The Beginning of Infinity, Part 1

Science Is the Engine That Pulls Humanity Forward 0:00 This Book Changed the Way I Think 2:13 Nullius in Verba 4:11 Explanations That Reach the Entire Universe 6:25 Read the Best 100 Books Over and Over Again 8:19 We’re at the Beginning of an Infinity of Knowledge 10:21 People Are a Force of Nature 12:18 It’s Impossible to Predict the Growth of Knowledge 14:36 Humans Are Unique in Our Ability to Understand Things 16:30 Good Explanations Are Acts of Creativity 17:36 Good Explanations Are Hard to Vary 19:15 There Is No End of Science 21:41 There Is No Settled Mathematics 23:48 The Methods of Mathematics Are Fallible 26:43 All Knowledge Is Conjectural 29:27 Is the Universe Discrete or Continuous? 32:36 Every Theory Is Held Inside a Physical Substrate 34:44 We Can’t Prove Most Theorems with Known Physics 36:27 Probability Is Subjective 38:03 Is Light a Particle or a Wave? 40:09 The Multiverse 43:28 We Explain the Seen in Terms of the Unseen 45:10 Science Expands Our Vision of Reality 46:36 Science Is an Error-Correcting Mechanism 48:08 Theories Are Explanations, Not Predictions 50:12 Make Bold Guesses and Weed Out the Failures 52:44 Science Advances One Funeral at a Time 54:56 It’s Rare to Have Competing, Viable, Scientific Theories 56:13 We’re All Equal in Our Infinite Ignorance 59:13 It’s Easy to Extrapolate How Things Will Get Worse 1:00:38 Pessimism Seems Like an Intellectually Serious Position 1:02:14 Rational Optimism Is the Way Out 1:04:11 — Transcript http://nav.al/infinity This is Part 1 of my interview with @bretthall9080 about The Beginning of Infinity. Also see Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EPuJZWIBJk