The Principle of Optimism
Time stamp - 54:18
Chris Anderson:
I just want to ask you this last question David, which is, if you could implant in the minds of the good majority of people on this planet a single idea what would that idea be?
David Deutsch:
I think it's got to be the idea of optimism, that all evils are due to lack of knowledge.
Chris Anderson:
Wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait yes you so you just gave a definition of optimism there that is not what most people think of as optimism. Most people think of optimism as a feeling of hope about the future your definition's different so explain that.
David Deutsch:
Well hope that isn't based on an explanatory theory is what they call a vain hope. It's whistling in the dark. Optimism as I define it has to do with knowledge. It's not a prediction of the future. It's an explanation of failure. If you explain failure as being inevitable, or due to some insuperable malevolent force, or just the way things are then that's a recipe for stasis, which is a recipe for failure and eventually death.
Therefore I think that all failure has to be explained in the form: The reason we didn't succeed is that we didn't know how to and the knowledge of how to is in principle attainable. We don't have it now but we could have it in the future if we do the right thing.
In fact it follows from this whole conception of knowledge that we've been talking about all this time that optimism has to be true otherwise there would be a limitation which would mean the supernatural and all that stuff. The arguments are watertight all the way from the scientific worldview to optimism in my view.
Chris Anderson:
So here's here's how I would distill this David Deutsch world view which I have to say David I find quite an inspiring world view. So here we are this homo sapien you know we've had this surprising moment of liftoff where we're able to create new knowledge, new understanding, but it's a fragile thing. It's full of errors, full of mistakes. If we could inspire everyone out there to adopt the mindset that knowledge was precious and that when things go wrong on our planet it's not because there's some evil force there that needs punching in the gut and spitting out. It's just because we're not understanding something and our job and our duty is to seek to understand, to look for those errors, to correct them, and if we were to adopt that mindset then there's there's literally no limit to the journey that we can go on together, a journey of growing knowledge and unlimited creativity. And kind of like lives of wonder and so forth. I mean that's what I take from you that knowledge is not a thing for schools, libraries, or whatever. It's this superpower that humans have developed if they're willing to look at it the right way.
David Deutsch:
Well put. I agree and we must also expect to make lots of mistakes. Knowing that the problem is to create the knowledge doesn't mean there's an automatic way of creating it. In fact, it's conjectural, we're going to make many mistakes that's why we have to set up institutions that can correct them.
Chris Anderson:
And so mistakes should be viewed as gifts in a way as long as you learn from them and adjust as a result of them. They're a gift.
David Deutsch:
John Wheeler said that our whole problem is to make the mistakes as fast as possible (without dying of course).
[Laughter]