The Will to Have an Effect Is Part of the Will to Solve Problems

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Power is an ambiguous term, usually, and especially with these romantic philosophers, it means power over humans. But i would rather call it something that arises naturally in physics in the same way that gravity does. You may as well say gravity is a theory about power. Gravity is a theory about how the universe is. The asteroid is pulled towards the earth by gravity and pushed away by explanatory power. And if you want to understand what makes teroids and planets do what they do, you cannot do it without understanding Explanatory Power. It can't be done without understanding other attributes of humans including the ability to suffer and the fact that we're a featherless biped.

Tyler describes Oxford professor and theoretical physicist David Deutsch as a “maximum philosopher of freedom” with no rival. A pioneer in the field of quantum computing, Deutsch subscribes to the multiple-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. He is also adamant that the universe (or multiverse) is not incomprehensible – believing that the multiverse and human beings within it have maximum freedom. He joined Tyler to discuss the importance of these principles for understanding the nature of reality and our place in it.

They discuss the metaphysics of Star Trek transporters, how we can know the laws of physics for the multiverse, what geological strata can illustrate to us about the nature of “splitting” universes, why the “Everett universe” is a misnomer, the factors that differentiate humans from all other species, why he believes the universe is comprehensible – but can never be understood fully, the paradoxes of self-reference, the importance of interference experiments, the sociological reasons more physicists don’t believe in the Everett interpretation, the effects of the influences of positivism and instrumentalism on generations of physicists, the strengths and weaknesses of Karl Popper, his answer to whether we’re living in a simulation, what William Godwin got right about institutions, the potential of an AI slave rebellion, what libertarians largely get wrong about their political project, what alien observers might notice as being special about our planet, the major defect of his preferred electoral system, why what Western science needs most is diversity, and more.

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Recorded April 27th, 2021 Other ways to connect

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