The Beginning of Infinity

Deutsch, a physicist who did foundational work in quantum computation, argues that knowledge growth is unbounded and that the mechanism is the creation of explanations that are hard to vary. His central criterion is that a good explanation accounts for what it purports to account for while having every component doing necessary work, so that any change to it destroys its explanatory power. Bad explanations can be adjusted to accommodate any evidence.

He argues against empiricism as the source of scientific knowledge, holding that observation cannot generate theories and that conjecture followed by criticism does, which follows Popper. He argues against inductivism directly, and against the claim that scientific theories are merely instruments for prediction.

His larger claim is that anything not forbidden by the laws of physics is achievable given the right knowledge, which he calls the principle of optimism, and that all problems are soluble, though solving one produces new ones. He applies the framework to the multiverse interpretation of quantum mechanics, to the evolution of culture, to the difference between static and dynamic societies, to artificial general intelligence, to aesthetics and to political decision-making, where he argues that the right criterion for institutions is the ease of removing bad policies rather than the quality of the selection process.

The book is demanding and the chapters vary considerably in quality. The physics sections assume comfort with unfamiliar arguments. Critics find the optimism unfalsifiable and the extensions into aesthetics and politics weaker than the epistemology. The hard-to-vary criterion is the most usable idea and applies directly to evaluating business theses and strategic explanations.