Matt Sornson

Universal Systems have Reach, unintended potential. For example the computer in your washing machine could, given enough memory and time, do astrophysics calculations. Oddly most jumps to Universality have been accidents. Only since the Enlightenment has their significance been understood and sought after.Both the Principle of Mediocrity (we are no... See more

We have made virtually no Progress over the vast majority of human history. Only recently (mostly since the European Enlightenment) has progress been discernible inside a human lifetime.

There are many misconceptions about where scientific theories are derived from. A popular one is Empiricism, that we derive theories from our senses. Another is Inductivism, that the future will resemble the past. Testability is also generally accepted as a defining characteristic of the scientific method. All of these are wrong - there are many ex... See more

The Enlightenment showed us progress is both achievable and desirable. It instituted a culture of Conjecture and Criticism, the two key components for any kind of rapid progress across any discipline from Science to Morality.Science is the practice of finding Good Explanations, statements about what is there, what it does, and how and why. Morality... See more

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.

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.

Whenever there has been progress, there have been influential thinkers who denied that it was genuine, that it was desirable, or even that the concept was meaningful. They should have known better. There is indeed an objective difference between a false explanation and a true one, between chronic failure to solve a problem and solving it, and also ... See more