The author of the review is an interesting guy. After reading the review I attempted to find some recent publications, but I couldn't. The best I could find is this Blogging Heads TV discussion<http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/13487>between him and Sean Carroll recorded 3 years ago. It's worth watching. If you watch it at 1.4 speed, Albert sounds like he is talking at a normal pace, but Carroll sounds quite speeded up.
*-- Russ Abbott* *_____________________________________________* *** Professor, Computer Science* * California State University, Los Angeles* * Google voice: 747-*999-5105 * blog: *http://russabbott.blogspot.com/ vita: http://sites.google.com/site/russabbott/ *_____________________________________________* On Sun, Aug 14, 2011 at 11:42 AM, Rich Murray <[email protected]> wrote: > The Beginning of Infinity, Explanations That Transform the World, > David Deutsch, NYT review, David Albert: Rich Murray 2011.08.14 > > > > http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/14/books/review/the-beginning-of-infinity-by-david-deutsch-book-review.html?_r=2&ref=science > > Reprints > This copy is for your personal, noncommercial use only. > You can order presentation-ready copies for distribution to your > colleagues, clients or customers here or use the "Reprints" tool that > appears next to any article. > Visit www.nytreprints.com for samples and additional information. > Order a reprint of this article now. > > August 12, 2011 > Explaining it All: How We Became the Center of the Universe > By DAVID ALBERT > > THE BEGINNING OF INFINITY > Explanations That Transform the World > By David Deutsch > [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Deutsch ] > Illustrated. 487 pp. Viking. $30. > > David Deutsch’s “Beginning of Infinity” is a brilliant and > exhilarating and profoundly eccentric book. It’s about everything: > art, science, philosophy, history, politics, evil, death, the future, > infinity, bugs, thumbs, what have you. And the business of giving it > anything like the attention it deserves, in the small space allotted > here, is out of the question. But I will do what I can. > > It hardly seems worth saying (to begin with) that the chutzpah of this > guy is almost beyond belief, and that any book with these sorts of > ambitions is necessarily, in some overall sense, a failure, or a > fraud, or a joke, or madness. But Deutsch (who is famous, among other > reasons, for his pioneering contributions to the field of quantum > computation) is so smart, and so strange, and so creative, and so > inexhaustibly curious, and so vividly intellectually alive, that it is > a distinct privilege, notwithstanding everything, to spend time in his > head. He writes as if what he is giving us amounts to a tight, grand, > cumulative system of ideas -- something of almost mathematical rigor > -- but the reader will do much better to approach this book with the > assurance that nothing like that actually turns out to be the case. I > like to think of it as more akin to great, wide, learned, meandering > conversation -- something that belongs to the genre of, say, Robert > Burton’s “Anatomy of Melancholy” -- never dull, often startling and > fantastic and beautiful, often at odds with itself, sometimes > distasteful, sometimes unintentionally hilarious, sometimes (even, > maybe, secondarily) true. > > The thought to which Deutsch’s conversation most often returns is that > the European Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries, or > something like it, may turn out to have been the pivotal event not > merely of the history of the West, or of human beings, or of the > earth, but (literally, physically) of the universe as a whole. > > Here’s the sort of thing he has in mind: The topographical shape and > the material constitution of the upper surface of the island of > Manhattan, as it exists today, is much less a matter of geology than > it is of economics and politics and human psychology. The effects of > geological forces were trumped (you might say) by other forces -- > forces that proved themselves, in the fullness of time, physically > stronger. Deutsch thinks the same thing must in the long run be true > of the universe as a whole. Stuff like gravitation and dark energy are > the sorts of things that determine the shape of the cosmos only in its > earliest, and most parochial, and least interesting stages. The rest > is going to be a matter of our own intentional doing, or at any rate > it’s going to be a matter of the intentional doings of what Deutsch > calls “people,” by which he means not only human beings, and not all > human beings, but whatever creatures, from whatever planets, in > whatever circumstances, may have managed to absorb the lessons of the > Scientific Revolution. > > There is a famous collection of arguments from the pioneering days of > computer science to the effect that any device able to carry out every > one of the entries on a certain relatively short list of elementary > logical operations could, in some finite number of steps, calculate > the value of any mathematical function that is calculable at all. > Devices like that are called “universal computers.” And what interests > Deutsch about these arguments is that they imply that there is a > certain definite point, a certain definite moment, in the course of > acquiring the capacity to perform more and more of the operations on > that list, when such a machine will abruptly become as good a > calculator as anything, in principle, can be. > > Deutsch thinks that such “jumps to universality” must occur not only > in the capacity to calculate things, but also in the capacity to > understand things, and in the closely related capacity to make things > happen. And he thinks that it was precisely such a threshold that was > crossed with the invention of the scientific method. There were plenty > of things we humans could do, of course, prior to the invention of > that method: agriculture, or the domestication of animals, or the > design of sundials, or the construction of pyramids. But all of a > sudden, with the introduction of that particular habit of concocting > and evaluating new hypotheses, there was a sense in which we could do > anything. The capacities of a community that has mastered that method > to survive, and to learn, and to remake the world according to its > inclinations, are (in the long run) literally, mathematically, > infinite. And Deutsch is convinced that the tendency of the world to > give rise to such communities, more than, say, the force of > gravitation, or the second law of thermodynamics, or even the > phenomenon of death, is what ultimately gives the world its shape, and > what constitutes the genuine essence of nature. “In all cases,” he > writes, “the class of transformations that could happen spontaneously > -- in the absence of knowledge -- is negligibly small compared with > the class that could be effected artificially by intelligent beings > who wanted those transformations to happen. So the explanations of > almost all physically possible phenomena are about how knowledge would > be applied to bring those phenomena about.” And there is a beautiful > and almost mystical irony in all this: that it was precisely by means > of the Scientific Revolution, it was precisely by means of accepting > that we are not the center of the universe, that we became the center > of the universe. > > This is all definitely incredibly cool. But I have no idea how one > might go about investigating whether it is true or false. It seems > more to the point to think of it as something emotive -- as the > expression of a mood. An incredibly cool mood. A mood that (maybe) no > human being could ever have been in before right now. A mood informed > by profound and imaginative reflection on the best and most advanced > science we have. But not exactly, not even remotely, a live scientific > hypothesis. > > Anyway, it’s that mood, or conceit, or whatever it is, that gives “The > Beginning of Infinity” its name. But a lot of the meat of this book is > in its digressions. And of those (alas) I can only, hastily, randomly, > mention a few. > > Deutsch is interested in neo-Darwinian accounts of the evolution of > culture. Such accounts treat cultural items -- languages, religions, > values, ideas, traditions -- in much the way that Darwinian theories > of biological evolution treat genes. They are called “memes,” and are > treated as evolving, just as genes do, by mutation and selection, with > the most successful memes being those that are the most faithfully > replicated. Deutsch writes with enormous clarity and insight about how > the mechanisms of mutation and transmission and selection of memes are > going to have to differ, in all sorts of ways, from those of genes. > > He also provides an elegant analysis of two particular strategies for > meme-replication, one he calls “rational” and the other he calls > “anti-rational.” Rational memes -- the sort that Deutsch imagines will > replicate themselves well in post-Enlightenment societies -- are > simply good ideas: the kind that will survive rigorous scientific > scrutiny, the kind that will somehow make life easier or safer or more > rewarding because they tell us something useful about how the world > actually works. Irrational memes -- which are more interesting, and > more diabolical, and which Deutsch thinks of as summing up the > essential character of pre-Enlightenment societies -- reproduce > themselves by disabling the capacities of their hosts (by means of > fear, or an anxiety to conform, or the appearance of naturalness and > inevitability, or in any number of other ways) to evaluate or invent > new ideas. And one particular subcategory of memes -- about which > Deutsch has very clever things to say -- succeeds precisely by > pretending not to tell the truth. So, for example: “Children who asked > why they were required to enact onerous behaviors that did not seem > functional would be told ‘because I say so,’ and in due course they > would give their children the same reply to the same question, never > realizing that they were giving the full explanation. (This is a > curious type of meme whose explicit content is true even though its > holders do not believe it.)” > > Another chapter is devoted entirely to the evolution of creativity. At > first glance, the ability to come up with new and better ways of doing > things would appear to confer an obvious survival advantage. But if > that’s how it worked -- or so Deutsch argues -- then the > archaeological record ought to contain evidence of the accumulation of > such better ways of doing things that are contemporaneous with the > time when the human brain was actually in the process of evolving. And > it doesn’t, which would seem to amount to a puzzle. Deutsch has a cute > proposal for solving it. The thought is that the business of merely > passing on complicated memes, without any thought of innovation, > requires considerable creativity on the part of their recipients. > Learning a language, for instance, is a matter of inferring, from a > small number of examples, a collection of general rules, each with a > potentially infinite number of applications, governing the uses of the > words involved. In Deutsch’s view, the work of keeping such complex > memes in place, from generation to generation, is no less a creative > business than the work of improving them. > > This, as I said, is cute, and typical of the dexterity of Deutsch’s > mind, but it’s hard to know how seriously to take it. Wouldn’t it be a > reproductive advantage to have a heritable capacity to think on your > feet, and outside the box, in a sticky situation, whether or not any > particular thought you have ends up getting preserved, and passed down > to your children, and enshrined in the practice of a whole society? > And isn’t it possible that creativity was never selected for at all, > but arose as a byproduct of the selection of something else? As to the > business of learning a language -- well, gosh, haven’t linguists been > thinking about these sorts of questions very hard, and very > systematically, and along very different lines, for decades now? If > Deutsch has reasons for thinking that all of that is somehow on the > wrong track, he ought to tell us what those reasons are. As it is, > none of that gets so much as a mention in his book. > > And there are, in some places, explicit and outrageous falsehoods. > Deutsch insists again and again, for example, that the only > explanation we have for the observed behaviors of subatomic particles > is a famous idea of Hugh Everett’s to the effect that the universe of > our experience is one of an infinite and endlessly branching > collection of similar universes -- and that what resistance there is > to this idea is attributable to the influence of this or that fancy, > misguided philosophical critique of good, solid, old-fashioned > realistic attitudes toward what scientific theories have to tell us > about the world. This is simply, wildly, wrong. Most of the good, > solid, old-fashioned scientific realists who take an interest in > questions of the foundations of physics -- like me, for example -- are > deeply skeptical of Everett’s picture. And that’s because there are > good reasons to be worried that Everett’s picture cannot, in fact, > explain those behaviors at all -- and because there are other, much > more reasonable-looking proposals on the table, that apparently can. > > Deutsch’s enthusiasm for the scientific and technological > transformation of the totality of existence naturally brings with it a > radical impatience with the pieties of environmentalism, and cultural > relativism, and even procedural democracy -- and this is sometimes > exhilarating and sometimes creepy. He attacks these pieties, with > spectacular clarity and intelligence, as small-minded and cowardly > and boring. The metaphor of the earth as a spaceship or life-support > system, he writes, “is quite perverse. . . . To the extent that we are > on a ‘spaceship,’ we have never merely been its passengers, nor (as is > often said) its stewards, nor even its maintenance crew: we are its > designers and builders. Before the designs created by humans, it was > not a vehicle, but only a heap of dangerous raw materials.” But it’s > hard to get to the end of this book without feeling that Deutsch is > too little moved by actual contemporary human suffering. What moves > him is the grand Darwinian competition among ideas. What he adores, > what he is convinced contains the salvation of the world, is, in every > sense of the word, The Market. > > And there are moments when you just can’t imagine what the deal is > with this guy. Deutsch -- notwithstanding his open and > anti-authoritarian and altogether admirable ideology of inquiry -- is > positively bubbling over with inviolable principles: that everything > is explicable, that materialist interpretations of history are morally > wrong, that “the only uniquely significant thing about humans . . . is > our ability to create new explanations,” and on and on. And if the > reader turns to Pages 64 and 65, she will find illustrations depicting > two of them, literally, carved in stone. I swear. > > Never mind. He is exactly who he is, and he is well worth getting to > know, and we are very lucky indeed to have him. > > David Albert is a professor of philosophy at Columbia and the author > of “Quantum Mechanics and Experience.” > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org >
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
