00:00:00.000 Welcome to the topcast episode 98 and appropriately as we get close to the century, the 100th
00:00:25.800 episode of Topcast, a podcast, ostensibly called The Theory of Knowledge Cast.
00:00:32.640 We reach chapter 5 of the Science of Canon Can't and that chapter, chapter number 5 is called
00:00:40.680 I say it's appropriate because the Science of Canon Can't is, of course, one of the newest
00:00:49.800 And in fact, this makes it one of the broadest theories of physics as well and the
00:00:54.360 science of Canon Can't construct a theory brings in knowledge within the orbit of physics,
00:01:02.840 A epistemology is being, if it isn't already, being subsumed by some fundamental physics,
00:01:09.960 fundamental physics and the form of construct a theory.
00:01:13.160 So this means our popularian vision of knowledge, which itself is the most modern vision
00:01:19.440 of knowledge here, too, has now been given a 21st century update by David Deutsch and
00:01:29.520 And this really appeals to me because like so many people who are drawn to science in the
00:01:34.160 first place, because, well, yes, it's fun, but also because it subtracts out so much
00:01:40.200 of people's emotions and feelings and opinions on any given topic that might otherwise
00:01:46.000 lead them astray in not thinking clearly and objectively about any issue at hand.
00:01:52.760 And in a sense, this is timely, and I often don't like to talk about timely things on
00:01:56.840 this podcast, but this one might stand the test of time, unfortunately, because right
00:02:01.520 now we are in the midst of what I think is a real pushback against anything that might
00:02:11.440 We are told that so much of our politics, history, and even science is about feelings and
00:02:18.640 This is not the way that science and reason should be.
00:02:22.720 Sure emotions are important, but they don't have primacy at best in places like science.
00:02:28.000 They can be an indication of what one might want to pursue or how one might be curious
00:02:34.120 about a particular topic, but they are not the thing that decides what is true, but we
00:02:38.960 are so often now taught about what's true for me or true for you or true for the individual
00:02:44.680 rather than actually objectively true and known.
00:02:51.160 And as always, when any emotion comes up at any time, it really needs to be interpreted
00:02:56.960 in the light of a good explanation for us to really understand what the meaning of any
00:03:05.000 So there has been a resurgent in recent years of subjectivity.
00:03:10.360 There can be many reasons for this, I suppose, but to put a spin on it from actual epistemology,
00:03:16.200 too much emphasis being placed on so-called beliefs, personal opinions, and subjective
00:03:23.680 And this stems deep down, in my opinion, in a deep way, from cleaving rather too closely
00:03:30.680 to traditional, outdated, false notions of what knowledge is in the first place.
00:03:36.200 I'd like to say that Popper is the philosopher of common sense, so man on the street generally
00:03:43.880 But academia is very much saturated in, well, academic notions of what knowledge is, and increasingly
00:03:50.360 generations of students appear to be inculcated with ways of thinking about knowledge and
00:03:57.120 knowledge claims, which are more and more subjectivist.
00:04:02.000 Well, it comes from, ultimately, the ancients, but all the way through to today, in modern
00:04:07.760 incantations of this same sort of subjectivist notion of knowledge, there isn't much in
00:04:13.680 the way of intellectual self-defense against subjectivist notions of knowledge.
00:04:18.480 And so everyone's opinion then stands on equal footing, even with things that are not
00:04:24.200 so much a matter of opinion as a matter of deciding between good explanations given certain
00:04:31.640 If knowledge is, as the ancients thought about justifying as true beliefs, then we can all
00:04:38.240 have things justified to us in different ways and to different extents.
00:04:43.840 Perhaps just our personal confidence or deep feelings on the matter are sufficient
00:04:48.280 justifications, so when I know something to be true, I know it because I believe it and
00:04:54.160 our beliefs may differ, so what we may know to be true may differ in what constitutes
00:04:58.360 knowledge or even what constitutes knowledge of the physical world might very well come
00:05:02.880 down in part in many places too, subjective feelings.
00:05:07.720 So we are at an interesting juncture, we, I say, people who might listen to this podcast,
00:05:13.720 people in associated circles, because just as popper seems to be coming more widely known
00:05:21.160 than ever and a little more popular, what rises up to meet that increased popularity of
00:05:27.800 popper is this stark relativism and subjectivism that is certainly there in the academy
00:05:34.120 and is spreading throughout the culture as things in the academy tend to do.
00:05:39.040 The antidote to this is simply more popper and better popper, rather like the antidote
00:05:44.800 to erroneous science as many people like to say is not superstition or non-science but
00:05:49.520 rather more science and better science, more error correction, better error correction.
00:05:55.240 So relativism in biology, the creeping wokism, the emotions surrounding climate change,
00:06:01.680 the absolute terror surrounding certain diseases, the drift towards collectivism driven
00:06:06.960 by a desire to feel more safe, to feel more altruistic and to feel more certain in the face
00:06:13.960 of doubt, these are all errors and they need a counter and almost all the responses I see
00:06:18.760 to this are not able to appeal to a genuinely objective response, a genuinely objective
00:06:28.000 They can only craft something they claim is objective but when one projects just a little
00:06:32.440 we find feelings and emotions again at the core of what they're saying.
00:06:36.680 So what am I talking about with regards to these outdated types of epistemology and outdated
00:06:43.360 notions of knowledge, well let's look at my favourite three that I've mentioned many
00:06:48.360 times before, they will be one, the received wisdom from academia on these topics which
00:06:57.080 The more modern version is the second kind which is Bayesianism and the pretender to
00:07:02.120 the throne in some ways that epistemology that calls itself object of this epistemology
00:07:09.960 So firstly the standard modern academic take on these things and it even came up in that
00:07:16.000 other book that I'm going through at the moment Stephen Pinker's rationality so even
00:07:19.720 as late as when I am going through the science of canon Kant people are still publishing
00:07:24.840 books taking for granted justified true belief.
00:07:29.720 That is the standard academic take and we know it's the standard academic take even today
00:07:34.280 because the great Stephen Pinker himself takes it as gospel, it takes it simply as red
00:07:42.640 We say we can know something on this view if we are justified in believing the claim to
00:07:50.200 So in this vision knowledge is about believing something it is the peculiar going on the
00:07:58.600 This is not objective but subjective it is about a believing subject.
00:08:03.560 So that's a vision of knowledge condemned to subjectivity it is about a personal subjective
00:08:09.400 experience of believing something and then saying well therefore that's knowledge or
00:08:15.360 The more modern incantation of this tries to rescue things by mathematically this notion
00:08:23.920 Here we do not give up the notion of justified true beliefs.
00:08:26.840 We just take on a new character for the justification.
00:08:30.760 We try to make the justification objective out there in the world by saying it is somehow
00:08:36.600 about objective measurements there in the world which once you do this measurement
00:08:41.920 in some way or other you end up having more credence for a claim and of course if you put
00:08:46.720 a mathematical veneer on something then it lends a certain respectability to your so
00:08:52.480 cold objectivity with Bayesianism I think we can almost do away with it in the same way
00:08:58.280 that we would do away with any claim which corresponds to the old adage of lives, damned
00:09:05.920 Nevertheless on this view of Bayesianism there is a claim that we can know something to
00:09:10.560 a greater or lesser degree if there is evidence for the thing and yes many Bayesians will
00:09:16.200 say that if there's evidence against a thing then the probability of that thing being true
00:09:20.600 drops to zero but if you have some evidence and then you gain more evidence then the more
00:09:26.480 evidence that you gather the more credence the claim gets which is strange for a
00:09:32.040 popularian and pointless as we like to say it's very rare we have competing theories
00:09:38.680 anyway we usually have only one theory going and the reason we have one theory going
00:09:44.160 is all others have been reduced to probability zero because we find out that they are literally
00:09:48.640 not true but in Bayesianism what is this credence anyway well it's something like degree
00:09:53.720 of truth all confirmation in fact Bayesianism itself sometimes calls itself Bayesian confirmation
00:10:01.080 theory so it's about confirmation and even where Bayesians try to be objective the fact
00:10:06.520 remains that the entire epistemology is about assigning probabilities to claims and it's
00:10:12.480 this process of assigning this process of coming up with some kind of objective number
00:10:18.920 to put on your claim that is the subjective part but what could it mean for any claim
00:10:24.360 like for example the earth orbits the sun to have a probability of 50% or 90% or 95%
00:10:32.520 and who decides anyway either the earth is objectively orbiting the sun in which case the
00:10:36.760 probability of that happening is one or it's not in which case the probability is zero
00:10:40.720 meaning that any calculation is completely and utterly pointless certainly in the physical
00:10:45.280 sciences anyway by what mechanism can we come up with these probabilities and as we might
00:10:50.880 say what is the alternative anyway real physical reality either is the way that we explain
00:10:56.840 it is or it's not we either have probabilities of things actually being the case or they're
00:11:03.640 not the case it's one or it's zero so the fact is that Bayesianism itself is refuted
00:11:09.720 by physics before it even gets its laces done up the universe is not probabilistic and
00:11:15.000 so epistemology cannot be about probabilities it must be about what is the case and what
00:11:20.560 we mean by what is the case is what our best knowledge tells us is the case the epistemology
00:11:28.040 makes ontological claims about reality it says what exists and that is the only way we
00:11:34.000 know what exists via the explanations that tell us with probability one what exists and probability
00:11:40.720 zero what doesn't exist and in between we just have a whole bunch of things that we don't
00:11:45.080 know and at the point of speculating upon until we have a good explanation of those things
00:11:49.720 and lastly for these outdated refuted old notions of what knowledge is we have that
00:11:56.200 epistemology that calls itself objectivism which to be fair is a broader philosophy more
00:12:02.560 or less about how to live one's life it's very much self help but there is something
00:12:07.760 which calls itself objectivist epistemology so we need to address it here's a book all
00:12:12.400 about it by iron rand and some of her followers but reading this book which I have it seems
00:12:20.840 to suggest we have two ways of getting to knowledge and basically the entire vision
00:12:26.200 of knowledge isn't any more advanced than what was gifted to us by David Hume either
00:12:32.840 we're getting knowledge via a process of derivation well let me quote from the book what
00:12:40.160 iron rand writes there is that quote axioms are usually considered to be propositions identifying
00:12:47.880 a fundamental self evident truth but explicit propositions as such are not the primaries
00:12:53.640 they are made of concepts the base of man's knowledge of all other concepts all axioms
00:13:01.400 propositions and thought consists of axiomatic concepts end quote so in that mood knowledge
00:13:10.560 production is about simply beginning with the axioms and then deriving what is true from
00:13:15.800 them and iron rand of course and perhaps I'll get to this as well she is very much
00:13:22.200 and empiricist in this sense that you simply see truth in the world you can see what is
00:13:27.240 self evident and from that self evident truth there's no need to interpret anything here
00:13:32.040 knowledge on this view or rather observations on this view are not theory laden they are
00:13:36.840 simply true in and of themselves and once you know what is true in and of itself you derive
00:13:41.640 like a mathematician what the truth of the rest of your explanatory framework will be I think
00:13:47.960 this is a completely not a dead end of course we need to interpret our observations nothing
00:13:54.040 is as it seems almost let's not get into that now to give iron rand credit she doesn't say
00:14:00.840 that all knowledge is like this elsewhere she says and I quote this is where you can't do
00:14:06.680 derivations of that kind she says quote the process of observing the facts of reality and of
00:14:12.280 integrating them into concepts is in essence a process of induction the process of
00:14:18.120 subsuming new instances under a known concept is in essence a process of deduction end quote
00:14:24.600 and yes by induction she really does mean the kind of induction that Hume raised the problem
00:14:31.080 of how do you ever realize these universal claims about reality given a limited number of observations
00:14:38.120 so she gets what science is all about completely wrong anyway so there's very little
00:14:43.080 in the work about science as an explanatory exercise it's all about science being a predictive
00:14:48.520 exercise and making these universal claims like you know all swans are white or something like
00:14:53.720 that as if that is anything really to do with how science works so in this objectivist
00:15:00.600 epistemology so called objectivist epistemology it is taken for granted that induction is real
00:15:05.880 and we simply observe the facts of reality so there exist direct observation on this view and further
00:15:11.400 induction is an unproblematic process of generalization whatever the case we do not escape
00:15:18.600 from justified true belief and so to that extent objectivism like all the other like those other
00:15:25.800 two kinds of epistemology I just mentioned must fall back onto feelings about whether or not
00:15:32.680 one is confident one has justified something and one believe something it's all happening inside
00:15:37.720 of a human mind there's very little that's out there in the objective world the world of objects
00:15:43.160 that enables one to determine whether or not one has an objective knowledge claim a claim that
00:15:49.000 is in fact right a claim that could be true or false independence of whether or not anyone
00:15:56.280 thinks it is true or false now leaving behind the really strict academic stuff
00:16:02.280 whether it's um looking at what the ancient Greeks said and what academic philosophers today
00:16:07.080 debate about what iron ran said or what a modern Bayesian might say popular accounts of knowledge
00:16:13.960 today you might find in a scientific American piece which I'll come to a really no better they get
00:16:20.200 no closer to actually explaining about how existing theories came to be how it is those theories
00:16:26.680 could be overturned and by what mechanism nor ever really grapple with what knowledge is in some
00:16:33.000 fundamental sense for example the scientific American who I'll just read I'll put up on the screen
00:16:38.840 now a quote from this scientific American article it reads quote pop is view of the scientific
00:16:45.880 method that's meant to get around the problem of induction might blow the young scientist mind
00:16:53.000 and convince him that the goal of objective knowledge is unattainable this would probably
00:16:58.920 undermine his efforts to build objective knowledge in the lab end quote so well all I can say
00:17:06.600 is wow um this is what can get printed in something like the scientific American talking about
00:17:14.440 science and about popper it's proof positive I would say the author could not possibly have read
00:17:21.720 popper I mean to come away from reading popper to conclude that someone might conclude objective
00:17:29.480 knowledge is not possible is not merely to misunderstand popper it's to ignore him entirely he wrote
00:17:36.440 after all an entire book on that exact topic by the way the author of that piece says he is a
00:17:44.120 philosopher of science this is the academic poverty that is the philosophy of science even today
00:17:51.000 in the 21st century and the poverty of epistemology and it is why it really is genuinely a reason
00:17:58.760 why people end up debating emotions around matters of scientific importance and new scientists
00:18:05.960 here on the other hand says that scientists about faith and that we should not lose faith in science
00:18:11.880 so there are many many misconceptions out there about the nature of objective knowledge none of
00:18:17.560 these ideas actually hit the name on the head about what objectivity is an objectivity in both
00:18:24.200 senses as I like to say there's objectivity in the epistemological sense and there's objectivity
00:18:30.760 in the ontological sense they're very closely related and in many situations you could probably
00:18:35.880 interchange them but what I would say in the epistemological sense following popper knowledge is
00:18:41.320 objective precisely because it's not about feelings it is not about subjective feelings of
00:18:47.480 confidence nor the subjective contents of individual minds like belief it is rather about whether a
00:18:54.680 piece of knowledge objectively solves some problem or not whether the answer is given or not whether
00:19:01.160 an error is corrected or not none of this has anything to do with feelings of confidence feelings
00:19:07.800 of certainty we simply know how is it that the sun produces so much heat and light that's a genuine
00:19:14.920 problem absent nuclear physics especially because so the history goes prior to about 1900
00:19:21.880 biologists and geologists were able to estimate the age of the earth and they estimated to be
00:19:27.400 well at least hundreds of millions and some even suggested billions of years old let's find
00:19:33.400 the problem then is if the only known way at that time to produce heat and light of the kind we
00:19:40.920 see from the Sun is a fire combustion a chemical reaction then the Sun should long ago have
00:19:47.320 consumed itself in that fire it's a standard astrophysics problem for undergraduates actually
00:19:52.920 given the mass of the Sun how long will it take given the luminosity of the Sun for it to consume
00:20:00.200 all of its hydrogen material if it was being burned in the same way that a fire on the earth is
00:20:06.680 burning well it would actually last about 20,000 years that's how long it would take to consume
00:20:12.200 all of the matter in the Sun at the rate at which it's burning it given it was a combustion
00:20:17.320 reaction but it's not a combustion reaction but people before 1900 didn't have a clue
00:20:21.640 that it wasn't a normal combustion reaction well they might have had a clue because
00:20:24.840 they realized that the sums weren't adding up they knew they must have been making a mistake
00:20:28.760 so they had a problem how to square the approximate known age of the earth hundreds of millions
00:20:34.920 to billions of years that happens to be 4.54 billion we know that now but at least then they knew
00:20:39.800 it wasn't 20,000 years how to square this huge number with the 20,000 year old Sun maximum of
00:20:48.040 20,000 year old Sun it's a problem that's a problem but once we have an understanding of nuclear
00:20:54.200 physics in the early 21st century then we can say that problem is objectively solved
00:21:01.400 nuclear physics explains the amount of matter in the Sun is more than sufficient to keep
00:21:06.120 it burning via nuclear reactions for 12 billion years or more there problem solved that bit of
00:21:11.800 knowledge is objective the question is objectively answered the problem solved and it's not about
00:21:17.400 anyone being confident in that answer how confident a physicist is any particular physicist is
00:21:23.320 in the answer is beside the point that's the answer and the only known answer and notice that no
00:21:28.520 one needs to even believe it certainly not a consensus of people need to believe it or understand
00:21:33.320 it for it to count as knowledge out there in the world objectively solving the problem and
00:21:38.280 correcting the error that the Sun must have been like any other burning object like a lump of
00:21:43.320 wood that we are familiar with undergoing combustion the presence of oxygen and very importantly we
00:21:49.880 should notice that that same knowledge now that same knowledge that solved the problem of
00:21:54.680 how it was that the Sun persisted in burning for so long is now being used again imperfectly
00:22:01.080 sure but it is being used to drive the push towards artificial earth-based nuclear fusion
00:22:08.920 reactors and guess what that knowledge is there now that knowledge of nuclear physics is there
00:22:14.520 instantiated in a nuclear fusion reactor and should everyone all the scientists who know how
00:22:21.880 that thing operates if they were to die tomorrow but leave behind the reactor itself the knowledge
00:22:28.440 is very largely preserved because should other people come along and whether or not they've got
00:22:34.600 the manuals to operate this thing or not could study closely the operation of their reactor
00:22:40.600 itself they would uncover the knowledge in that object they could uncover that the fusion reactor
00:22:47.080 actually instantiates in its super high temperature plasma producing lasers a way of overcoming
00:22:52.120 the electrostatic force of repulsion of hydrogen nuclei to fuse them into another chemical
00:22:57.560 altogether and in the process release vast quantities of energy the knowledge of how to do that is
00:23:03.400 literally in the reactor the same relationships exist between the components of the reactor
00:23:09.000 as existed in the minds of those now gone scientists and can now be recreated literally recreated
00:23:15.800 mind you in the minds of anyone who focuses sufficiently on how the reactor is doing what it is doing
00:23:23.240 so that is what we mean by objective what proper means by objective knowledge it means it does
00:23:29.480 not come down to subjective mental states it comes down to whether epistemologically
00:23:35.080 that a claim really solves a problem or not and we might say following so objectively in the
00:23:41.320 ontological sense as well that knowledge is there in the object and so it's not about the particular
00:23:48.280 contents of any individual mind that is not what makes knowledge objective and there is no way
00:23:53.480 of making knowledge objective in that way no matter what the Bayesian say or what ran say
00:23:58.360 or what the ancient Greeks say or what some scientists or some popularised of science or philosophy
00:24:04.040 claim today objective knowledge is objective knowledge in the same way that
00:24:08.440 electrons are electrons it's not because poppers says it is what it is it just is what it is
00:24:14.360 milican or wolf gang poorly might have had a view on the electron we don't say the electron is
00:24:19.080 what it is because wolf gang poorly said this or that we just say what the electron is so too with
00:24:25.560 objective knowledge it's not a matter of opinion it is what it is and just as with the electron
00:24:31.320 we can improve our understanding of it over time but that improvement won't lead us in the
00:24:36.920 direction of well maybe it's about feelings after all we know more expect that than we expect our
00:24:43.000 understanding of electrons to go back to JJ Thompson's 1904 plum pudding model of the atom
00:24:48.680 that model was refuted then it's been replaced and we're moving forward I say all of that by way
00:24:54.280 of long preamble because we are moving forward today we take popper and now we add what
00:25:00.760 Deutsch and Marletto have said about knowledge so let's finally begin with some reading I'll be
00:25:07.320 skipping the first few pages in which Kiara calls a story from her childhood not just related to
00:25:12.120 you now in my own words when she comes across this little hole in the garden of her home where
00:25:17.320 she once lived in this little hole eventually it turns out even when it was disturbed the perfect
00:25:22.920 little hole in the ground was disturbed by putting leaves on it all disturbing it in some other way
00:25:27.640 the next day it would be repaired perfectly as a little hole and it turns out the little hole
00:25:32.360 was being repaired by a mole cricket a little cricket which would recraft the hole once it had been
00:25:39.640 disturbed so the hole was persisting over time and that is of course going to lead us into this
00:25:45.640 concept of knowledge as being resilient information in some way or other and there's something
00:25:51.880 there's some entity that is causing the ability of that system to remain in place over time so
00:26:00.120 let me pick it up on page 140 of the science of Ken and Kat and Kiara writes quote
00:26:06.440 most changes or transformations that happen reliably around us require something to stay unchanged
00:26:13.320 in the case of my story the things that undergo transformation are the soil and the grass around
00:26:19.080 where the hole is built the thing that stays unchanged is the cricket to be precise the cricket
00:26:25.400 stays unchanged only in a particular respect what stays unchanged are all the features that make
00:26:30.840 it capable of building a hole for instance it's strong four limbs which are shaped like shovels
00:26:36.600 and even armed would sort to its edges to excavate more efficiently this guarantees that the hole
00:26:42.360 can be kept roughly in the same shape for much longer than the time over which the environment
00:26:47.960 operates with its inexorable erosion pausing their my reflection so here we're getting a hint of
00:26:54.600 that there's these two kinds of knowledge in the world and Kiara doesn't distinguish between
00:26:59.800 these two because she's got a unified concept of knowledge but the two versions that David Deutsch
00:27:05.480 talks about are the knowledge of the genetic kind in the DNA of organisms and which arose by
00:27:12.040 evolution by natural selection and the knowledge that appears inside the peculiar minds of people
00:27:19.640 which is this explanatory knowledge which arises via a process of creative conjecture and
00:27:24.840 refutation and so here we have an example of the kind of knowledge that arises through
00:27:31.000 evolution by natural selection and what we have is I guess a vision of Dawkins extended phenotype
00:27:37.960 this idea that the DNA inside of an organism actually reaches out beyond its own body
00:27:44.760 and so encoded somewhere in the DNA of the cricket is a code for building little holes and so
00:27:52.920 the DNA actually reaches out into the external environment beyond the body of the cricket
00:28:00.040 into the soil and constructing holes in the soil so there is there is there is abstract knowledge
00:28:06.600 in the DNA of the cricket the cricket is a physical instantiation a kind of catalyst of a sort
00:28:13.160 the thing that if you disturb the hole if you muck up the hole if you go and put a stick in the
00:28:17.960 hole and you know just destroy the little cricket habitat then it will repair it and so the hole
00:28:24.760 will persist why will the hole persist because the knowledge is there I will do the job of repairing
00:28:30.520 okay back to the book chiarite any transformation happening reliably with a high accuracy
00:28:37.320 such as making a perfectly round tunnel requires something such as the cricket that stays unchanged
00:28:43.240 in its being capable of causing it again the entity must retain that property because
00:28:48.680 that is necessary for the transformation to happen reliably to clarify the point
00:28:53.720 in the whole making transformation things like enough space and soil and the cricket are all
00:28:59.400 necessary but as I said it is only the cricket that remains the same before and after the
00:29:04.760 transformation in some respect the soil gets abraded away the space is used up by the hole and
00:29:10.520 so on but the cricket for its lifespan is very nearly unchanged in that capability things that
00:29:17.160 can perform a transformation and retain the property of doing so repeatedly such as the cricket
00:29:22.920 deserve a unifying name catalysts is a good one here one has to be careful because I am borrowing
00:29:29.880 the term from chemistry to indicate a much more general class of systems than chemical catalysts
00:29:35.800 chemical catalysts are entities that make a chemical reaction happen more quickly and faster
00:29:41.320 when they are present and that retain the property to do so over and over again they operate a bit
00:29:47.080 like facilitators when all the other reagents are around but the catalysts are not there
00:29:52.600 it takes ages for the reaction to happen and other reactions may well consume the reagents first
00:29:58.600 but if catalysts are present then the reaction happens quickly and deterministically since
00:30:03.640 chemical catalysts are distinguished from reagents because they do not change while everything else
00:30:09.000 does I shall use catalysts to indicate systems that can cause a transformation and retain
00:30:14.760 the property to do so like the cricket in my story pausing their my reflection so I might just
00:30:19.480 mention my favorite catalysts class of catalysts which are the catalysts that allow for the
00:30:25.560 arbor process the arbor process being the combination of gaseous nitrogen with gaseous hydrogen
00:30:33.800 in order to produce ammonia this is a remarkable life saving reaction and is just one of those
00:30:41.400 wonderful examples where we show that we really have made objective progress in the world science
00:30:47.480 really does help everyone on the planet industrialization is a wonderful thing and so on and so
00:30:53.320 forth the problem is how to make arid land able to grow crops the overall majority of land on planet
00:31:01.800 earth where there is land can't be used to grow crops because the soil isn't fertile enough
00:31:07.640 what it needs to have in it is nitrogen nitrogen fixed so they say in the soil what scientists knew
00:31:14.360 was that well you could use ammonia to make artificial fertilizers in order to make the soil fertile
00:31:21.480 and therefore grow more crops what the question is how do you make ammonia how do you get sufficient
00:31:27.000 quantities of ammonia in the first place well they knew of a reaction a reaction was well this
00:31:32.520 one here you just take nitrogen you take hydrogen and then you produce ammonia but big issue it's
00:31:39.400 not really a spontaneous reaction you know just mixed gaseous nitrogen and gaseous hydrogen
00:31:45.000 and then get ammonia at the end it doesn't work that way even if you pressurize it and you use
00:31:50.360 high temperature it still doesn't work very well but if you add a catalyst of the right kind and
00:31:55.640 very many different kinds of catalysts are used I think one is powdered iron but there are all sorts
00:32:00.440 of other fancy kinds that these guys are but firstly I think but once you once you have the right
00:32:06.680 catalyst and you manage to figure out the most efficient temperature and pressure then once you put
00:32:13.720 it in the right vessel with the catalyst the nitrogen and the hydrogen then you get vast quantities
00:32:19.320 over ammonia being produced you get lots and lots of the stuff and so this literally this reaction
00:32:24.680 these catalysts have saved countless people's lives they have fed countless hundreds of millions
00:32:32.520 one would want to say maybe billions of people's lives we were able to support so many more people
00:32:37.400 on planet Earth precisely because of this reaction it is a wonderful lesson about science and progress
00:32:44.920 and might I say so-called artificial chemicals after all if anything is artificial it's this process
00:32:51.160 it is very hard to do it doesn't happen spontaneously very easily certainly not with the
00:32:55.720 efficiency required creating the volumes required so this is a very much a man made
00:33:02.280 knowledge based way of feeding the world using lots of chemicals in order to encourage the growth
00:33:10.600 of plants now what Chiara is of course talking about when it comes to catalysts here knowledge as
00:33:17.560 being a special kind of catalyst we have the the knowledge itself well in the form of the cricket
00:33:24.360 here we have the the cricket being the catalyst which enables the construction of the whole
00:33:31.000 over and over again the construction of the burrow over and over again that even when the burrow is
00:33:35.160 disturbed or destroyed along comes the cricket and it will just keep on rebuilding that thing over and
00:33:39.880 over again but the cricket itself has not changed even if the burrow is and as she will come to
00:33:45.800 shortly as Chiara will come to the knowledge has to be in an abstract form inside of the cricket
00:33:53.400 and that would be in the the DNA program so to speak for constructing a cricket that program for
00:33:58.840 constructing the cricket building the cricket from the material out of which the cricket itself
00:34:04.280 is made would also code for holes in the ground which can house a cricket and so that is a very
00:34:10.200 specialized kind of knowledge one then wonders and I wonder can there be a universal
00:34:18.120 knowledge catalyst of this kind a universal abstract catalyst which can transform anything
00:34:24.760 into anything else that's known well this is what a person is one presumes that the program for
00:34:30.920 a person is that kind of universal catalyst which can take the material of any kind and with
00:34:38.360 the relevant knowledge could construct any other thing that is constructable so that is what
00:34:45.640 a person might turn out fundamentally to be or more fundamentally to be but we get ahead of
00:34:51.000 ourselves let's go back to the book Chiara writes quote why are catalysts in this generalized sense
00:34:58.600 interesting answering this question will require one to understand the link between
00:35:04.920 catalyst and knowledge as I introduced in chapter one the reason is that most systems undergo
00:35:10.120 changes during processes that involve them i.e they do not stay the same unlike catalysts
00:35:16.040 also most transformations in physics do not happen reliably those that do require a catalyst that
00:35:21.320 can perform them catalysts and likewise highly accurately perform transformations are hard to come by
00:35:29.000 some of you might be suspicious of the notion of hard to come by it sounds too subjective what
00:35:34.040 looks hard to realize for some might be very easy for others actually that is not the case
00:35:39.160 hard to come by has an objective meaning established by the laws of physics one thing is harder
00:35:43.720 to come by than another in this sense if the former requires compared with the latter more
00:35:49.560 of what is naturally given by the laws of physics for it to emerge this notion is objective
00:35:55.480 because what the elementary elements are things like energy time elementary chemicals and so on
00:36:01.000 is set by the laws of physics take a look around and see what is not hard to come by
00:36:05.480 what the laws of physics gave us in abundance are things like elementary particles and fields
00:36:10.840 entities which as we have learned via modern physics are used to explain the existence of
00:36:16.040 elementary particles themselves and their mutual interactions for example if we see electrons and
00:36:21.560 protons being attracted by what classically we would call the electrostatic force we do not have
00:36:26.360 to invoke anything else but the laws of physics to explain that attraction i call things that are
00:36:31.400 given in abundance in our universe such as fields and particles naturally occurring systems
00:36:36.680 and likewise the interactions that need no more than the laws of physics as we know them to be
00:36:41.560 explained fully i call naturally occurring interactions among these naturally occurring systems
00:36:47.160 interactions there are a few accurately and reliably perform transformations for example the
00:36:53.480 planetary orbits around the sun are almost elliptical so one could say the task of making the
00:36:59.560 planets describe elliptical orbits is well approximated in nature this fact is a direct consequence
00:37:05.400 of naturally occurring interactions because there is a symmetry in the gravitational potential
00:37:10.760 that causes the orbits to have approximately that shape in the case of such transformations what
00:37:16.520 has to stay unchanged for them to be performed to a higher degree of reliability the catalysts
00:37:22.200 are just the underlying physical laws which do not require further explanation pausing
00:37:27.960 their my reflections so yeah for for stuff that we see out there happening for example planetary laws
00:37:34.360 and incidentally there's a wonderful conversation at a very high level i would say technically high
00:37:40.280 level that shorn carol the physicist on his mindscape podcast has with chiaramiletta that's worth
00:37:46.760 looking up and listening to shorn actually brings up the case of orbits planetary orbits because
00:37:53.880 it would seem that we have good explanations of planetary orbits using various other models i mean
00:38:01.480 we could use Kepler's laws of physics and we could say well Kepler's laws of physics actually
00:38:06.440 somehow come out of Newton's law of gravity of course what do we how can construct a theory
00:38:11.960 how say anything about this particular situation of planetary orbits well there it is there it is
00:38:18.360 in the sense that what the laws of physics are are like a catalyst a catalyst that itself remains
00:38:24.440 unchanged while causing the position of a planet around a star to change that's the thing that is
00:38:30.280 changing over time but the laws of physics aren't changing they're the one thing that remains
00:38:34.680 unchanged while all these transformations are going on out there in the physical universe in astronomy
00:38:40.600 whenever you have one body orbiting another it's a another way of approaching the same physical
00:38:48.040 situation namely that of planetary orbits so let's go back to the book more on catalysts of this
00:38:54.280 kind quote but most of these kinds of transformations are not like that there's more to them
00:39:01.080 some non-elementary catalyst must be present for them to be performed to high accuracy
00:39:05.960 think again of the hole in the grass being formed and reformed that is not directly
00:39:09.960 explainable given the laws of physics because there are no naturally occurring interactions
00:39:14.760 that cause tiny holes in the grass to materialize and be maintained to a high accuracy unlike
00:39:21.160 planetary orbits the mole crickets holes in the grass of course obey the laws of physics but to
00:39:27.080 explain their persistence we need some additional bit of explanation involving the cricket likewise
00:39:33.640 to explain most transformations that happen accurately and reliably we need some additional
00:39:38.360 explanation this explanation will involve the concept of a catalyst but also of information
00:39:44.040 as defined in chapter three in terms of counterfactuals it will involve a particular type of information
00:39:50.520 which can enable itself perpetuation in chapter one I called it knowledge to explain how most
00:39:56.600 transformations happen to a high degree of accuracy in other words we need to resort to a new class
00:40:02.040 of counterfactuals pausing their my reflection yes I've made a big deal of this over some recent
00:40:08.040 podcasts of mine some very recent episodes the big deal being people will sometimes the
00:40:16.600 determinists will say well everything just abates the laws of physics as if that's an explanation
00:40:22.600 but it's not an explanation it's true something can be true and yet be next to in relevant
00:40:30.200 to the question at hand it's almost vacuous it's not utterly vacuous of course to say everything
00:40:37.000 that happens out there in the physical universe the universe abates the laws of physics
00:40:42.760 but that gets you not very far unless you're trying to explain exceedingly simple systems like
00:40:49.400 planets orbiting stars planetary orbit yes then you can explain that purely in terms of laws of
00:40:56.280 physics or when you have subatomic particles interacting can be explained purely in terms of laws of
00:41:02.440 physics you might even say that you know classically the high school undergraduate physics situation of
00:41:09.480 some objects sliding down a frictionless ramp can be explained purely in terms of laws of physics
00:41:15.560 although there you might have a little bit of a problem because even there one might wonder
00:41:20.440 why is that object going down the frictionless plane did someone let it go and if so why
00:41:27.480 so then we start to expand out with planetary orbits we don't need to worry about the why
00:41:33.160 who put that object in orbit we have other explanations for that the reductive explanation actually
00:41:39.320 gets you all the way to the answer for that so as as Chiara says here it's not really informative
00:41:46.120 to say that something like a cricket building a borough is simply obeying the laws of physics
00:41:51.720 that's not enough that's not going to be able to explain what's going on you need something deeper
00:41:57.800 there's knowledge there in the DNA of that cricket and that cricket then is able to construct
00:42:02.920 the whole because somewhere in that DNA of the cricket there is code for building holes
00:42:09.800 okay so now i'm going to skip quite a long passage quite a fair a few paragraphs
00:42:17.480 and Chiara talks about well what would it take to stop the building of holes in gardens of the
00:42:24.440 kind that the cricket builds well maybe in an extreme case you might say well kill the cricket
00:42:30.360 but as she says now that won't be enough killing that cricket won't stop holes being built
00:42:36.520 by crickets in general as she says even if you were to destroy all the crickets in your garden
00:42:42.120 there would be something that survives and that is the genome that codes for the mole cricket
00:42:47.720 the genome is information as i said in chapter three because it can be copied
00:42:51.960 during DNA replication so what you really should destroy is that piece of information
00:42:57.720 if that is not destroyed the cricket could always be brought back to life via
00:43:02.040 some laboratory experiment along the lines of what happened in the film Jurassic Park
00:43:06.040 and that would cause the whole making transformation to happen again and again just as before
00:43:10.360 so that piece of information contained in the genome is the thing that you would ultimately
00:43:14.840 have to destroy in order for the mole cricket activity to cease forever so the genome is the
00:43:20.840 thing one would have to exterminate in order to stop the transformations caused by a living entity
00:43:27.160 now i'm going to skip the next part where Chiara relates a story that Chiara tells this story
00:43:33.240 and the story is basically about how well it's a science fiction story that she read as a child
00:43:38.680 her father told her as a child about how in the future humans are trying to help these aliens
00:43:44.600 who are infected by a bacteria disease and the way they help the aliens is by programming
00:43:50.440 nanobots with the genome essentially the DNA of the bacterium in order to have the nanobots
00:43:57.640 attack the bacterium and so the nanorobots the miniature robots are able to get into the bacterium
00:44:04.280 and destroy that sequence of the genome to prevent the bacterium from replicating it's something
00:44:10.280 like that anyway but the point here is that the genome contains information information of what
00:44:17.240 kind is it abstract yes let's go back to the book Chiara says quote the genome is not an
00:44:25.480 ordinary catalyst it has two additional properties it is information because it can be copied
00:44:31.480 in the process of DNA replication and it causes itself to remain instantiated in physical
00:44:37.640 systems over generations because it guarantees that the organism for which it codes can survive
00:44:44.040 in a certain environment i shall call this type of information and abstract catalysts catalyst
00:44:50.920 as i said because it can enable transformations and retain the property of causing them again
00:44:57.240 abstract because its identity does not depend on the physical systems in which it is embodied
00:45:02.840 it can be copied from one embodiment to another without changing its properties it could be in
00:45:08.360 DNA or in a nanorobots computer according to our criteria in chapter three an abstract catalyst
00:45:15.080 is made of information for it is copyable also it is information that is capable of enabling
00:45:20.440 its own preservation in the terminology of chapter one it contains knowledge and quote
00:45:25.640 just my quick reflection here yes so we already know that DNA is a form of abstract knowledge
00:45:31.480 because we can read DNA we can sequence the genome which means that we take whatever information
00:45:37.880 is in the DNA of the cells of a human or any other organism can be taken and in the laboratory
00:45:43.080 a printout made and stored in the computer and then in even the further distant future you would
00:45:48.360 be able to take whatever that read out is in the computer where that information is in an abstract
00:45:54.280 form it's not made of DNA stuff it's not made of a double helix instead it is made of zeros and
00:46:00.920 ones being represented inside of a computer but that information could then be taken and then
00:46:07.320 turned back into DNA which is the double helix and this is what it means for something to be abstract
00:46:14.440 abstract information means that it is substrate independent it doesn't matter whether it's actually
00:46:21.560 physical DNA zeros and ones in a computer all in a possibly ridiculous case writing it out and
00:46:29.080 handwritten AGTC sequences of base pairs on a piece of paper that could in principle be done
00:46:36.440 but all of those whether it's the physical DNA itself whether it's the zeros and ones in a computer
00:46:42.040 whether it's AGTC written on pieces of paper would all represent the same bit of knowledge
00:46:49.480 that bit of knowledge which codes for the construction of some organism represented by that DNA
00:46:56.600 back to the book and Keira writes quote before moving on I want to clarify something important
00:47:02.760 I just said that a catalyst can enable or cause transformations on physical systems truth be told
00:47:09.800 the term causation has acquired especially in physics circles a bad reputation saying that a
00:47:16.040 catalyst has the ability to cause certain transformations could therefore be misunderstood
00:47:21.560 for one of these bad ways of looking at a cause but it isn't when we say that the catalyst causes
00:47:28.040 a transformation we mean simply that the transformation occurs only when the catalyst is available
00:47:34.440 and that the catalyst retains the property of making the transformation occur over and over again
00:47:40.680 although other notions of causes are problematic and seem arbitrary in physics
00:47:45.320 this one is not because it is clear when some system is or is not a catalyst for instance
00:47:52.120 one can say that the catalyst that produced a blue green algae cell is the parent cell
00:47:57.160 that originated it via self reproduction indeed the parent cell is the particular cell that is
00:48:03.320 capable of constructing the daughter cell by using the information in the DNA the DNA and the rest
00:48:09.000 of the cell in this context are only systems necessary to the transformation which also
00:48:14.520 stay the same in the ability to enable the transformation again before and after the transformation
00:48:20.280 the retention of this ability is a distinctive and objective feature of the catalyst which does not
00:48:26.040 apply to other elements in the environment for any transformation that occurs in physical reality
00:48:32.120 one can unambiguously identify a catalyst that is capable of realizing it and retaining the
00:48:38.440 ability to cause it again it is the catalyst for the transformation one can think of it as a cause
00:48:45.960 of the transformation how do we distinguish abstract catalysts from other kinds of information
00:48:51.240 we need to look for information that can enable transformations and is resilient again biology
00:48:56.840 seems to provide a useful example where abstract catalysts are distinguished from genetic information
00:49:02.520 think of a plant for instance a maritime pine tree standing on the librarian coast
00:49:07.720 even before visualizing the tree one can perceive it sent after the rain molecules of particular
00:49:13.160 chemicals called terpenes are released by the tree and cause the air to be permeated with that
00:49:18.360 characteristic fragrance zooming in one can take a closer look at the minute green needles
00:49:24.200 that line the trees branches going in closer still one reaches the level of a single cell of
00:49:29.880 the pine tree closer still and one is looking at a DNA strand inside the cell let's look for the
00:49:36.360 abstract catalysts in the cell every part of the DNA strand in the cell contains information
00:49:42.360 in the sense I explained earlier in this book this is because the strand is copyable it is
00:49:49.000 copied in the process of DNA replication when cells reproduce however only some pieces of that
00:49:54.520 DNA strand code for something these bits of what biologists would call adaptations
00:50:00.200 an adaptation as already mentioned in chapter one is a piece of information in the DNA
00:50:04.760 with the ability to enable a certain trait to emerge in the organism that hosts the DNA we say
00:50:11.240 that it codes for that particular trait for instance there is a bit of DNA that codes for the color
00:50:16.040 of the pine needles such as that particular shade of green that that pine trees have however
00:50:21.880 not all adaptations are resilient which is the other salient property of abstract catalysts
00:50:28.200 to be resilient in a given environment an adaptation needs to be useful it must increase
00:50:34.600 the probability that the genes that code for it will be passed on to the next generation
00:50:40.200 and preserved for generations in that given environment pausing the MRI reflection there we get
00:50:44.760 useful so remember we have this three pronged popularion doyched notion of what knowledge is
00:50:53.800 and jar is adding to that with the notion of resilience but it captures this same idea of
00:50:58.920 knowledge on the one hand being that kind of information which once instantiated somewhere
00:51:06.040 tends to cause itself to remain so I love that it's not so poetic but we can also say succinctly
00:51:11.560 that knowledge is useful information now one might very well ask what does it mean to say useful
00:51:18.200 what I would say is that there's the third part of this little fork of different ways of
00:51:23.160 coming to an understanding of what knowledge is in this popularian framework that being knowledge
00:51:30.120 is information that solves a problem and the problem here might be how to be passed on to the
00:51:37.400 next generation how it is that the species the genes whatever you however you want to frame this
00:51:43.000 how the the organism continues to survive or at least passes on it genes to the next generation
00:51:48.280 so that that species continues to survive because the genes continue to survive okay skipping a
00:51:54.120 partner just picking it up where kia writes quote being a useful adaptation guarantees the survival
00:52:00.680 of that piece of information with causal abilities it is what guarantees that it is resilient
00:52:07.080 and that it qualifies as an abstract catalyst so the information in a piece of DNA may or may not be
00:52:13.480 an abstract catalyst depending on whether or not it can propagate itself for generations
00:52:18.440 thus remaining instantiated in physical systems generalizing from this biology example
00:52:23.720 information that can enable transformations on physical systems must also be resilient
00:52:29.080 in order to qualify as an abstract catalyst so catalysts are systems that can enable transformations
00:52:35.720 and retain the ability to cause them again abstract catalysts are catalysts that are
00:52:41.320 copyable and can perpetuate themselves their catalysts made of resilient information
00:52:48.920 which we call knowledge supposing there going back and just repeating that because
00:52:55.320 that's knowledge dense there knowledge density about knowledge again abstract catalysts are
00:53:03.000 catalysts that are copyable and can perpetuate themselves their catalysts might of resilient
00:53:08.840 information which we call knowledge of words knowledge is resilient information as we learned in
00:53:14.920 chapter one of the science of canon cart let's keep going go right now an intriguing fact
00:53:21.960 though I'm about to explain is that all catalysts must contain an abstract catalyst
00:53:27.320 catalysts in other words must have some properties that are invariant no matter what transformation
00:53:33.000 they are intended for and that invariant part must be made of knowledge as I'm about to illustrate
00:53:38.520 this remarkable fact is due to the particular structure of the laws of physics in our universe
00:53:44.440 let's consider the example of assembling an aircraft from elementary components in the airbus
00:53:49.000 factory the elementary components are the subpart of the plane such as wings engines seats and
00:53:54.440 wheels but to be more expansive we can think of the whole process that produces an aircraft out
00:53:59.800 of even more elementary entities such as metals plastic and similar materials the whole factory
00:54:06.200 is the catalyst for this transformation where is the abstract catalyst as I said it is the thing
00:54:12.600 that ultimately one has to eliminate for the factory to stop working properly okay so
00:54:19.000 pausing their my reflection so this idea of the abstract catalyst is that one crucial thing
00:54:24.920 that would ensure that if you destroyed it you wouldn't have resilient information anymore
00:54:30.680 resilient information is knowledge knowledge is that information which continues to get itself
00:54:36.760 copied and replicated over time so what could possibly stop that destroying the abstract catalyst
00:54:41.400 where is the abstract catalyst in this particular case you can probably guess continuing
00:54:46.600 Kiara says imagine a slight modification to the factory for example by introducing a floor
00:54:52.680 in its production line if it is a well-run factory there is a way to fix the problem and thus
00:54:58.360 restore the production process so that changes in consequential for the output however
00:55:03.800 if you destroy the sequence of instructions for constructing the plane or the instructions
00:55:10.040 for repairing the factory the factory might have to shut down the recipe for the aircraft must
00:55:16.680 be copied for the factory to survive it is the abstract catalyst that keeps the factory going
00:55:22.760 for years this recipe is the set of instructions to realize the construction of the aircraft
00:55:28.120 to the accuracy set by the factory standards it is a recipe in the sense that it is a sequence of
00:55:33.560 steps that one has to follow in order to forge the metals into the shape of the plane the recipe
00:55:38.920 for a fully fledged aircraft is what allows the construction of the aircraft to happen reliably
00:55:45.080 because the final product is checked against the procedure until it meets the criteria set
00:55:49.720 by the quality control of the company also the recipe is preserved down the line for decades
00:55:54.520 so it is what allows aircrafts to be produced over and over again sometimes the recipe can be
00:56:00.200 slightly improved but it is preserved in its ability to create an aircraft that can fly safely
00:56:05.560 and swiftly thus aside from all the various things the factory contains there is a particularly
00:56:10.760 important piece of information which is copied from generation to generation in order for
00:56:16.200 aircrafts to be produced to the factory standard losing this recipe would make the factory fade away
00:56:23.320 and even if an alien civilization were to find the remains of the aircraft factory in order to
00:56:28.840 make it functional again they would have to find the recipe or figure it out themselves the recipe
00:56:34.200 is the abstract catalyst and it is made of knowledge pausing air more reflection and although
00:56:38.680 kia it doesn't say it here one would presume that if the aliens found a non functional factory
00:56:46.360 that's one thing even if all the raw materials were there but if the aliens also had
00:56:51.960 the aircraft fully functioning aircraft well then that aircraft contains the knowledge
00:56:59.160 implicit implicit not explicit but implicit within it of how to construct itself if they were
00:57:04.680 sufficiently careful and undid every nut and bolt very very carefully then they could rebuild the
00:57:11.720 thing they could replicate it so a fully functioning aircraft over here could lead to given a factory
00:57:19.160 another fully functioning copy of that aircraft over here it would be very hard it's not the
00:57:23.480 ideal way to do it you'd rather have a plan written out but in theory you could deconstruct the aircraft
00:57:29.320 produce a plan then reconstruct presumably as long as you're error correcting very carefully
00:57:34.840 very accurately along the way but in principle it could be done so this is the sensing which the
00:57:39.160 knowledge is there in object it's objective knowledge another for another way I'm talking about this
00:57:45.000 is of course reverse engineering let's keep going kia rights in order to be compatible with the
00:57:51.160 laws of physics we know the recipe must have the form of a sequence or combination of elementary
00:57:57.480 steps to see why we must understand that laws of physics do not contain any protocol to preserve or
00:58:03.240 create complex entities such as aircrafts or even wings or things of that type leave an aircraft
00:58:09.320 for a while in a desert without being repaired or checked and will soon become unfit to fly
00:58:14.440 as I said in chapter one the only thing that the laws of physics preserve directly
00:58:18.600 elementary components and interactions and elementary symmetries they are no design laws
00:58:24.600 ultimately physical laws provide only very simple types of transformations that can be performed
00:58:28.920 reliably without their being a recipe those corresponding to naturally occurring interactions
00:58:34.680 these are transformations that happens spontaneously such as the oxidation of the coating of an
00:58:39.000 aluminium surface or the molecules of air in an oven heating up the surface of a cake such transformations
00:58:45.160 are elementary steps that do not need for the maintenance to be realised in a stable manner in fact
00:58:50.440 they do not need to be specified in the recipe because they are implicit in the laws of physics
00:58:55.720 I've uncovered a regularity in the way abstract catalysts appear they must be realised as a
00:59:00.840 recipe a sequence of elementary steps non-specific to the output each of which does not require
00:59:06.840 further explanation and which can be considered as a direct consequence of physical laws
00:59:12.200 okay that's wonderful there I'm going to skip a part where we'll basically
00:59:17.720 carry just talks about how in biology we're familiar with the appearance of design organisms have
00:59:24.680 the appearance of design it's as if there is a designer behind the designer various things
00:59:30.680 but we know now that's not the case that evolution by natural selection explains how you can
00:59:36.600 have this ratcheting up of complexity over time and the increasing appearance of sophisticated
00:59:43.000 design but of course that appearance of design is better described as the illusion of design
00:59:49.080 anyway kara goes on to say quote whenever you see something with the appearance of design
00:59:54.680 that can last a long time you can rightly assume that some abstract catalyst is contained in it
1:00:01.720 I have said that most transformations that are possible in the physical world must occur via a
1:00:06.680 catalyst that enables them I've also noted that all catalyst must contain an abstract catalyst
1:00:11.960 which is itself made of knowledge as introduced in chapter one knowledge is defined entirely
1:00:17.960 via counterfactuals it is information that is capable of remaining instantiated in physical
1:00:25.080 systems unlike most definitions of knowledge the good thing about this one is it does not
1:00:31.480 depend upon their being and knowing subject and oh yes you better believe i'm going to repeat that
1:00:39.240 quote knowledge is defined entirely via counterfactuals it is information that is capable of
1:00:45.320 remaining instantiated in physical systems unlike most definitions of knowledge the good thing
1:00:51.400 about this one is that it does not depend it does not depend on there being a knowing subject
1:00:58.120 going on this way of looking at knowledge based on counterfactuals breaks with a long-standing
1:01:02.600 tradition which regards it as a chiefly anthropomorphic subjective concept that tradition says that
1:01:10.120 knowledge requires there to be a sentient being such as a human to exist knowledge in other words
1:01:16.680 would only exist in minds according to this idea knowledge appears to be subjective
1:01:22.040 something like that is very remote from the laws of physics in contrast knowledge as defined
1:01:27.720 here as it occurs in abstract catalysts is sharply different the main two differences are that
1:01:34.360 this entity is objective it can exist irrespective of whether there is a knowing subject
1:01:40.280 and it is a possible subject for physics as i said those are know the philosopher khalpop will
1:01:46.040 recognize the chief features of his epistemology in the characteristics of this concept
1:01:51.640 however with the science of canon can't i have related knowledge to physics
1:01:56.280 something beyond the domain of epistemology which we can do because we are using counterfactuals
1:02:02.840 in physics there have been several discoveries of new types of stuff for example at some point
1:02:08.680 it will realize that all engines use some type of energy heat and transform it to partially
1:02:14.200 into another type of energy work it was then natural to wonder how to express the laws about
1:02:20.120 these two types of energy and that gave rise to thermodynamics likewise in this case it is natural
1:02:25.720 to wonder can knowledge be created can it be destroyed can it be transformed this problem is a
1:02:33.160 deep one and it is only partially solved so far the science of canon cart provides an objective
1:02:40.280 handle on knowledge it gives us tools that may one day be used to answer these questions fully
1:02:45.560 posing their my reflection isn't that wonderful anyone who is interested in philosophy epistemology
1:02:51.880 and physics has a real opportunity to contribute to the frontiers of all those areas
1:02:59.160 by investigating the science of canon cart reading about constructor theory trying to push the
1:03:05.400 frontiers forward in constructor theory so anyway young people at their listing this would be a
1:03:10.360 wonderful opportunity to go into an area which hasn't so far proved to be a dead end like many of
1:03:16.120 those other kinds of cutting edge areas of physics that have been around for many many decades
1:03:21.560 and don't seem to be doing too much in the way of making progress towards solving particular
1:03:27.640 problems in physics but bringing epistemology within this fear of physics physics has this as
1:03:35.640 David Deutscher said before this totalitarian character of gradually coming to encompass every other
1:03:42.360 subject and now epistemology it's wonderful so this idea of counterfactuals being very much
1:03:49.880 at the heart of what epistemology is about and whether it's possible for a thing to be known
1:03:55.560 for this particular knowledge to be constructed whether this particular piece of knowledge can be
1:03:59.560 created or not is going to come down to physics that's exciting stuff okay I'm skipping a little
1:04:07.960 bit and then I'm picking it up where we're just getting right to the end of the chapter so this
1:04:13.000 will be the last bit that I read from the book from this book and Chiarites quote with this new
1:04:20.600 perspective we have a different angle on theories that deny that knowledge could be anything
1:04:25.160 substantial or of scientific interest on the grounds that it might be associated with an
1:04:30.200 anthropocentric attitude there is nothing anthropocentric in abstract catalysts their capacity
1:04:36.520 to enable transformations is objective in fact knowledge and knowledge creating entities
1:04:42.680 are singled out as significant properties of our universe but this is not as in religious
1:04:48.120 explanations because of some dogma it is because of a physical explanation knowledge is a
1:04:55.480 particular property that matter can have in our universe say that again knowledge is a particular
1:05:01.800 property that matter can have in our universe which exists when abstract catalysts are there
1:05:07.720 and it is fascinating to study its regularities how it comes into existence how it evolves
1:05:12.600 and whether it can be sustained and grow indefinitely and this becomes through this approach
1:05:19.400 via counterfactuals a problem for physics maybe one day we'll be able to solve it
1:05:27.480 end quote end of chapter five isn't that wonderful that is just absolute cutting edge epistemology
1:05:34.680 that is right at the edge of what is known about knowledge right now that we now have this
1:05:40.760 concept of an abstract catalyst this thing that contains the information allowing the transformation
1:05:47.320 of matter into some other kind of matter and which as I like to say enables us to solve our
1:05:54.440 problems and just by way of I suppose showing due respect to the person that started all this we
1:06:03.240 have the very latest in what knowledge is about there from kyama let her following the work of David Deutsch
1:06:10.600 let's have a look at what popper actually said it would be remiss of me to to not read just something
1:06:18.120 brief from objective knowledge where popper actually talks explicitly about objective knowledge
1:06:25.320 so again just to have the point on that knowledge should not be seen as something about
1:06:31.480 merely what people are thinking on a given topic that knowledge really is out there in the world
1:06:38.520 kyara's made that point forcefully there that it is part of physics importantly it is a property
1:06:45.000 that matter can have in our universe where did this all start who kicked this off well
1:06:50.680 popper himself and he wrote this is page 115 of the chapter that's called epistemology
1:06:57.160 without a knowing subject and he wrote quote one of the main reasons for the mistaken
1:07:03.880 subjective approach to knowledge is the feeling that a book is nothing without a reader only if it
1:07:10.840 is understood does it really become a book otherwise it is just paper with black spots on it
1:07:16.840 this view is mistaken in many ways a wasps nest is a wasps nest even after it has been deserted
1:07:25.240 even though it is never again used by wasps as a nest a bird's nest is a bird's nest even if it
1:07:31.320 was never lived in similarly a book remains a book a certain type of product even if it is never
1:07:37.560 read as may easily happen nowadays moreover a book driven a library need not even have been written
1:07:43.880 by anybody a series of books of logarithms for example may be produced and printed by a computer
1:07:49.880 it may be the best series of books of logarithms it may contain logarithms up to say 50 decimal
1:07:55.400 places it may be sent out to libraries but it may be found to cumbersome for use at any rate
1:08:01.960 years may elapsed before anyone uses it and many figures in it which represent mathematical
1:08:06.840 theorems may never be looked at as long as men live on earth yet each of these figures
1:08:12.920 contains what I call objective knowledge and the question of whether or not I'm entitled to
1:08:18.440 call it by that name is of no interest the example of these books of logarithms may seem far
1:08:24.440 fetched but it is not I should say that almost every book is like this it contains objective
1:08:30.040 knowledge true or false useful or useless and whether anybody ever reads it and really grasp
1:08:36.200 its content is almost accidental a man who reads a book with understanding is a rare creature
1:08:41.560 but even if he were more common there would always be plenty of misunderstandings and misinterpretations
1:08:47.880 and it is not the actual and somewhat accidental avoidance of such misunderstandings which turns
1:08:53.560 black spots on white paper into a book or an instance of knowledge in the objective sense
1:08:59.880 rather it is something more abstract it is its possibility or potentiality of being understood
1:09:07.080 its disposition or character of being understood or interpreted or misunderstood or misinterpreted
1:09:13.400 which makes a thing a book and this potentiality or disposition may exist without ever being
1:09:19.880 actualized or realized pausing their more affliction so that's just worth lingering on there
1:09:25.320 it's about potential possibility the possibility or potential of being understood or misunderstood
1:09:32.840 so if something could possibly be understood but never is or possibly misunderstood but never is
1:09:38.120 that's the point it doesn't matter whether it actually is misunderstood or actually is understood
1:09:42.600 it's just that it could be understood or misunderstood therefore it must contain knowledge of a kind
1:09:48.040 knowledge that is capable of being understood or misunderstood and as he says that it doesn't matter
1:09:52.840 whether that's actualized or realized that that that's inherent within itself inherent within
1:09:58.120 is kara might say it's a property of the matter itself that that matter contains information that
1:10:03.160 could be understood or not proper goes on to say quote to see this more clearly we may imagine
1:10:10.280 that after the human race is perished some books or libraries may be found by some civilized
1:10:15.320 successes of ours no matter whether these are terrestrial animals which have become more civilized
1:10:20.040 or some visitors from outer space these books may be deciphered they may be those logarithm
1:10:25.400 tables never read before for argument's sake this makes it quite clear that neither its composition
1:10:30.920 by thinking animals nor the fact that it has not actually been read or understood is essential
1:10:36.200 for making a thing a book and that it is sufficient that it might be deciphered thus I do admit
1:10:42.600 that in order to belong to the third world of objective knowledge a book should in principle
1:10:47.960 or virtually be capable of being grasped or deciphered or understood or known by somebody
1:10:54.120 but I did not admit more okay then Papa goes on to criticize a whole bunch of competing epistemologies
1:11:01.800 which are all very similar in very many ways but I can't let things go without mentioning
1:11:08.200 this passage from Papa which is I'm skipping forward to page 141 where he has some remarks on
1:11:14.120 probability theory and he writes quote nowhere has the subjectivist epistemology a stronger
1:11:22.440 hold than the field of the calculus of probability this calculus is a generalization of
1:11:29.400 Boolean algebra and thus of the logic of propositions it is still widely interpreted in a
1:11:35.320 subjective sense as a calculus of ignorance or of uncertain subjective knowledge but this amounts
1:11:41.320 to interpreting Boolean algebra including the calculus of propositions as a calculus of
1:11:46.840 certain knowledge of certain knowledge in the subjective sense this is a consequence which
1:11:52.360 few basians as the adherence of the subjective interpretation of the probability calculus now call
1:11:58.520 themselves will cherish this subjective interpretation of the probability calculus I have
1:12:04.200 combatted for 33 years fundamentally it springs from the same epistemic philosophy which
1:12:10.920 attributes to the statement I know that snow is white a greater epistemic dignity than to
1:12:16.760 the statement snow is white I do not see any reason why we should not attribute still greater
1:12:23.160 epistemic dignity to the statement in the light of all the available evidence to me I believe
1:12:28.360 that it is rational to believe that snow is white the same could be done of course with probability
1:12:33.880 statements okay and obviously there is far more to be gained by reading this in terms of
1:12:40.840 understanding the nature of objective knowledge but for now I think we've covered everything from
1:12:50.200 where it began this notion of objective knowledge to where we are as of 2021 and our appreciation
1:12:57.160 of the cutting edge of epistemology really where we are in the most modern sense where we've
1:13:01.960 done away with criticized refuted those other subjectiveest notions of what knowledge is which
1:13:08.200 have plagued philosophers and unfortunately still plague especially academic philosophers
1:13:13.720 even through to today and which students of philosophy are still taught and of course as we
1:13:19.880 often complain here proper simply isn't studied enough that people often have to leave academic
1:13:28.680 institutions in order to really get a handle on what Papa says about these important issues of
1:13:36.680 objective knowledge philosophy more broadly but hopefully one day there might be an institution of
1:13:41.160 some kind who wants to take on you know degree programs in Papa and construct a theory I'm sure
1:13:49.080 that would be absolute anathema to David Deutsch but maybe it would be a completely non-coercive
1:13:58.120 way of teaching a new generation of people how to make objective progress out there in the world
1:14:05.560 after all the moment the universities seem to be in a difficult situation let's just say that
1:14:13.640 but for now until next time when we are up to episode 99 of Topcast which will be a special one
1:14:20.120 episode 100 will be a special one which will be the full interview with David Deutsch and indeed
1:14:25.000 episode 101 and maybe 102 will be a special one as well and ask me anything episode and my
1:14:32.360 patreon's we'll get we'll get first kick of the ball so to speak in asking me a question they've
1:14:36.920 asked me on patreon I've put the call out on twitter if you'd like to ask me a question for
1:14:41.320 and ask me anything episode I'm not planning on doing these particularly regularly at this point
1:14:46.440 but maybe episode 101 and episode 102 possibly will be devoted to me responding to questions from
1:14:52.920 people who have questions about the last 100 episodes of Topcast but until next bye bye
