The Beginning of Infinity & the “First Principles” of Progress

TL;DR

A review of some key ideas from David Deutsch’s The Beginning of Infinity. The world is explainable, because of that explanations have & will keep changing the world. Humans are the only thing that have the potential to explain anything and build anything possible. Humans can progress even to achieving immortality & space travel. We should. You can help.

Introduction

Imagine through some rip in the fabric of time you wake up 50,000 years ago with no memory of your modern life or self? There’d be no phones, no buildings, no internet – just you in pure nature.

Using this storyline is a good way to show that there are some fundamental ideas that have ruled life from the beginning. Like a wax-on-wax-off-Mr.-Myagi lesson where humans didn’t arrive at the holy-crap-I-know-karate part until like 500 years ago. The hiding in plain sight truths starts with: Explanations. 

Explanations

Simply, an explanation describes something in the world. It is the map, the thing it describes is the territory. The more accurate the map is for what you need, the more useful it is to navigate the territory. Maps become useful far before they become perfect.

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The first thing you’d do waking up hungry 50kya¹k=1,000, ya= years ago is to start looking for food and water & you’d be desperate to find it. Desperate to avoid getting lost. Desperate to make a mental map of your territory. If someone could even point you in the direction of water you’d gladly take it even if they couldn’t tell you a google maps explanation of every step of the way. It would be imperfect, but still useful.

Think for a second about the maps we take for granted today:

• Why can’t you eat certain plants?
• Drink from any pool of water?
• Why do you get tired when you don’t eat?
• How long can you survive without food?
• Without water?
• Why do you get sick – how could you avoid it in the future?

The sheer volume of explanations we stand on is extraordinary even when thinking of the basics. ²Of course, some of these answers are programmed into you by evolution, an aversion to rotten food, an attraction to clean water, etc.

Everything is explainable – everything, the entire universe

Does this feel obvious to you? It is perhaps the most profound thing imaginable to me. If it sounds too incredible, consider – there are 3 possible scenarios here:

1. We don’t live in an explainable universe

Yet how do we have so many good explanations to date?

2. We live in a universe that is partially explainable

Things have worked so far, but maybe it is this time the naysayers are right and the explanations we don’t have yet are really forever out of our reach.

This has not been a great bet historically. As humans have mowed down everything from, “you’ll fall off the edge of the world if you sail beyond a certain point” to “only read from [insert specific book or teaching here] or God will curse you.” There is a long list of gates that people thought were impenetrable walls.

3. We live in an explainable universe.

Earth-shaking-thunder-bolt, do we get the import here? If true, it means we can figure it out, the whole thing, all of our most pressing problems can get better if we wake up.  

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Humans are not just another animal

Y’know how McDonalds has that special sauce? Coke has that billion dollar recipe? There is something that makes humans unique: they can understand, share & improve explanations. That’s it, that is our secret sauce. We are the only thing in the universe that can do this.

When people say humans are just another animal they are right in some sense, but they are also importantly wrong because they tend to forget that they’ve never seen Donkeys debating the merits of a carbon tax. Like it or not, if anyone is going to destroy or fix this place it’s not going to be the the other mammals.

And guess what else – we don’t need to save the world, we need to save the world for humans. If we global warm or pollute the planet to death – it is not the planet that dies, it’s us. The earth survived Chicxulub even if the dinosaurs didn’t and it’ll survive us whatever we decide to do with it. But (understatement of the century): humans are worth saving. Only a human can appreciate the extraordinary beauty that is the world.

Good explanations are not necessarily instinctive for humans

Here is the other thing, explanations are easy to create, but good ones aren’t. Here is the recipe:

1. build on what you know
2. make an educated guess
3. ask the toughest questions you can think of to see if you can find any problems with your guess and then change your guess accordingly

Think about this step by step:

1. build on what you know.

Everyone builds on what they think they know, but start deeper. From 1st principles, what do you really know? Have you thought about it? Was it just handed to you? Are you freaked out thinking you might not have realized how many hand-me-down ideas are in your head?

2. make an educated guess

To understand better, invert this: how would you make an uneducated guess?

• Well, first I’d take the first thing that came to my mind, I wouldn’t even think about it. I could simply parrot the last thing someone told me. Maybe I could find the first thing on Google that agrees with me.

Wait, sounding kinda familiar huh? Kinda like what we do most of the time – ouch. Maybe an educated guess is not so common sense.

3. ask tough questions of your guesses and explanations

Try the opposite here too: how would you avoid asking tough questions?

• Oh yeah, I really like asking the first thing that comes to my mind…oh wait I don’t like that one I’ll skip it. Ah, I don’t like that one either, wait, I’ll just ask my friends and family who already agree with me.

To do this right, we need Navy Seal, no holds barred, I’m competing like I would a Facebook chat with my philosophical enemy questions. Better yet, recruit that person to poke holes in your reasoning. Then really, really listen, well enough that you can repeat it back. This is hard.³Did you know chess players burn calories like marathon runners? They are human like you, our brains can handle a few reps, you can do this.

All explanations will have problems they can’t explain. Better explanations solve more problems and give you better problems to solve. Which in turn makes your explanations better.

Which leads us to:

Humans can make progress happen

Progress is a real thing, it happens as:

• Explanations go from more false to more accurate
  • Zeus doesn’t change the seasons; the tilt of the earth does.
• Suffering is transformed into peace & relief
  • Surgery used to be done without anesthesia, now it doesn’t break your mind forever.
• Wrong is made better
  • Racism is bad, continually reducing it is better.
• Big problems are traded for smaller problems
  • Finding wifi is a better problem than finding food and water.

This seems like common sense, but we regularly hear people long for the way things used to be forgetting the good today and the bad from the times we look back to.

Building Stuff Using Explanations

Just as humans are universal explainers, humans are also universal builders: you are a “factory for transforming any raw material into anything that the laws of nature allow, given the right information”⁴Beginning of Infinity Can you feel the boldness of this statement?! If this does not make your hair stand on end you are probably on the wrong blog. This is pure fire.

Explanations build on each other and improve. Inventions build on each other and improve. Solutions to smaller problems roll up and fix bigger problems. Our creations grow.

Here’s an example & let’s be honest, does social media suck? If you really think so you’ve already deleted it, but odds are like most people you have a love/hate relationship with it. It is because we are not done creating it, it is more good than bad for most, and it will get better.

• Remember when you wouldn’t see someone for 5 years and wonder what they were doing?
• How hard it was to find a similar community?
• Have you ever bought something that was meaningful that reluctantly came from a Facebook ad?

Social media made all of these things better. Tolerating an imperfect creation is the price of progress. You have a giant AI-driven recommendation engine that all you’ve got to do to get it to work for you is talk about what you like, click on stuff related to a topic and a swarm of robots starts offering you stuff you could want. Don’t get high-centered on only the negative without seeing the positive in it too.

Most new things are not received well. Think of something as seemingly innocuous as the bicycle and the headline below it generated. [ The Bicycle – Build For Tomorrow](https://pessimists.co/bicycle/)

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Humans & Cultures

5 days…you’ve kind of figured out water when you ran into that stream, but food, food is your obsession, after the great berry explosion of day 3, you are nervous to try new things. The rabbits are fast and when you chase them you feel like the star of that Disney movie UP without the walker. Your teeth are grinding at the gnawing hunger that has spread from your middle and now you think you can feel it in your eyes and elbows. Suddenly, you hear something rustle and wonder if you should expose your soft belly and just end the pain, when that annoying survival instinct takes over and you start to run. Wait, a person? I mean, only about as attractive as you are, but yeah that’s a person. Your breathing takes on a different pattern as you stare at each other confused whether to flee, to fight or to hug. Slowly you float toward each other. Greet. Smile, ignoring the layered tooth scum you both have and both make a sound of kindness. Your system melts inside, something is so deeply moved in you that tears brim in your eyes. You are not alone anymore!

Explainin’ ability might make us unique, but the need for being around other people is etched into our DNA. Remember in 3rd, 6th, & 14th grades learning about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs? If you look closely the entire pyramid is permeated with social needs. We largely rely on others for our ability to stay safe, to inform our self-esteem & we even measure our potential by our ability to help others. Every level of need is influenced by other people.

 

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When people group up so do their explanations. Drop into your local church and talk about how the Bible is made up. Or go into your local anthropology class and tell them that the first humans emerged 6,000 years ago. Think you are immune? Name your group here [ ] and now name your group’s enemies here [ ]. Now list “enemies” opinions & wait for your emotions to trigger like a magnet to iron filings. You can very much feel your body pull away from the opinions of whoever you think of as “not us”.

As people & their explanations align a group personality called a culture is born. Like personalities, there are all kinds.

Static Cultures

Ever met a person that you suspect has never changed their mind? A culture can do that too, you might have run across some. It is an utter tragedy for progress: you can’t improve if you don’t change. A culture can get militant about not changing, declaring their explanations final and complete. In fact, look anywhere a group or individual decides to declare themselves immune from criticism, and know that they have taken themselves out of the growth game. ⁵Watch out – if you note getting criticized in your company, field, industry and or no one knows enough to criticize you, you need to find a way to get it, otherwise you are compromising you or your companies growth.

The horror of static societies […]can now be seen as a hideous practical joke that the universe played on the human species. Our creativity, which evolved in order to increase the amount of knowledge that we could use, and which would immediately have been capable of producing an endless stream of useful innovations as well, was from the outset prevented from doing so by the very knowledge – the memes – that that creativity preserved. The strivings of individuals to better themselves were, from the outset, perverted by a superhumanly evil mechanism that turned their efforts to exactly the opposite end: to thwart all attempts at improvement; to keep sentient beings locked in a crude, suffering state for eternity.

Beginning of Infinity, David Deutsch

Growing Cultures

In contrast, a culture that is open to feedback, willing to change and even seeks out better explanations begins the march toward progress and the resolution of their most critical problems.

Suffering is dumb and preventable

If the world is explainable & problems are solvable, much of our suffering becomes optional in the longer run. For those who believe in the glory of suffering they are always free to bring it upon themselves in any way they choose, and can even call it good for them. ⁶Personally, I like Crossfit when I need a dose of this.

We accept it when we have no other option, but it should be a giant incentive for us to keep building, keep solving problems. Especially because:

Every Day: Nature is trying to kill you

You’ve been walking with your new friend for awhile now, you’d be nervous if you weren’t so hungry. The thought of any food that awaits you is overwhelming and your stomach is cramping like it has held back some pain in reserve knowing that you might not get any. Now, knowing you are close it has let go of all restraint and the pain is making it hard to walk. You start to hear the scuttle of movement, the sounds of children playing, when the smell of cooked food takes your breath away. You are close. Your companion shows you into the crowd and people surround you, staring, unsure. You try to smile to conceal the pain, to keep your eyes off the food, but you can almost feel calories in the aroma entering through your nose. Someone notices, looks to the crowd for approval and then throws you some food. Hands shaking, you inhale the food. The relief is so intense your eyes are watering and your ears pounding. You might just survive after all.

50kya you knows deeply now that nature is trying to kill you.

Take your life today and over the course of one year (let alone a decade) look at how many things would kill you without modern explanation & invention:

• Wrong food, bad water
  • Only the trial and error explanations & evolutionary adaptation kept your new tribal friends alive. Today we take so much for granted, but sans a tribe carrying built-over-time explanations you probably die pretty quick.
• Injury
  • Sometimes even a mild one would take you out. You’d be moving, running outside all the time so risk of injury is up. Something happens you break a leg and boom can’t hunt, can’t run and unless you’ve got a really tolerant tribe – worm food.
• Sick
  • Forget about just having the comfort of a pain killer, no herbal remedy or time tested explanations from your tribe? Buh-bye.

These above are just the obvious ones, what about: people not liking you? Bad eyesight? Fight with a neighboring tribe? Dead, dead, dead.

This is not a sphere that is trying to take care of you “naturally” this is a sphere you only survive by the protective dome of better explanations & better creations from those explanations.

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Today, almost the entire capacity of the Earth’s ‘life-support system for humans’ has been provided not for us but by us, using our ability to create new knowledge.

Beginning of Infinity, David Deutsch

What Does the Future Hold?

To recap:

• Humans are:
  • unique & valuable
  • universal explainers (they can potentially explain anything)
  • universal builders (they can build anything possible)
• Progress is possible in many different domains
  • In explanations
  • In the things we build
  • In morality
  • In reducing suffering (which is preventable)
• We just need to:
  • Keep improving our explanations
  • Keep building & improving our creations

If we keep improving from the first “map” we created when we pointed another person to water, to the scientific revolution that started 500 years ago, we may, perhaps even remarkably soon, see the solving of disease, of unnecessary aging & the pushing on the borders of immortality all while traveling to the stars, but it won’t happen without intention. We have to keep building our way forward.

The Enlightenment is the moment at which explanatory knowledge is beginning to assume its soon-to-be-normal role as the most important determinant of physical events. At least it could be:…

Beginning of Infinity, David Deutsch