David Deutsch Quotes

Quantum computation is a distinctively new way of harnessing nature. It will be the first technology that allows useful tasks to be performed in collaboration between parallel universes.

Feeling insignificant because the universe is large has exactly the same logic as feeling inadequate for not being a cow.

It is possible to build a virtual-reality generator whose repertoire includes every possible environment.

Our best theories are not only truer than common sense, they make more sense than common sense...

Every problem that is interesting is also soluble.

Base metals can be transmuted into gold by stars, and by intelligent beings who understand the processes that power stars, but by nothing else in the universe.

The whole [scientific] process resembles biological evolution. A problem is like an ecological niche, and a theory is like a gene or a species which is being tested for viability in that niche.

No precautions, and no precautionary principle, can avoid problems that we do not yet foresee. We need a stance of problem-fixing, not just problem-avoidance.

Humans may or may not have cosmic significance, and if they do, it will be by hitching a ride on the objective centrality of knowledge in the cosmic scheme of things.

The overwhelming majority of theories are rejected because they contain bad explanations, not because they fail experimental tests.

If we can't program it, we can't understand it.

To me quantum computation is a new and deeper and better way to understand the laws of physics, and hence understanding physical reality as a whole.

I chop and change between what is called 'work' and what is called 'recreation.' There are no discontinuities in my day. I only play tennis with people I find interesting.

Discovering a new explanation is inherently an act of creativity.

Is the human race a universal constructor?

If you can’t program it, you haven’t understood it.

Science is objective. And in my view we cannot take any experimental results seriously except in the light of good explanations of them.

Where we have good, testable explanations, they then have to be tested, and we drop the ones that fail the tests.

I don't think it would be a good idea for scientists to have more political power. Scientists as a group are more inclined to try to derive an ought from an is, than the population at large.