5min chapter

#662: David Deutsch and Naval Ravikant — The Fabric of Reality, The Importance of Disobedience, The Inevitability of Artificial General Intelligence, Finding Good Problems, Redefining Wealth, Foundations of True Knowledge, Harnessing Optimism, Quantum Computing, and More

The Tim Ferriss Show

notes

CHAPTER

The Principle of Optimism

An explanation that involves the supernatural is intrinsically not a good explanation. The axial tilt theory of the earth explains a lot but it's very hard to vary. If you change even one tiny thing about that theory, then it sort of falls apart and it makes a completely different set of predictions. This is kind of how the growth of knowledge happens. And so I think this leads you to your very important principle you talk about, which is a principle of optimism.

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David Deutsch (@DavidDeutschOxf) is a visiting professor of physics at the Centre for Quantum Computation, a part of the Clarendon Laboratory at Oxford University, and an honorary fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford. He works on fundamental issues in physics, particularly the quantum theory of computation and information and especially constructor theory, which he is proposing as a new way of formulating laws of nature. He is the author of The Fabric of Reality and The Beginning of Infinity, and he is an advocate of the philosophy of Karl Popper.

Naval Ravikant (@naval) is the co-founder of Airchat and AngelList. He has invested in more than 100 companies, including many mega-successes, such as Twitter, Uber, Notion, Opendoor, Postmates, and Wish. You can see his latest musings on Airchat and subscribe to Naval, his podcast on wealth and happiness, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also find his blog at nav.al.

For more Naval-plus-Tim, check out my wildly popular interview with him from 2015 (nominated for “Podcast of the Year”) and our conversation from 2020.

Naval also co-piloted the interviews with Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin and famed investor Chris Dixon.

Please enjoy!

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[08:03] The impact The Fabric of Reality and The Beginning of Infinity have had on Naval.

[10:07] The four strands.

[13:04] Dispelling common misconceptions about science.

[19:26] How does knowledge grow?

[24:26] The benefits of understanding the four strands.

[32:47] How quantum computing arose from trying to test a multiverse theory.

[37:40] What a good explanation looks like.

[42:43] How do conjecture and criticism give us a basis for optimism?

[48:38] Translating knowledge into action.

[51:20] Artificial intelligence (AI) vs. artificial general intelligence (AGI).

[56:54] AGI is people! But how do we ensure it’ll be good people?

[1:03:03] What’s taking AGI so long to get here?