it is the end of civilization and therefore fighting against that is glorious and worthwhile It gives meaning to life and so the more you can talk in terms of these hyperboles the more life seems worthwhile It’s as if making rapid quiet peaceful progress Which is what’s actually going on all the time right now is not exciting enough for people when they are in political mode
[02:25:49] Green: It’s what I call meaning means. Yeah
[02:25:50] Blue: meaning means. Yeah, I call effective altruism
[02:25:56] Green: So it’s fired does anybody have any final thoughts
[02:26:00] Orange: I guess I’m still trying to think about your your thought experiment of what would happen if the piece of the sun hit the earth But I know you tell me if you you still want to go back there
[02:26:12] Green: Well, I I think that um That doesn’t really necessarily go against the concept. I mean that what that means is is that I’m that in that Circumstances it is against the laws of physics to be able to save humanity at that point because the knowledge necessary to do so it exists outside the time frame that is possible under assembly theory to to create the knowledge in time um, I doesn’t necessarily I don’t necessarily see that as Meaning that the principal optimism isn’t true or even that all problems are soluble What the right caveats isn’t true The question that I that I guess I would have is Does this make it maybe dangerously close to a tautology? And if not why not and and I feel like we kind of answered that question Like it didn’t come out as a direct answer But like if I go back and I think about what people were saying There’s clearly more to it than a mere tautology, right? And so but I think there’s it’s difficult to nuance it it’s difficult to explain Why is this not just a tautology?
[02:27:23] Pink: one comment on that Is that it’s important to recognize in this? I think everyone on this panel will will agree that Deutche’s principle of optimism is not a scientific claim. It’s not falsifiable. It’s a it’s a metaphysical claim, right? And so when sam harris points out these Examples, uh, he’s kind of trying to like highlight That this principle Can’t really be falsified But that’s okay because it’s not trying to make a falsifiable prediction. It’s a metaphysical lens and under that rubric you you want to analyze it in terms of Does this lens give you new insights into problems? Does it allow you to uh to make progress? How does it compare to other forms of? Metaphysical principles. Does it have any internal contradictions these kinds of analyses? And so I think part of sam harris’s critique is he’s looking at it as a scientific principle And trying to show that it’s not falsifiable when it’s not pretending to be a scientific principle And we all know it’s not falsifiable and we need to analyze it using a different toolkit
[02:28:25] Orange: But that would this that would contradict what we said earlier. Namely that the heat depth of the universe would be Something that contradicts the principle of optimism.
[02:28:34] Pink: Well, I didn’t say that earlier in fact I said that that wouldn’t contradict the principle because the principle acknowledges that you can have A lot of physics which cause cause harm, right? So I don’t think that contradicts the uh, the principle
[02:28:46] Orange: Yeah, I think it contradicts I mean, there’s so again, there’s different phrasings of the principle of optimism But the the important thing in my mind anyway is that scientific progress It doesn’t have anything which is a fundamental
[02:29:01] Green: Yeah,
[02:29:01] Orange: hindrance. There are no bounds on scientific progress This
[02:29:05] Green: is exactly why I actually asked about to have this panel It’s because I think it does come down to how you actually formulate them and I was trying to figure out what is the best formulation
[02:29:15] Orange: I the thing I care about is are there bounds in scientific progress and if the heat depth of the universe were True if there were true theory Then there would be So so in that sense it would be the reputational optimism at least how I understand it So there are there is a sense in which it’s related to physics and It would be Yeah, so it would be testable in that sense
[02:29:45] Green: So and then consider that the principle of optimism as deutch Is doing it not necessarily how vaden’s doing it vaden has an interesting take here I’m not trying to downplay that but he he calls it all evils are caused by insufficient knowledge Well, if heat death if we’re starting with the assumption heat deaths true That’s an evil that is not caused by insufficient knowledge So I would say that it does violate the way deutch understands the principle of optimism now vaden saying You could rephrase it a little bit and maybe it’s not as bad as it first appears and that’s kind of a fair point vaden
[02:30:19] Pink: Well, so just to make it clear. So I’m not the one doing the rephrasing I’m referring to the first paragraph of the article that peter shared where He talks about the principle of optimism And then to clarify he says two sentences later that he argues as no limitation on knowledge growth except for laws of nature Yes,
[02:30:37] Green: that is not violated. You’re right.
[02:30:39] Pink: Yeah, so so if you are allowed to say that a law of nature But there exists a law of nature that say causes everyone to suffer Then that would be consistent with what I take his argument to be but but I take sam’s point That he also in beginning of infinity defines the principle of optimism isolated from his later statements about Limits to knowledge growth, but it seems like we want to be careful not to just Blithely assume that all laws of nature are going to Be favorable for us, right? Which is kind of what he’s verging on Because if you’re going to say other than the laws of nature You have to bite the bullet that there could be a law of nature that we really wish we didn’t Discover but that possibility is there through baby.
[02:31:21] Green: I agree. Yeah
[02:31:23] Orange: Yeah, well, it’s so I think That would still be allowed it could still be that you know, there’s a law of physics which says that every Tuesday morning we all get a Good kicking or something um As long as it doesn’t impose bounds on the growth of knowledge so that would be a law of physics a very weird one and It’s unclear why I’m proposing it But let’s say that it is a law if this particular law Of everyone is physically assaulted on Tuesday morning Doesn’t impose bounds the way that the heat death of the universe does
[02:32:00] Green: So let me go back to answering sam’s question to me So I’m understanding the principle of optimism in the sense of all evils are caused by insufficient knowledge And I’m relating that to all problems are soluble secondarily, uh, but accepting vaden’s point here The fact that the sun it’s in some part of the multiverse is about to break off and kill us all That is an evil that is not caused by insufficient knowledge In a sense, right? But I don’t feel like that’s really what was intended because we could in theory get to the point where our knowledge Would allow us to deflect even the sun so It’s this is not the same as heat death In this case where heat death is actually a hard limit by the laws of physics That you cannot overcome with any amount of knowledge that you can actually generate because it’s actually placing a limit on the amount of knowledge You could generate So I do see this as different, right? There’s there’s a legitimate point here Like it would be easy to understand the principle of optimism as saying That that the sun will never kick A piece of itself out out at us and we will die Okay, that would be a false understanding of the principle of optimism or it’s easy to imagine you know Taking it as uh It means that there can be no such thing as heat death or something along those lines. There’s different ways to interpret it But they’re not all the same and they have different implications and some of them are probably true Interpretations some of them are probably false interpretations
[02:33:35] Orange: Yes, yeah, the way that I understood your question is basically that there are these kinds of things like Basically random events such as the sun kicking out a piece of itself that hurdles towards the earth and then kills everyone That are all happening constantly Another would be there’s a supernova going off That we can’t see coming until it’s already too late It’s like mere seconds away and then the supernova has his hit us And that these things are going on constantly seems like a thing which we cannot prevent in principle that it’s not Possible to make Completely sure There’s no event either known or not or unknown that doesn’t end us end up killing us And that this is somehow an impediment to the growth of knowledge.
[02:34:23] Pink: Yeah trivial example, but I’m curious because we have A physicist on the panel, but isn’t it the case that we could discover Some supermassive black hole That we are within the event horizon of it’s just far enough a way that we haven’t noticed it And if that’s the case Then there is no escaping that fact. Is that A possible discovery we could make
[02:34:46] Orange: oh, I think that’s possible Although I imagine that we would see significant What is the deformation around the black hole so you know the black hole kind of warps The space around it and that’s that’s one of the ways in which we could notice it I imagine, but
[02:35:04] Red: you know, it’s A
[02:35:07] Orange: supernova is bad enough Supernova is it could definitely happen And we really couldn’t see it coming because the particles are heading towards us at 99.9 percent the speed of light so we could only see it mere seconds or something like that before The explosion kills us all
[02:35:25] Green: so let me restate What I was trying to get at one more time here is I feel like I maybe I’ve been a little bit too sloppy in saying it Something like heat death is a hard if it were true It it places an actual Limit on the growth of knowledge and knowledge could cannot save you from it But that is not true for the sun kicking itself at you. Yes, it’s true that in that case that part of the multiverse is going to die but it doesn’t really change the fact that We can use knowledge to stop the sun from killing us Okay, so there’s there’s something interesting there still being said by the theory Even if you accept that in that case that part of the multiverse is going to die Whereas if you’re accepting heat death, it’s you’re no longer saying something interesting
[02:36:13] Orange: The problem that you’re addressing is or the thing that you’re criticizing here could be That all problems are soluble because you have an instance of a problem that seems to not be soluble but And that was the stronger version I had in mind that their growth of knowledge is still safeguarded but the It does seem like there are certain problems which we cannot solve On the flip side of that these events are very very rare. So they will Effect some of our instances in the multiverse, but not all of them.
[02:36:46] Green: Yeah,
[02:36:46] Orange: and so Even though they kill some of us some of the time they leave most of us most of our versions of us I should say alive and Yeah, that I think that’s part of the solution here that it’s not a problem that we can solve With a hundred percent certainty we can never be sure that you know, the supernova isn’t going to hit us But those events are somewhat random and unlikely to happen. So they will leave most of the versions of us alive
[02:37:21] Green: By the way, greg egan’s book diaspora that I mentioned before is specifically about the supernova event So one of the things that he’s making the point is that you can survive such an event if you have the right knowledge
[02:37:35] Brown: I was just wondering whether we might be able to cleave off this question of the heat death of whether knowledge can grow indefinitely or it has some very large but finite limit from The moral or ethical or methodological principle of optimism that they didn’t seem to lay out earlier, which is we try to solve problems until we find out either find a solution which seems to me is a question of purpose that conscious creatures can have regardless of whether the universe comes to an end or not and I could I could play a video game that allows for a potentially infinite score or I could Have knowledge that there’s a finite score. That’s very very difficult to reach I might still explore that video game endlessly and learn new things and Delight in it and find purpose in it Even though it’s finite So I’m I’m wondering if we could separate those two things and think of the principle of optimism perhaps in a strong form and a weak form the strong form being what sam was saying that You know it cuts off the infinite growth of knowledge But the weak form would be the methodological principle that We try to solve problems.
[02:39:03] Green: I could accept that that makes sense. Yeah
[02:39:06] Pink: Yeah, I love that and I’ve only ever really interpreted the principle of optimism in the the latter sense But maybe it’s because The difference between actual infinity and a number that’s so large. I’m never going to reach it doesn’t make a big Difference in my life too much But but I take your point that if you’re if you’re interested in the stronger problem Like is it actually infinite or not then that that? The latter question obviously matters quite a lot. So
[02:39:34] Orange: I like your decision
[02:39:35] Pink: quite a bit then bill
[02:39:36] Orange: Yeah, just just to give a brief argument for why you should care in that case. Oh, nice. Yeah, it’s that As we said before it would mean that some parts of the universe will forever be unexplainable that Uh, there will be problems which will never be solved which can never be solved and that Directly implies that there’s some aspects of the universe cannot be known by anyone so That’s Reintroducing the supernatural.
[02:40:06] Pink: No, no, I don’t think it is at all. I think it’s much more analogous to the resolution of the question. How do we Make the square root of two rational Well, the way we solve that problem Is to recognize that there’s not a solution and a solution is impossible Uh, and that’s the solution and then we move on to something something else. So I don’t think it’s a supernatural I think it’s just accepting what we accept in other other domains that sometimes the solution to a problem is an impossibility result And you have to take the solution in whatever form it manifests itself I think it’s very different than making a claim about supernatural Because if we do make that claim in the case of say the heat death if that’s shown to be true Then that’s a physical principle. That’s the analogous result to the proof of the irrationality of the square root of two
[02:40:54] Brown: Sam I won’t say I agree with you, but I’m wondering if This is of a kind with the problem of The methodological problem in critical rationalism of Ruling out All logical possible theories and only looking at those that are actually on the on the pitch as it were Yes, there will be Things that will never be explained But are those the problems that we’re trying to solve and It seems to me that the heat death of the universe doesn’t rule out Solving the actual problems that we’re trying to solve now Even though there will be an infinity of problems that we will never solve
[02:41:38] Orange: Yeah, I think it would clash with the way that we understand philosophy of science because philosophy science Works because it doesn’t have an end. It’s a cycle and if you say at some point The cycle has to stop just because The universe comes to an end Then that clashes with the way that we understand philosophy of science I
[02:42:00] Green: agree with sam on this for what it’s worth I think that the way deutch actually explains his theories in his books There is absolutely an assumption of infinity going on But that’s why he calls it beginning of infinity So I think that at least the way he is formulating his philosophies That there is absolutely the assumption of infinity and heat death would be counter to that
[02:42:23] Teal: Yeah, I just wanted to tie back to the speed question I guess because to me it’s it’s always very present in whatever he’s saying About optimism is that If we can solve for instance if heat death were to happen This is not something that we can solve and that that will happen no matter what we do But anything happening in the interval that could terminate us Could be solvable if we acquire knowledge fast enough And so that’s that’s where I come back to the to the speed where Um, he we always insist on on this where we need to maximize The speed at which we discover knowledge because otherwise we might be extinguished Long before heat death.
[02:43:06] Green: All right any final thoughts before we end this
[02:43:10] Pink: Only that we should do more panels because this was a lot of fun.
[02:43:13] Green: Yeah, it was fun.
[02:43:14] Pink: Yes, it’s great and we’re here
[02:43:16] Green: we probably will do more panels because Um, this was really helpful to hear other people’s opinions on what I saw as a really important but somewhat difficult to understand set of concepts and getting other people’s insights has been very helpful to me
[02:43:32] Pink: Yeah, it’s it’s really interesting to see how The the subtle differences and how Uh, we think about things that the dutch has written and you can gain a lot from just teasing out the subtle subtleties There so that’s great.
[02:43:44] Green: Thank you everybody for joining us And it’s been a pleasure.
[02:43:49] Blue: Thank you so much everyone. That was wonderful. Thank you. Thank you. Bye. Thank you. Have a great day
[02:43:55] Green: Hey,
[02:43:56] Blue: likewise
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