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Back to Why Pessimism Makes Dumb Ideas Sound Smart - David Deutsch - #1164, with David Deutsch.

Why Does David Deutsch Call Misunderstanding Your Fault?

David Deutsch agrees that whenever someone does not understand you, the fault is yours, not theirs, unless they are a golden retriever. He follows the philosopher Karl Popper, and he calls Popper's theory of knowledge streets ahead of everyone else in the 20th century.

Popper is very well known and highly respected. People put him on the list of the 10 top philosophers, and in science they talk about his criterion for distinguishing science from philosophy or from pseudoscience. His actual philosophy is not very well understood. One tenet is that there is only one way of creating knowledge. The details differ, but knowledge created by evolution, by a scientist, by a mathematician, and by a child learning to speak a first language comes from processes more alike than different. The differences are inessential. Learning a new law of physics one has discovered, and learning an existing piece of knowledge from someone else, are the same mental process.

In all of them, the knowledge comes from within the learner. You cannot download it like a computer. You have to guess what the other person means, and at first you will guess wrong.

Grokipedia·David Deutsch·Karl Popper

Transcript

Why Pessimism Makes Dumb Ideas Sound Smart - David Deutsch - #1164 ·

Modern Wisdom

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  1. Why Does David Deutsch Say Drop Certainty?David Deutsch says people should look to correct errors and should not look for certainty.
  2. Why Does David Deutsch Reject All Certainty?David Deutsch says people should aspire not to have any certainty. People should aspire to uncertainty.
  3. Why Does David Deutsch Dismiss the Fermi Problem?David Deutsch says the Fermi problem is not the kind of problem he likes. We do not know whether we are alone in the universe. We might be or we might not be.
  4. Did Turning From Nuclear Power Cause the Climate Problem?David Deutsch says fear of artificial intelligence is not a justified fear.
  5. Why Can't We Write a Grandmaster's Chess Program?David Deutsch says use only the old theory and you will say AGI is impossible in that way. Know what we know and you will see why it is possible.
  6. Why Does David Deutsch Call Creativity Unimpressive?David Deutsch says creativity by itself is not an impressive thing. He uses the word to mean the ability to create new knowledge.
  7. Why Are School Exams Such Bad Stand-ins?David Deutsch says education is judged by how well and how accurately you fill the bucket.
  8. Why Does David Deutsch Reject Compulsory Education?Chris Williamson asks what a better approach is for somebody who wants to learn a lot from people who know a lot, and whether people should exit formal…
  9. Why Did Popper Say to Marry a Problem?David Deutsch says diversity is the key to a good life, and he does not think any formula applies to everybody, or even to any two people.

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