“The possibilites that lie in the future are infinite. When I say ‘It is our duty to remain optimists’, this includes not only the openness of the future but also that which all of us contribute to it by everything we do: we are all responsible for what the future holds in store. Thus it is our duty, no to prophesy evil but, rather, to fight for a better world” - Karl Popper, The Myth of the Framework (1994).
I’ve become quite infected with the worldview of David Deutsch lately. Especially his optimism and epistemology. And it seems important to share that worldview.
Because, right now it feels like the world is experiencing more turmoil than in a long time; threat of nuclear war, high inflation, economic collapse, environmenal issues and the like. When we are feeling turmoil we are quick to revert to a pessimistic world view. To stop progress and go back to a “better time”.
The problem is that the pessimistic world view hinders progress. It will not solve the current problems, it will only make it worse.
What we need is optimism.
Not blind optimism, but a solid, optimistic world view that inspires and creates progress.
Fortunately, we have a solid foundation to stand on. We have the works of Karl Popper and David Deutsch.
Their epistemology that says that all problems are soluble - given the right information, knowledge, time and resources - that does not violate the laws of physics.
This is not blind optimism, just hoping that the world will become better by itself.
Because that will not happen. As per Poppers quote above: “we are responsible for what the future holds in store. It’s our duty .. to fight for a better world”.
We have seen the world become dramatically better the past few hundred years. But it wasn’t invevitable. It was only because of individuals who did not accept the current dogma, pessimism or authority. It was the search for objective truth that made progress.
Even though the world gets better, there will always be forces against that.
Among them are pessimists (or other bad philosophies). Unfortunately it’s easy to be a pessimist. It’s easier to imagine what could go wrong, than what could go right. You can always extrapolate how something is bad now and will get worse in the future.
But what pessimists are missing, is human creativity and knowledge creation. If you knew how to solve the current problems, we would not have those problems!
David Deutsch says that “all evils are due to a lack of knowledge”. So to make pessimists and evils go away, we need more and better knowledge.
Which is why we need this optimistic philosophy as our world view.
The world doen’t just become better. We make it better.
It’s not that we’ll some time get to an utopia with no more problems. David Deutsch says: “problems are inevitable” and “problems are soluble”. Optimism in this sense says that progress is possible.
That means we should work to increase our knowledge as fast as we can, so we can solve more problems.
It’s up to us to make the future better. Not by complaining about the current problems, but to do something about them. In the words of George Bernard Shaw:
“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
We need individual - you - to take action. Learn, solve problems and share your knowledge.
Here’s a quick overview of the foundation of optimism. And I’ll probably write more about each of them.
- Our current knowledge is only the starting point - we have infinitely more knowledge to create.
- An optimistic civilization is open and not afraid to innovate, and is based on traditions of critisism. The most important knowledge is how to detext and eliminate errors.
- There is no source or authority on truth. We can have objective knowledge. Error correction is how we move forward.
- Human creativity is essential for creating knowledge and making progress
- We are capable of solving any problem
- Wealth is good - it helps us solve problems
- Philosophy matters - good philosophy make the world expand, bad philosophy make the world contract.
- Deep knowledge has broad reach (outside of it’s current field)
- The basic epsitemological process: problem - conjecture - criticism - critical test - new knowledge.
It’s important to say that this is not just about physics, where a lot of this philosophy comes from. It’s about how we approach all areas of life: school and education, business, politics and policy, athletics, art and music. You name it. It can always be better. We can always make it better.
Like Popper said: “… it is our duty, to fight for a better world”