PDF Summary:The Beginning of Infinity, by David Deutsch

The Beginning of Infinity is a counterargument to the belief—advanced by numerous scientists and philosophers throughout history—that there is a finite amount of knowledge in the universe. Theoretical physicist David Deutsch rejects the idea that humanity will someday know everything there is to know, and he explains why this belief is not only wrong, but harmful.

Deutsch argues instead that there’s no limit to knowledge, because rather than simply “finding” it, we constantly create it through questions, studies, and calculations. And because there’s no limit to the knowledge we can create, there’s no limit to how much we can improve the world.

In this guide, we’ll provide background information and real-world applications to support Deutsch’s more complicated ideas, and we’ll compare his theories to those of other scientists and disciplines.

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People Create Knowledge

One of Deutsch’s main problems with empiricism—the idea that we acquire knowledge through experience—is that it implies we’re essentially blank slates waiting for the universe to imprint knowledge on us through our experiences. In contrast, Deutsch believes that the ability to actively create knowledge through reasoning, extrapolation, and experimentation is what makes us people.

Similar to the “blank slate” belief, some people think the entire world was created for our benefit; in other words, that all life on Earth exists simply to support humanity. Deutsch rejects this idea as well, saying we support ourselves by creating knowledge. In other words, people create knowledge in order to solve problems—ranging from how to support an ever-growing population to how we can explore other planets.

What Is a Person?

In everyday conversation, most people use “person” interchangeably with “human.” However, in law and the social sciences, exactly what defines a person is an ongoing discussion with far-reaching implications.

Deutsch’s proposed definition of a person being a knowledge-creating entity is open to interpretation, and potentially problematic no matter how it’s interpreted. For example, if we take it to mean that a person is any individual who’s capable of learning, then many nonhuman beings (and even some advanced computers) could be considered people.

If, instead, we interpret it to mean that only someone who can add to humanity’s overall knowledge is a person, that would leave out people who lack the skills or education to make new discoveries.

Overall, it would be best to remember that Deutsch is neither a legal expert nor a sociologist, and to take his definition of “person” with a grain of salt.

Learning Mimics Evolution

Interestingly, although people create knowledge intentionally while evolution happens naturally, Deutsch says that the two processes have a number of things in common:

• Successful ideas and successful genes both reproduce, by definition.

(Shortform note: In biology, a “successful” gene is one that helps its host organism survive and reproduce, thereby passing itself on to the next generation. Deutsch is echoing that definition in his discussion of successful ideas—they’re ideas that survive and pass from person to person through conversation, media, and imitation.)

• Successful ideas and successful genes both emerge from fierce competition, while their unsuccessful competitors die off.

(Shortform note: Both organisms and ideas have to compete for limited resources—however, in the case of ideas, the resources are people’s time and attention. Just like animals die if they don’t get enough food, ideas die if nobody talks about them.)

• Good ideas and good evolutionary adaptations are both hard to change without ruining them (think back to trying to change the theory of gravity without making it worthless).

(Shortform note: For an example of how changing an evolutionary adaptation can prevent it from working properly, consider the genetic disease cystic fibrosis (CF). In CF, a mutation to a single gene makes it so the body can’t properly regulate flows of salt and fluids throughout your body. This leads to the buildup of thick, sticky mucus in the lungs, which (if not treated) eventually proves fatal. In other words, slightly changing a bodily process makes it not work correctly, thereby killing the person.)

• Knowledge and evolution both create “good enough” solutions. In other words, neither knowledge nor biology can ever be perfect—instead, we have adaptations and theories that function in the current environment, and that may not survive when the environment changes.

How Did Religion Evolve?

Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins first discussed the similarities between genes and ideas in his book The Selfish Gene. In fact, that book is where the word “meme” originated, though the definition was quite different from the modern one: Dawkins defined a meme as a piece of information that spreads from one organism to another through imitation—for instance, some birds’ songs spread because nearby birds mimic the songs they hear.

As an example of a successful meme, Dawkins discusses the idea of gods. Belief in a higher power has existed in some form throughout almost all of human history, making it one of the most successful memes ever—though, admittedly, a lot of the time people imitated others’ beliefs under threat of violence. As a biologist, Dawkins says that it’s tempting to talk about memes in evolutionary terms; to ask, “How does believing in God help one to survive and reproduce?” Perhaps simply because it’s comforting to think something more powerful than ourselves is in control of the universe.

However, Dawkins also says that belief in God might just be a side effect of how our brains developed: As we look for patterns and explanations in what we observe, “God did it” presents an easy and satisfying answer. Remember, as Deutsch says, neither genes nor memes create perfect solutions, only solutions that are good enough for the present circumstances.

Cultures Co-evolve With Memes

Deutsch adds that cultures consist of ideas that people share—in other words, cultures are built on successful memes (using the original meaning of “meme,” as Dawkins defined it). Deutsch identifies two different types of memes, and the cultures that come from them:

Rational memes are beneficial, based in knowledge, and encourage people to continue building knowledge. For example, the theory of gravity is a rational meme: It’s based on our current best understanding of reality, and it replicates because we keep teaching new generations about gravity. Rational memes create dynamic cultures, which change and evolve as the memes within them do.

Anti-rational memes suppress thought and creativity. They replicate via blind devotion and intolerance for questions or doubts. Anti-rational memes lead to static cultures, which maintain stability by never allowing anything to change. For example, many orthodox religious sects are static cultures: All members must believe the same things and perform the same rituals, generation after generation. Deutsch adds that static cultures are doomed to collapse sooner or later; their inability to create new knowledge means that they can’t respond to unforeseen dangers, and eventually one such danger or another will destroy them.

Why Static Cultures Are Fragile

In Antifragile, mathematician Nassim Nicholas Taleb explains why some things break after being damaged while other things become stronger:

• Fragile systems are rigid and unable to change. As a result, no matter how strong those systems are, sooner or later they’ll break. Almost any nonliving object is fragile, whether it’s as easily broken as a pane of glass or as durable as a car engine.

• Antifragile systems can change and adapt, not just recovering from damage but actually becoming stronger from it. The classic example of an antifragile system is a muscle: Exercise damages the muscle, which becomes stronger after repairing itself.

In the case of static versus dynamic cultures, we’d say that static cultures (born from unchanging anti-rational memes) are fragile. They refuse to adapt to change, and thus they’re bound to break eventually. For example, a culture that tried to continue as normal in the face of a deadly plague might end up being destroyed by it.

However, dynamic cultures (born from evolving rational memes) are antifragile. They adapt to stressors and become stronger from learning how to cope with them. If faced with that same deadly plague, a dynamic culture would learn how to avoid and treat that disease; then, going forward, that culture would have improved hygienic and medical techniques to keep its people healthy.

Group Decisions Are Fatally Flawed

On the topic of static versus dynamic cultures—and specifically, how those cultures are run—Deutsch says that many people have a flawed view of how to make a good decision. In short, it’s a mistake to think about choosing the “best” option from a preset list of choices by weighing the pros and cons of each. Instead, truly effective decision-making requires creating new options that didn’t exist before.

Furthermore, since making good decisions requires new and creative solutions, Deutsch adds that group decision-making is fatally flawed by nature. That’s because, when a group of people must make a decision, it inevitably starts with arguments about “pros and cons,” of existing ideas, and ends with the group choosing one option off of a short list. Generally, it’s the option that the most people in that group can be convinced to accept. It’s an inefficient, irrational, and imprecise process.

(Shortform note: What Deutsch is getting at in this section is that group intelligence often seems to be less than the sum of its parts—that no matter how many brilliant and creative people are in a group, they work against each other and can’t bring out their full potential. One of the reasons why groups that are made up of creative individuals struggle to be creative collectively is due to a lack of friction. For new ideas to emerge, there needs to be differing viewpoints and passions that butt up against one another and spark, so to speak. Once a group begins working “collaboratively,” agreeing with one another, the sparks subside.)

Deutsch’s solution is that decision-making bodies—for example, governments—should be primarily concerned with two things:

1. Making it easy to overturn bad decisions in favor of new ideas
2. Making it easy to replace group members who perform poorly

A group that can easily fix its mistakes with new ideas, and easily replace people who make bad decisions, is as good as group decision-making is going to get. A group that adheres to those two principles will be able to constantly evolve as ideas and culture do, and to make decisions reflecting that evolution.

Learning Requires Creativity

Deutsch proposes that humans evolved the ability to be creative so that we could share memes (again, in the original sense of “meme”). Essentially, he says that we need creativity to solve problems, and to share what we’ve learned with others. Remember that Deutsch’s definition of a person is a being who creates knowledge. Therefore, in a very real sense, we need creativity in order to be people.

The Impact of Creativity

Whether creativity is necessary for personhood depends on whether you agree with Deutsch’s definition of “person.” However, there’s little doubt that creativity is a crucial part of learning and decision making, and plays a key role in humanity’s development on the individual and societal levels:

• Individual: Researchers believe that childhood games, imagination, and “playing pretend” play a key role in learning and in developing skills that will be useful later in life. This is especially evident in how children tend to imitate their parents or other nearby adults.

• Societal: We can track how societies developed by examining their tools, art, and what remains of their architecture—all products of creativity. Remember, the main purpose of creativity is to solve problems, and an evolving society faces numerous new problems ranging from how to house and feed everyone, to how to maintain order among so many people.

All Knowledge Is Significant

Just as evolution involves competition between various biological adaptations, knowledge creation involves competition between different ideas and ways of thinking. Deutsch discusses two such schools of thought—reductionism and holism—in order to point out the fatal flaws in each:

1) Reductionism means discussing a phenomenon in terms of each individual part that composes it—in other words, it focuses on the smallest and most fundamental levels possible. For example, a strict reductionist might try to understand a rainstorm by calculating the behavior of each individual water molecule (an impossible task).

(Shortform note: Deutsch is using the scientific definition of reductionism, meaning the belief that any event can be explained in terms of physics. For example, in chemistry, a reductionist approach would mean describing a chemical reaction by explaining the physics that cause the chemicals to combine in certain ways.)

2) Holism is the opposite: It’s the belief that understanding a small piece of something is useless except in terms of what it can tell you about the whole. For example, a strict holist wouldn’t be interested in learning about one type of tree, except in terms of how that species contributes to the forest it’s in.

(Shortform note: Scientific holism emerged in the 1920s, and was originally a theory stating that simple parts will naturally come together to form complex wholes—individual atoms forming molecules, individual thoughts forming a person’s psyche, and so on. Holism, by this definition, never found much traction in the scientific community, but the term itself survived and took on the meaning that Deutsch uses here.)

Deutsch talks about these two opposite extremes in order to make the point that knowledge can’t be ranked. In other words, detailed knowledge of the parts isn’t “better” than broad knowledge of the whole, or vice versa. Any type of knowledge is valuable, and—perhaps even more importantly—any type of knowledge could turn out to be the basis for further discoveries.

(Shortform note: Deutsch isn’t arguing against reductionism or holism, only against strict reductionism and holism; both schools of thought provide us with valuable knowledge. For example, one microbiologist wrote that molecular biology (reductionism) and systems biology (holism) depend upon each other and complement one another. We need both types of knowledge in order to understand complex events, like how an organism grows or how a wound heals.)

When Knowledge Becomes Universal

Deutsch adds that, while knowledge usually grows incrementally (new discoveries building step-by-step on those that came before), sometimes one of those discoveries has far-reaching, even universal, implications.

For example, as scientists studied what matter is made of, breaking it down into smaller and smaller parts, they eventually discovered the elements of the periodic table and the atoms that compose them. We now know that everything—from sand to stars to our own bodies—is made of those atoms in various combinations.

In theory, by finding the right ways to combine the elements of the periodic table, we could create anything we can imagine. Deutsch says we can’t do that yet because we don’t fully understand the universality of the atom. In other words, we know (to some extent) what atoms are and how they behave, but we don’t know why everything is made of atoms, and why certain combinations of atoms create certain things.

Think of atoms as the alphabet of the universe: Once we fully understand the rules that gave rise to it, we’ll be able to arrange the letters into any words we want. Once we have that breakthrough, our understanding of atoms and elements will become universal.

The Search for Universal Truth

According to theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, the search for these pieces of universal knowledge is the ultimate purpose of science. In A Brief History of Time, Hawking explains that science currently has two prevailing theories that explain how the universe works:

• General relativity accurately explains and predicts how large objects behave (in physics terms, “large” generally means “big enough to see with the naked eye”). However, it cannot explain how subatomic particles such as electrons behave.

• Quantum mechanics can somewhat explain the behavior of those subatomic particles, but it operates with completely different rules than general relativity. Furthermore, quantum mechanics is still imprecise, only offering results in terms of probability rather than certain outcomes.

Hawking says that the final goal of physics is to combine these two theories into a Grand Unified Theory that applies to any type of physics problem—what Deutsch would call a piece of “universal knowledge.” However, so far the two theories have proven incompatible, meaning that we need more incremental advancements before we can achieve Hawking’s dream of a universal theory of everything.

Conclusion: The Case for Optimism

We’ve discussed various ways in which humans create knowledge, and how we could continue creating knowledge forever. However, all of that begs the question: So what? For Deutsch, the potential to create infinite knowledge is grounds for infinite optimism about the future.

First of all, there have been—and continue to be—many pessimistic predictions about the future. For example, there have been numerous projections about how many human beings Earth can support, some of which estimated under a billion people; clearly, we’ve far surpassed those predictions. Today, many scientists predict that climate change will devastate much of the world, perhaps within our lifetimes, but there’s hope that we can overturn those predictions as well.

Such predictions were—and are—based on current knowledge. We’ve exceeded expectations many times before, and that’s because there’s no way of knowing what we’ll know in the future. Therefore, Deutsch rejects such pessimism and instead offers a knowledge-based argument for embracing optimism.

First, he starts with the assumption that knowledge alleviates suffering. Basically, because we develop new knowledge in order to answer questions and solve problems, every bit of knowledge we acquire reduces suffering in the world by a tiny bit. Second, he reiterates that knowledge is infinite.

In short: There’s no limit to what we can learn, and therefore there’s no limit to how much we can reduce suffering in the world.

We Don’t Know What We’ll Know

Perhaps one of the most optimistic visions of the future comes from Lifespan, written by geneticist David Sinclair. Sinclair predicts that Earth can support a theoretically infinite number of people, that our quality of life will improve endlessly, and that someday people will be able to live forever.

Some of these predictions—especially about overcoming aging and living forever—are based on Sinclair’s own work as a scientist, but others are rooted in the same optimism that Deutsch has: That knowledge can increase endlessly, and that there’s no way of knowing what we’ll know in the future.

As a proof of concept, Sinclair points out that the last two centuries have seen the biggest population boom in the history of the world, driven in large part by increased life expectancy; at the same time, the average quality of life has increased drastically. He doesn’t see any reason why those trends should suddenly reverse.