Matt Sornson

Must progress come to an end – either in catastrophe or in some sort of completion – or is it unbounded? The answer is the latter. That unboundedness is the ‘infinity’ referred to in the title of this book. Explaining it, and the conditions under which progress can and cannot happen, entails a journey through virtually every fundamental field of sc... See more

Think of Memes as any ideas that are passed between lots of people. For example, a language, scientific theory, or religious belief are all memes. Memes have to be actively replicated to survive (i.e. spoken or written and distributed). A Rational Meme is a Good Explanation that relies on the recipient's critical faculties to cause itself to be rep... See more

Knowledge creating entities (aka People) can exist almost anywhere in the universe. With the right knowledge People could feasibly create an ideally suited environment in an empty area of space by hoovering up and transmuting hydrogen atoms into a space-station.Technology, once created, is automatic. We will not have to think about vacuums or the c... See more

We should not use (the semblance of) Sustainability as an aspiration or a constraint on planning. For example, we shouldn't just try and solve the 'human' part of global warming. If the earth goes into a new ice-age, or warms dangerously, we should solve that regardless of how much of the problem is man-made or not.

Deustsch defines Optimism as the theory that all failures are due to lack of Knowledge. That doesn't mean proceeding as if there won't be bad outcomes (since problems are inevitable) - he calls that Blind Optimism. In contrast Blind Pessimism is avoiding everything not known to be safe.

Upgrade your brain with The Beginning of Infinity and The Fabric of Reality. Listen to @ToKTeacher podcasts alongside.