Book: The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsche
Presenter: Sanjay Phadke
Date: 29-08-2021
Review :
Phadke began describing the book as a recipe to perpetual progress.
Laid out key topics and ideas.
All progress is driven by quest to arrive at a good explanation.
He outlined the 3 steps. 1)Start with a base conjecture 2) Criticism of the conjecture
3) Arrive at an explanation with error corrections 4) Creativity will drive the journey to infinity.
The author seems to lay more emphasis on conjecture than experimentation.
Good explanation creates good service and everything that follows the laws of nature
Will eventually yield a solution to any problem.
Author draws a parallel between gene replication and idea replication.
The author cautions that Artificial Intelligence and its sub part Data Science is just the beginning and humans are very far from creating machines which can have emotions or can think like humans.
Author discredits dooms day prophesy because he is a boundless optimistic.
Author asks the question ‘Why are flowers beautiful’? This raised questions about perceptions and subjectivity.
Questions/Points Raised:
- Sonia Valecha – Replication versus copying. – Answer: Copying is dumb while replication in intelligent
- Sonia Valecha described the contents being spiritual – Phadke affirmed
- Satish Khot – Asked about Parallel Universes – Phadke explained every point in time there are infinite paths. I did not quite understand it
- The discussion on flower alluded earlier raised the question of perception in understanding reality. Arpita Chatterjee pointed the universal fractal design that pervades all creation. I gather that Arpita meant ‘that a beautiful flower (or anything in nature) is the result of natural selection’.
- Satish Joglekar asked if the author mentioned intuition. Phadke mentioned ‘No’. This raised the question of intuition being the basis for axioms and if so, is it the same as creativity? Phadke seemed to agree.
- Satish Joglekar asked, ‘Is the author just being optimistic without proving a general framework’. Phadke replied ‘the book does provide a general framework’. He did not elaborate on it.
