Modern WisdomWhy Pessimism Makes Dumb Ideas Sound Smart - David Deutsch
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
55 min read · 11,272 words- 0:00 – 4:19
How is Knowledge Created?
- CWChris Williamson
People of the UK and Ireland, I'm coming to you live. Imagine that, me on stage in your city. Dublin is completely sold out, but everywhere else has got limited tickets left, and you can get yours now at chriswilliamson.live. This is a custom-built live show. I absolutely adore it. I've spent over a year working on it. So if you're a fan of everything Modern Wisdom, come and see me on stage this October around the UK and Ireland, chriswilliamson.live. I'm kind of fascinated in your worldview from, uh, a personal perspective, from a person's perspective. You know, we can talk about how important it is for a society or for civilization or for humanity as a whole to think about the importance of optimism and our capacity to solve problems and stuff like that. I'm kind of interested in how an individual takes that as well. I think that might be an interesting tension. Uh, obviously, we've had all of this most recent stuff about anthropic researchers leaving and, and a bit over fears of AI and, and then super intelligence and recursive stuff. I don't know if you're interested in that or if you're kind of a little bit bored of it. I, I've been talking about it a lot. Um, I'm also interested in w- how your worldview's changed over the last 15 years since the last book, human potential and stuff like that. So we can, we can start off and then scurry down whatever rabbit holes sound interesting if, if that seems good to you.
- DDDavid Deutsch
Sure.
- CWChris Williamson
Wonderful.
- DDDavid Deutsch
Sure. By the way, I, I think I agree with that maxim. So, uh, you know, when- whenever someone doesn't understand you, it's your fault, not theirs.
- CWChris Williamson
Say more.
- DDDavid Deutsch
Unless they're a golden retriever.
- CWChris Williamson
[laughs]
- DDDavid Deutsch
That's, that's it, literally. [laughs]
- CWChris Williamson
Are you telling me that I've got a get out of jail free card today?
- DDDavid Deutsch
Uh, yeah, yeah. You, you're human, yes.
- CWChris Williamson
Say more on that. Why, why is it, uh, the, the fault of misunderstanding, why does that lie in a, a, an odd direction to-
- DDDavid Deutsch
Um, so I'm, um, as you well know, I, I'm a follower of the philosopher Karl Popper, and, uh, he has a, a theory of knowledge which is, uh, in my view, streets ahead of everyone else in the, in the 20th century. He, uh, he, he's, he's... He, he has a strange, strange kind of reputation because he's, um, very well-known, highly respected, you know. People always put him on the list of the 10 top philosophers or something like that. And in science especially, they always talk about Popper's criterion for distinguishing science from, uh, philosophy or from pseudoscience. And yet, his actual philosophy is not very well understood. And, and, um, one of the tenets of his philosophy is that there is only one way of creating knowledge. The, the details are different, but knowledge as created by the process of evolution, uh, as created by a scientist, a mathematician, a child learning to speak their first language, those processes are all more alike than they are different. The, the differences are pretty inessential. And, uh, uh, in, in particular, the, the process of learning something new, like learning a new law of physics that one has discovered or learning an existing piece of knowledge, like from someone, someone else, that is all the same process mentally. In all of them, the, um, the knowledge that is learned comes from within the learner. So you're, you're learning something... You, you can't download it like a computer. You have to guess what the other person means. And at first you will guess wrong, and so you will have to test those guesses and, and so on. So the, the, um, if, if that process goes wrong, it is because the, uh, the, the, uh, teacher or the professor or-
- CWChris Williamson
The communicator. Yeah
- DDDavid Deutsch
... yeah, the communicator, um, has, uh, not pitched it to meet your problem situation. So, uh, yes, go ahead.
- 4:19 – 10:01
Do We Misunderstand Being Wrong?
- CWChris Williamson
Why... Or w- what is it that most people misunderstand about being wrong? I think we all have this aversion to making mistakes, to not understanding, to, uh, putting errors into the way that we understand the world or how it is that we're interpreting something else. Is there a better framing for how sh- people should think about wrongness?
- DDDavid Deutsch
Uh, yes. Um, so, um, a- as Popper said, I, I... You're gonna have to stop me quoting him ev- ev- every minute or two. Um, uh, we are all alike in our infinite ignorance. Or, or longer, um, uh, we may all know different things, piece... different pieces of knowledge, but in our infinite ignorance, we are all alike.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- DDDavid Deutsch
So this all comes from the idea that since there's an infinite w- distance to go and we all have different finite amounts of knowledge, um, we, we are all at, like I say in, in my book, uh, we're all at the beginning of infinity. We're, we're only ever at the beginning. And so, uh, we, we have something in common with everyone else who is also at the beginning. And, and to hold oneself up as an authority is a philosophical mistake as well as, um, a, a, a, a, what can you call it? A sociological mistake or a cultural mistake. It's, it's, um, it's a power play rather than a participation in the growth of knowledge which, which we should all be participating in.
- CWChris Williamson
How should someone hold strong convictions if we all kind of need to remember that we can be completely mistaken at all times and we are vast in our ignorance and partial in our knowledge?
- DDDavid Deutsch
Yes. Um, well, as you're suggesting here, it's, it's a psychological matter, so, uh, we should not be looking for certainty. We should be looking f- to correct errors. So when, when... Sometimes when people say, "Oh, I'm certain about something," it, it means that they have investigated all the possible ways it could be different, and they satisfied themselves that those are all wrong, and they have their reasons, and they... But more often, certainty is regarded as, as a, a virtue. Uh, in, in, in past times, um, faith, obedience, um, th- that sort of state of mind was regarded as virtuous. And people, um, judged not only each other but themselves according how, to how much of that they had. Now, uh, i- in modern times, especially with the growth of knowledge, uh, accelerating more and more in the last couple of hundred years, uh, everyone's had the experience of... Well, everyw- every adult, let's say, [laughs] has had the experience of being proved wrong about something that they were sure was right or something happened that they were sure would never happen. Um, th- that's, uh... And, and so one should, um, infer from that experience. People don't, but one should infer from that experience that the subjective sensation of being certain is no guide to the truth. It's, it's no guide at all. And, uh, neither is... And th- this is a bit h- even harder to, like, internalize. Neither is e- the extent of knowledge or ignorance because somebody can be very ignorant or even very malevolent, and yet on a particular thing, they might have the truth and you might not.
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- DDDavid Deutsch
So it's no good saying, "That's a bad person. I won't listen to them," uh, because you might be missing the, the one truth that would save you. So, uh, like again, like I say in the book, if, if y- if your enemy says that, uh, he's gonna come and kill you, um, it might be advisable to believe your enemy when you disbelieve your friend who says, "Oh, don't m- don't mind him. He, he's, he's just, um, the bark is worse than his bite."
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- DDDavid Deutsch
So you see, it has nothing, it has nothing to do with being knowledgeable. It has nothing to do with being benevolent. We're all alike in our fallibility. So the only way to judge ideas is not by someone's authority or by one's own authority or by how sure one is, but only by the criterion of whether you have a good explanation for why that truth is, is, uh, h- has had its errors corrected better than all the other truths you've heard or can think of.
- CWChris Williamson
I can imagine a situation where this, this becomes or at least it feels to an individual very effortful to go through the entire working of the equation in order to arrive at the truth as opposed to using the shortcuts, as opposed to saying, "Well, this person seems to be from an illustrious background, and they have been right about other things before seemingly," or other people seem to respect their opinion, or they're saying it with a level of fervor that implies that they know what they're talking about. Uh,
- 10:01 – 21:29
Why We Should Never Aspire to Be Certain
- CWChris Williamson
what is a practical way for people to not take half of the afternoon to decide which sandwich they want or which would be a more optimal y- yogurt to purchase? W- how can people sort of apply this to life without it becoming clunky and, and slowing them down?
- DDDavid Deutsch
So, so we, we have a theory, um, a- about situations that we're in. Uh, you know, you, you talk about sandwiches. So, uh, I, I go, uh, into town and buy a sandwich from, from a sandwich shop. And how do I know it's not poisoned? How, how do I know it's not off? Uh, how do I know that, that I haven't been handed the wrong sandwich, and, and so on? Well, as you say, if I went back to first principles to work all that out, um, it, it would take all afternoon, and I would be starving to death by the time I ate anything.
- CWChris Williamson
[laughs]
- DDDavid Deutsch
So, uh, the, the rational thing to do, as I said, is to form a theory. I have a theory about how chains of sandwich shops work, how, how they are regulated, uh, for example, by the government or by the market or, or, um, the, the shop may have a particular ethos that I think they really do have rather than, uh, pretending and so on. In the case where I can't say that, then I will have to use different criteria. And, uh, in that particular case, I myself would not buy a sandwich [laughs] unless, unless I had those... that kind of history and that, that kind of idea of where this is coming from, where it's coming from intellectually as well as where it's coming from physically, uh, i- in mind. Um, so you don't, you don't have to go through the whole thing because, in short, not only can I... am I able to criticize ideas myself- I'm able to formulate and criticize ideas about other people.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- DDDavid Deutsch
It's just that when I formulate an idea about b- about the, the knowledge of, uh, you know, the doctor or, or the, um, the airline engineers who, who prepared the airplane that I'm going to fly on, um, uh, the, the... Uh, I don't go by their reputation. I go by that theory, and a small fact can destroy a large reputation.
- CWChris Williamson
Uh-huh. Uh-huh.
- DDDavid Deutsch
Like, if, if I'm due to fly and then I, I read in the newspaper in the morning that that airline has had a scandal where their engineers have, have been shoddy in preparing the plane, I may well not fly. Even though, um, I may also think that the chance of the plane going wrong with me on it are actually tiny, but, you know, maybe now they're only one in 1,000 and ideally I'd like it to be one in a million.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- DDDavid Deutsch
But I could be wrong, always.
- CWChris Williamson
Does that mean... Is certainty something that we should ever aspire to?
- DDDavid Deutsch
Oh, no, we should aspire not to have any. In fact, we should-
- CWChris Williamson
Should we aspire to uncertainty then?
- DDDavid Deutsch
Uh, yes. Uh, I mean, [laughs] if, if you want a, a life of scientific research, then it's highly desirable that you enjoy the sensation of being baffled, of, of being in a state of conflict, of thinking, "Well, now it looks like this, this is true, but it can't be true." And that sensation is, for example, what a- what attracts me to, to, uh, to scientific research. I, I, I don't think one should even aspire to believe anything. I think belief is a, i- is a corrupt kind of category that has come down to us from, from Plato and, and later from, from Christianity, uh, and Islam and so on. M- most religions don't ha- don't value belief. They, they value, um, ritual and, uh, conformity and ways of life. Belief was something introduced by Christianity, and it's rather weird if you think about it. As, as, um, Percy Shelley said, uh, in the, in the, um, in the essay for which he got expelled from Oxford University, he pointed out that you, you can't believe or disbelieve something by an act of will.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- DDDavid Deutsch
It's got to become via your reason. Therefore, calling disbelief a, an immoral thing doesn't make sense.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. Do you know Oscar Wilde's idea of the Oxford manner? Have you come across this?
- DDDavid Deutsch
Don't think so, no.
- CWChris Williamson
Beautiful. It's just this one, one line. He refers to the Oxford manner as the ability to play gracefully with ideas rather than sort of falling into violent or rigid opinions. And I think in my world, which is significantly less salubrious than, uh, uh, academia, but, um, maybe just as cutthroat and as much backbiting, um, the, the internet is really quick to show its own smarts by pointing out the flaws of others. And one of the problems that I've found is that the ability to put on a, a hypothetical hat, or in, in my, uh, parlance, a bro scientist hat, um, look, I'm just... I'm trying to play gracefully with ideas. Please give me enough degrees of freedom here to maybe be wrong. Um, but because... How would you say? Like, production and publication of ideas are one and the same on the internet, so you're coming up with things in real time, and then they're kind of broadcast out into the world, which means there is no s- there is no scratch pad. There is no whiteboard that's not publicly available. The whiteboard and the lecture kind of become one and the same. Uh, and that means, uh, I... That's been lost, at least in a way that a lot of people consume, uh, ideas and, and understand information and sort of see the debate go on. And I get the sense that kind of what's happened over the last decade or so is a slow increase in the seductivity of certainty and a derogation of uncertainty or incongruence or, you know, like a lack of coherence or something like that because it becomes a target immediately for people on the internet or, or, uh, critics or, um, you know, naysayers or enemies or whatever to kind of point the finger. "Look, he doesn't know that much about this thing 'cause he was pontificating and playing and trying to play gracefully with ideas, therefore that means that he must be wrong about da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da as well," which is, um, I guess in one way we could call this weaponized uncertainty, that it is being used as a tool to kind of, uh, dismiss someone as a, a wider, a wider thinker as opposed to, hey, like, this is cool. Like, he's prepared to... I mean, he missed the mark with that, but it's fun. He's, he's able to try and play gracefully with ideas. I thought that kind of related here.
- DDDavid Deutsch
Yes. Um, ideally Twitter or X, um, i- is the ideal, um, medium for conjecture, for just throwing ideas out and then having them criticized and come back to you and so on. But because of the phenomenon you're talking about, you can't really do that, and, uh, I, I have long ago stopped doing that on Twitter. So I-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm
- DDDavid Deutsch
... I, uh, think twice and three times and four times before putting something on Twitter, on X. Uh, and, uh, one thing that's possible to... I, I, and it's possible to take a middle ground and say... I either ask it as a question, uh, does anyone think so and so is true?
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
- DDDavid Deutsch
Or you could say, "I guess so and so might be true." Um, or, "If so and so were true, then it might, it might answer this other question." So that's it, but-
- CWChris Williamson
Look at the throat-clearing land acknowledgement that we need to do before we actually put an idea out in a desperate attempt to dampen its impact
- DDDavid Deutsch
Yes. Yes. Well, um, I- I think it's, it's inevitable. I mean, there, there are, there are plenty of other places to, to, um, publish conjectures. Um-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm. The dinner table, maybe.
- DDDavid Deutsch
Uh, yes, uh, in private or, or in a private chat or, or in a, a more public thing where one labels it as conjecture. For example, I, I have just... I'm just finishing a book on the Fermi paradox or the, or the, the Fermi problem. And, uh, I have, uh, I have some conjectures there, which I think are... Well, it's, it's slightly strange. I, I think they're poss- they're, they're possible solutions to the, to the Fermi problem. But I am sure, certain, [laughs] you know, which I shouldn't be-
- CWChris Williamson
Seduced
- DDDavid Deutsch
... that they are not true. But I, I just would like to put them out there, uh, in the form, look how easy it is to make up ideas about this and for them to be wrong. That's the idea.
- 21:29 – 23:53
Will We Ever Solve the Fermi Paradox?
- CWChris Williamson
So you're saying that if you have this nascent, uh, early stage idea and you put that out, somebody comes in with a certainty and criticism which cuts off at the knees the progress of this particular, uh, idea of yours. You rob yourself from the opportunity of being wrong in a new way or wrong in multiple new ways, which would give you the idea. That is so fun. Uh, also, I, I've, I've gotta call you out for this. The fact that you have been able to deal or try and play gracefully with ideas with regards to the Fermi problem by constructing an entire new fictional universe in an attempt to get yourself a, a, a few million light years of distance away from potential criticism is, is kind of hilarious. What did you... What have you come to believe about the... It's also cool that you call it the Fermi problem, not the paradox, I suppose. What have you come, what have you come to believe about the Fermi problem?
- DDDavid Deutsch
Uh, we don't know the answer. Uh, it, it's, it's, you could also call it the Fermi mystery or... But, but, you know, it's not so unusual. We, [laughs] we, we don't know most things, so we don't know whether, whether we are alone in the universe. We, we might be or we might not be. Uh, the point I wanted to make is that, that, um, it's easy to come up with explanations for why, why the, why the aliens or their, their robots are not here yet. It, it's, um... Uh, so this is, this is not of the form, l- like I said, of, of the form of problems I like, namely, it looks as though it must be so and so, and yet it looks, also looks as though it can't be so and so.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- DDDavid Deutsch
So that, that, that's the kind of th- thing that I, I enjoy thinking about because th- there, there are two things which appear to be in collision and, uh, like quantum gravity. And, and no matter how you think about it, no matter how... w- whatever angle you look at it, it still, it still seems like a collision. So that's the... But, but the Fermi problem is not really... It, it's really a collision between one fantasy and another fantasy. It's, it's, uh-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm
- DDDavid Deutsch
... uh, we just don't know. Uh, get over it.
- CWChris Williamson
[laughs]
- 23:53 – 28:41
Is Optimism the Most Rational Worldview?
- CWChris Williamson
Okay. Uh, getting back down to terra firma, is it fair to say that you hold optimism as a philosophical stance?
- DDDavid Deutsch
Yes. Yes. Although by optimism, I don't mean having a cheerful outlook on life or thinking that everything is going to be all right. As a matter of principle. Um, I, I mean that, uh, whenever something goes... It, it's more of a explanation for failure than a prophecy of success. It's, it's, uh, like whenever something goes wrong, it's because we had not yet created the knowledge to make it go right. It's always a matter of knowledge.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- DDDavid Deutsch
So, uh, uh, what you asked earlier about when, when you fail to persuade someone of something or when you fail to, uh, teach someone something, it's because you haven't yet thought of the way of meeting their problem. Oh, and, uh, of whether you really should be meeting their problem or may- maybe you should both go and do something better.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- DDDavid Deutsch
So, you know, why, why, why does... Is it really necessary for this other person to agree with you on this thing? So, um, so th- th- that's a uniform application of optimism. Um, and, and pessimism is the opposite. It's, it's where you regard failure as a barrier, as a barrier to ever getting out of the situation or solving the problem or go- g- get- going from bad to good.
- CWChris Williamson
Right.
- DDDavid Deutsch
Going from bad to good is, is only, is, is always possible. And when we fail, it is always because we don't yet have the knowledge to succeed.
- CWChris Williamson
Should this broader worldview around optimism, should that extend to how we feel about our own lives individually? 'Cause I have to assume that if you see failure as a, a way marker on route towards success, that's quite agentic, it's sort of personal determination. I have some sovereignty here. Uh, I, I imagine it must be difficult... 'Cause you, you mentioned it's not just having a sort of cheerful, rosy outlook on life. But I imagine it, in some ways, it must be quite difficult to maintain a non-rosy, non-cheerful outlook on life if you have a worldview that is predicated on this kind of optimism because you're going to see your own personal struggles through the lens of, "Well, I j- I just need some more knowledge, and I'm sure that I can overcome this thing, or I can make the decision that I don't need to overcome this thing." I'm interested in how this sort of relates to the individual and how they do deal with adversity and, and, and challenges in their own life.
- DDDavid Deutsch
Um, so optimism is no guarantee that you will solve the problem. You, you, you know, you might have a terminal illness and, and the, the doctor says to you, "You've got X time to live." And you might think, well, you might think correctly, that's because we don't yet have the medical knowledge. Okay, that, that doesn't mean that there, there exists a way of you to quickly bone up on, on all the relevant medical knowledge, solve that problem, cure that disease, and then survive. Although, that has happened remarkably often.
- CWChris Williamson
Somebody who's been diagnosed with something that's supposedly terminal has just speed run the, the solution for it and fixed themselves.
- DDDavid Deutsch
Yes. It has happened, so it's not impossible.
- CWChris Williamson
That's like those, uh, those wartime, um, medics f- where they were the only medic available in the tent, and somehow they'd got shot, and you see these guys without anesthetic, with a scalpel out, operating on himself. It feels a little bit like that.
- DDDavid Deutsch
Yes, yes. Uh, and, and, uh, the, the lack of knowledge there might extend further than just the knowledge of how to perform an operation on yourself. I mean, you know, there's a war going on. That in itself should not have happened. W- with better knowledge, it would not have happened. But again, that, that's not a formula for correcting it yourself in the tent.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- DDDavid Deutsch
So, uh, o- on the other hand, you can't say what, what you will solve. You, you, you might, you might, you might solve it. But the, the... In, in regard to what you do, you do not think this is insoluble. You do not think this is how far reason can reach, and from now on, reason doesn't have any access. That's always false.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
- 28:41 – 31:42
Why Does Pessimism Masquerade As Sophistication?
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, I wonder, why do you think it is that pessimism so often masquerades as sophistication?
- DDDavid Deutsch
Ah, um, I thought you were going to ask a different question. Yeah, why it, why it masquerades as sophistication? Because, uh, it... So, um, say you're writing a story, uh, ab- about some characters who, who, the, you, the... You're making the, uh, reader like the characters and, and suddenly one of the characters, um, is gonna get killed and, um, you know, and, and, and you're thinking, "Can they be saved? Can they be saved?" And in the last chapter, they're not saved.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- DDDavid Deutsch
Now, that is easy to write because, um, knowledge in fiction is very hard to create, just as in real life. If to, to make a realistic story about how this situation which you've set up to look as though that favored character is going to die, how that can end up with, with them see- being saved-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm
- DDDavid Deutsch
... um, is, is, is hard. It's, it's similarly hard to solving it in real life. So, some authors just pull the, the, the solution out of a hat. The, this deus ex machina, as the ancient Greeks presumably didn't say. Um, so, uh, if you do that- The audience will be disappointed. They'll, they'll say, "Oh, uh, you know, we've, we've been had. I, I've just, I've just spent, you know, two hours watching this movie or, or several days reading this long novel and, and, uh, i- i- the author has led me along, and then he's tricked me at the end. He's, he hasn't delivered."
- CWChris Williamson
It was all a dream.
- DDDavid Deutsch
Y- well, for example, yeah. That's another, that's another way of doing it. So it, it's all a dream. So, but similarly, what is not really realized is that the opposite tactic of saying not only does he die, but everybody dies, like in Hamlet.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- DDDavid Deutsch
Um, that is equally a cop-out. Anyone can write that ending, just like anyone can write the deus ex machina ending. What you need to, to do is to solve the problem so that you will have told the reader some knowledge, some... And, you know, if it's a good novel, it's, it's... it should be knowledge about life in general, which they can use to understand the world and their own life and their friends and, and so on. It, it should enrich the person. But having it, having it end unhappily is always a cheat. Um, and, uh, that's, that's, um, that's true whether it's a happier or a sad ending pulled out of a hat.
- 31:42 – 37:27
Should We Be Afraid of AI?
- CWChris Williamson
What's a current problem that you think people are most unnecessarily pessimistic about right now?
- DDDavid Deutsch
Um, well, I guess it's the, uh, AI doom, uh, scenario. Um, it, it might be the, it might be the climate catastrophe scenario. Uh, I, I'm not sure exactly whether it's the same people who, who-
- CWChris Williamson
[laughs]
- DDDavid Deutsch
... who are, are worried about both or different kinds of people.
- CWChris Williamson
I think the Venn diagram's probably got a, a, a good bit of crossover, yeah.
- DDDavid Deutsch
Yeah. Um, uh, th- they are both examples of, uh, of, um, looking at a problem and thinking of it as a barrier. So you, you, you ha- you, you say, "So and so could happen. We could, could all die." Uh, you're not taking into account that that is true. That is always true. That has always been true every day that the human species has existed.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- DDDavid Deutsch
It's always been true that we could be hit by a comet and all die. Uh, in fact, just recently, the probability of that has gone down drastically because we have finally turned our attention as a species to the problem of diverting comets and asteroids. But if they're big enough, we still can't do it. Um, but, but still, the, the probability of it has, has gone down. Um, people used to worry about things like the oxygen will run out of the air because we're consuming oxygen, and, you know, where's it gonna come from? And, and, um, and people have, um, w- worried about things that aren't even a rational fear, like, like the apocalypse or, you know, the world is going to end on such and such a day, and we'll all be judged wanting and so on. Um, so, um, yeah, at, at the moment, I think it's the AI thing and, and the, uh, climate catastrophe thing. It's, it's not that those fears couldn't come true. It's that when you see them in perspective, you see that it's an arbitrary choice to pick those things. In, in, in a slightly different universe, we're, we're, we're still worrying about something else, or we're, we're worrying about whatever the next thing is, which we can't predict yet.
- CWChris Williamson
So you hold, I would imagine, a, uh, rather unpopular opinion in the modern world, which is that AGIs aren't going to pose much greater risk than, than humans already are. What's your, what's your perspective at the moment on this AGI thing? I mentioned to you earlier on this Jacob Cop- Coxon guy who was at, um, uh, OpenAI, I think, for about three years, and he was at Anthropic recently, and he tweeted yesterday, uh, "I resigned from Anthropic today. I spent the last three years doing pre-training research at both OpenAI and Anthropic. Neither company is acting responsibly. They are racing towards self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives." Some other safety researcher from Anthropic said there's a more than 10% chance that advanced AI could kill all humans within the next decade. Models potential- like, have a low risk at the moment, but future systems could become more capable, et cetera, et cetera. What... How do you come to... Given your background, quantum computing, et cetera, what... How do you come to think about this conversation?
- DDDavid Deutsch
So I, I, I think it's, it's, uh, it's not a justified fear as, [laughs] as I've just said, uh, for reasons I've just said. But, you know, I'm old, and I remember when people were saying this about nuclear reactors, and they said it so loudly and so often that people stopped making nuclear reactors, thereby causing the present climate, uh, problem. So they, they, um, uh, they didn't know. They picked... From my point of view, they picked at random one of the many bad things that could happen, but we don't know whether they will or whether they will or won't, but there's no particular reason to think that they will, even though they could. And they picked that one at random, and they alarmed everybody. And people took drastic action to avoid that alarm with catastrophic results. Um, the, the, the worst effect on the environment that the, that our species has ever had, uh, was the, the turn away from nuclear power. So, uh, if we turn away from artificial intelligence, um, uh, because of a similar fiction, um- Will it be... N- n- no. I was, I was gonna say it might well be a bigger catastrophe. Uh, I think I was a bit tempted to say something dramatic. No, I-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, yeah
- DDDavid Deutsch
... I think it would be a big catastrophe, but not as big.
- CWChris Williamson
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- 37:27 – 44:08
Why LLMs Can’t Take Over the World
- CWChris Williamson
I don't know. I, I spent a good bit of time over the last few months in, in SF and, and talking to people on every side of the fence, including sort of with the fence up inside of them as well, straddle- straddling both sides. Um, certainly f- at least a, a relatively uncontroversial opinion seems to be LLMs are not the architecture that can get us to something that is very scary, uh, that, that is going to be able to take over the world. Is that something that you would agree with?
- DDDavid Deutsch
Absolutely. I think that follows directly from, uh, Popper's epistemology, uh, because the, the, uh, LLMs do not have a module [laughs] in them, uh, capable of creativity.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- DDDavid Deutsch
So they, they, they are, um... I mean, they, they can do remarkable things, and a few years ago, I wouldn't have guessed that this kind of functionality is on the horizon for another 50 years. And yet, it came all at once, and, uh, the... everything worked, one after the other. And the people who did it think that AGI is going to work as well for the same reason. But, uh, the, the, uh, present, the present, um, LLM-based AIs, not only have they not shown any sign of AGI, but we know how they work, or at least some people know how they work. I don't. But, [laughs] but, but, uh, uh, we do know that, that the people who designed them did not say, "Now we know what creativity really is. Now we can program it, and all we need is some super computers, and we, we..." Uh, they, they, they didn't say that. They, they said, "Now, now we can build a language model which will be able to speak English properly." And I would be like, "Uh, good luck with that."
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- DDDavid Deutsch
And, and they did. But, uh, it, it's one thing to a- achieve, uh, functionality that makes sense epistemologically and to achieve it much faster than was thought, and it, it's another to achieve a, uh, functionality that violates our best theory of what knowledge is. And that's another thing. People who think that LLMs are going to deliver AGI don't say, for example, "Well, Popper had only an approximation to the, to the true theory of knowledge. He, he didn't realize that, that there's, there's, there's, um, a, a gap in his theory, and this gap we have filled. We know how to fill that gap. And so if you just use his old theory, you'll say that, uh, AGI is impossible this way. But if you're, if you know what we know, then, then you'll see why it's possible." They're not claiming that. They're saying it'll just happen-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah
- DDDavid Deutsch
... if they have more compute, if they have more computer power available. Um, but it's, it's, um, a, a previous kind of slight blip of the same type was when, um, chess engines first started defeating grand mas- the best grandmasters at chess. So, a, a lot of people were saying... Well, some people were saying, "No, they'll never do it because com- humans have got some special thing in their [laughs] brains," and whatever. And, and o- o- other people were saying, "No, it's just a matter of giving it more computer power." But that's different because they had a theory of why it just requires more computer power.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- DDDavid Deutsch
And when they achieved it, this is the thing that's hardly ever, hardly ever mentioned. When a, um, when a chess engine beats a grandmaster, they're doing it in a different way. The co- the computation that is going on in the chess engine is a radically different kind of computation from the computation that's going on in the grandmaster. The grandmaster is, is doing only, like, one-millionth of the amount of computing power, uh, of, of computation the, than the, than the chess engine does, and yet can reach a very high level, not quite as high as the, as the machine, as the program. But still, they are doing a completely different thing. And although we know how to write the program of a chess engine, we do not know how to write the program of a grandmaster.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- DDDavid Deutsch
And this is, um, this is why grandmasters can write a book You know, my greatest games and how I won them or, you know, something like that. And a chess engine can't. If you ask a chess engine how it won, it will say, "Well, if you do this move, then that will happen, and if that happens, this will happen. If that happens, this will happen," down, down to, you know, however many steps it can do nowadays. Um, and a, a grandmas- grandmaster will not say that. A grandmaster can't follow it down to anywhere near as many steps as a, as a, um, a- as a chess engine can. But a grandmaster will say something like, "Well, I thought that if I give up this pawn, it's going to, uh, create a weakness on the G file." And by weakness, he doesn't mean that he's followed down all the, um, all the possible continuations. Whereas something that has... can follow down all the continu- A- and by the way, some of those continuations may not lead to victory. Uh, he, he might say, "I thought this might work, but then five moves later, the bastard found a way out of it." Uh, and that, that, that can also happen. That, that also can't happen to a, a chess engine.
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- DDDavid Deutsch
So there are different types of program. We do not know how to write the grandmaster type of chess program, let alone an AGI.
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- DDDavid Deutsch
You know, when the grandmaster gets up, he's then starts performing computations of orders of magnitude greater complexity than playing chess. It's j- it's just that, that he, he, uh, he's not engaging competitively in, in something that requires insight.
- 44:08 – 48:05
What is Creativity?
- CWChris Williamson
What is creativity, in your opinion? How, how do you think about explaining that simply?
- DDDavid Deutsch
Um, the way I use the term is perhaps different from the way, uh, philosophers and others use it. Uh, creativity, I, I think is not a, not that impressive a thing, c- just creativity by itself. W- I, I use that word to mean, uh, the ability to, uh, create new knowledge. So, uh, evolution is creative, is a creative process in that sense, in that it, it starts off with an animal that, that can't fly, and then, then a few million years later, it's, it has created an animal that can fly. And it, it can fly because its genes encode knowledge of how to fly, including, uh, implicitly knowledge of aerodynamics and a- all sorts of things that we don't even have a, a handle on yet. But, so it has created knowledge. The thing that, uh, humans have and that no existing other species has, although there were species in the past that had this, is explanatory creativity, where we can, l- like, like with the chess master, we, we... Not only we can say, "I prefer this move to that move," you can say why. So I, I, I want to, um, pick up this burning branch from the, from the wildfire, like the f- say, the first person who invented a, um, a, a campfire. Uh, I was just writing about this in my, in my forthcoming book, actually. Uh, uh, I, I, I, um, uh, I, I want to pick this up because I want to carry it with me.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- DDDavid Deutsch
And if I carry it with me, maybe the predators who might otherwise attack me, and I'm carrying food from the latest kill, will run away from me instead of me running away from them. Now, that idea, that's not, that's not induction. That, that's not any of the, um, pre-Popper ways of thinking of, uh, the growth of knowledge. He, he's not doing something he's seen before. He's, he's, he's imagining something that he's never seen before, that no one has ever seen before, namely carrying a branch in, for protection against, against the predators. And then as, as, as he walks home with it, then he's saying, uh, he, he'll say, "Oh, well, it's getting dark, but I can still see. Maybe if I get this all the way home, we'll, we'll all be able to be protected from the, from the wild animals," and so on. That, that's the kind of thinking that is not... It cannot be characterized as optimizing for a given outcome, like checkmate or like proving a mathematical theorem.
- CWChris Williamson
Uh-huh.
- DDDavid Deutsch
It, it's, it's more like discovering a new mathematical object which is interesting. But you can't, you can't give, um, a computer a criterion of interesting. So you, you, uh, humans can change the axioms to better axioms, and that's, that... Humans are not just meeting a fixed criterion. And also, humans can change their mind. Uh, he, he might decide, "Well, um, uh, we might, we might scare off the, the, the predators this way. But, um, we're getting burnt by the flames, and it's not gonna last us all the way home, so we better throw it away now and run home." That, that, that, that's the sort of thing you can think if you have a genuine problem situation in mind rather than a criterion to meet.
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- 48:05 – 53:35
Is Our Education System Built on a Mistake?
- CWChris Williamson
What do you make, given the importance of understanding education, uh, m- modesty or sort of nobility, humility when it comes to learning? What do you make of the current education system?
- DDDavid Deutsch
Um, so I think that, uh, our society's present Attitude to education, both for children and for in universities and, and, and for everybody in their own life is, is based on a wrong theory. It's, it's, uh, what Popper calls the bucket theory of the mind, of the mind, which, which is that knowledge is a kind of fluid which some people have and some people don't have of a s- particular kind. And the task is for the person who has it to pour it into the bucket. That is, the, the, the recipient is a kind of bucket for knowledge, which is initially empty, and you pour the knowledge in. So that is, um, very bad in a number of ways. In, in fact, edu- education is, is the last holdout of pre-Enlightenment theories of knowledge. Everywhere else, we at least give lip service to Enlightenment theories. Like, you, you don't give someone authority to override the wishes of someone else. Uh, you, you, you don't necessarily respect the opinion of someone else just because of their status and, and so on. Th- this is... We may not enact this perfectly, as we were saying earlier in this conversation, but, but it's, it's, it's largely agreed that this is what we should be doing. In education, it's the other way around. We, we judge education by how well and how accurately you fill the bucket. And so one of the things that's wrong with that is that when something goes wrong, which it nearly always does, then you will i- immediately jump for the, to the conclusion, the, so what has gone wrong? Well, the bucket, it's either leaky or it, it didn't want to receive the fluid. But there can't be anything wrong with the fluid because the fluid is knowledge. That is by definition what we want to transfer.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- DDDavid Deutsch
By definition, transferring it is success. So we measure success according to, say, exam results or something, and then, then because of the natural, uh, the, the natural arms race or, [laughs] or, uh, the, the s- self, self, uh, sustaining, um, uh, situation that, that happens in many human situations that aren't rational, um, the incentive is to spend more and more time on meeting the criterion and less and less time on things that can't be measured, which are the important things. So, uh, at least with chess, you can measure how good a grandmaster is, although you cannot easily measure how good a grandmaster is at explaining or at teaching-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm
- DDDavid Deutsch
... or at giving a running commentary on, on chess games. There is no criterion for that. There's no mechanical way you can say, "Well, I, I've got 93% on the explaining my, um, uh, explaining my moves test, so I must be good at explaining my moves." There is no such thing. And everything that is important in education is of that type and not of the testable type. Uh, I, I omit, uh, things where, where being able to execute the, execute the criterion perfectly is the task, like being an airline pilot. But even an airline pilot, you know, an airline pilot who doesn't know the, what the different controls do is not gonna be a good airline pilot. But even with an airline pilot, understanding is extremely important. May not be as important as being able to operate the controls, but it is extremely important.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- DDDavid Deutsch
Uh, but, uh, things that we learn in school and in most university courses are, are not like that. The, the course and the exam are designed as proxies for the thing that you actually want, and they are very poor proxies. The only reason they are proxies at all is that people who really want to do the thing are willing to waste their time learning to pass the criterion.
- CWChris Williamson
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- 53:35 – 55:27
How Should We Reinvent Education?
- CWChris Williamson
What is a better approach, then, for somebody who wants to learn a lot from people who know a lot? A- uh, sh- sh- should people exit formal education as quickly as possible? Uh, we presumably can't upend the entire system right now immediately. What's your advice?
- DDDavid Deutsch
I, I t- uh, I, I'm... Up, upending is outside my wheelhouse. Like, you know, I, I don't, I don't know how to formulate good political policies-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm
- DDDavid Deutsch
... that will gain wide acceptance. But, uh, technically we can. We, we do now, with the internet, uh, we do have the means of completely upending the system and not having any compulsory education, certainly for children. But, uh, I, I think, uh, there are more and more ways of, um, adapting university education to, to technologies like Uh, the internet and also, um, uh, collaborative technologies where, where you, where you have, for example, access to somebody. Access to somebody is-- can be very valuable where, um, compulsory subordination to that very same person would, would be very bad for you.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
- DDDavid Deutsch
So you, uh, t-today, you know, you, you can write an e- anyone can write an email to any famous person and have a reasonable chance of getting an answer if, even if it's only, "Read my book, you dolt."
- CWChris Williamson
Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- DDDavid Deutsch
Um, but, but, but even that, even that is, uh, is, is a lot better than, than what things used to be like, say, even 30 years ago.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- DDDavid Deutsch
But even 30 years ago, it would have been better, in my opinion, not to have compulsory subjects and not to have compulsory education of any
- 55:27 – 1:03:24
Can Too Much Discipline Hold You Back?
- DDDavid Deutsch
kind.
- CWChris Williamson
What do you think about discipline and forcing yourself to do things? I've seen that you appear to be very anti this, despite it being kind of the, uh, one of the most popular worldviews at the moment to put your feelings to one side and push through and, uh, sort of ignore how you feel. What's your perspective on discipline and, and forcing yourself to do things?
- DDDavid Deutsch
Like, like many things in, in, uh, epistemology and in psychology, the same words, the same terms can be used to describe absolutely opposite things. So for example, take a mountaineer who enjoys climbing Mount Everest or, or difficult mountains, who, who looks, looks for difficult climb where other people have failed perhaps, other people have been killed. And he goes on the climb, and on the climb he, uh, undergoes severe privation and what would be suffering to almost anyone else. But, but to, to him, it's just privation. It's, you know, it's, it's, it's getting cold. Uh, every fiber of his being wants to go back down and, and go... g-get back in the warm. But he wants to get to the top. And all the pain and suffering and discomfort is just... it's, it's not just... It's not that he overrides it, though in a sense he does. But what's really happening is that that's what he's there for. That's why he chose this climb. If, if it were easy, he wouldn't have chosen it. Uh, now so what is, um, for one person, the very r- the, you know, this is the reason he's alive. This is the reason he gets up in the morning. It i- it, it is in anticipation of doing this thing. For, for almost anyone else, it would be torture. What's more, almost anyone else couldn't do it well enough. They, they, they would eventually fall off. It's only because he loves it that he has put in the, the amount of practice and work and thinking and, and, uh, analysis and so on that allows him to reach the top of this difficult climb. This is... I- in the case of, of, um, mountaineering, we're talking about actual pain [chuckles] and so on. But most things don't, don't have actual pain.
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- DDDavid Deutsch
Physical pain. But they do have psychological pain, boredom, uh, despair, um, fear, and, uh, all, all that kind of thing, which... And, and so in, in that sense, I think the, um, mountaineer is a good analogy to all learning. All learning should be like that. It should be something that you would, uh, you would pay the price to have it, just like the mountaineer does. Or like I was talking the other, the other day to a Formula One driver, and I, I, I was saying, God, you know, uh, the, the, in Formula One racing, you have to have reactions that are approximately one half the length of a human reaction time. So that means that you, you must start doing the, the thing before you have the information in front of you, because you have understood the course and the vehicle and so on well enough. And you must do that again and again and again during the race. And every so often you will spin off, and you will risk your life, and so on. And so most people, again, would hate to do that. You know, most people would, would pay a lot to ha- to not have to do that. But also, if they were forced to do it, they wouldn't do it well because they do not love it. So, um, uh, I think having discipline and forcing yourself could be a form of words that describes this mountaineer.
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- DDDavid Deutsch
And in that case, it is wonderful. It is, in a sense, the best thing in the world. Whereas, uh, somebody forcing themselves to, um, uh, get a GCSE maths, uh, thing and spending the, the whole summer, uh, preparing for the, for the GCSE maths and, and just scraping through and then fr- starting the very next day forgetting everything they knew, that is the epitome of something bad. That's something that shouldn't happen. It's, it's, uh, uh, in a, in a rational society, that would never happen. That would be... If, if that happened even once, it, it, it would be headline in the newspaper and, and heads would roll.
- CWChris Williamson
So from an individual's perspective- Obviously, we are still contending with and navigating the world, and it is in some ways scarce or misaligned to what it is that we want to do. So sometimes you have to do that. You have to use your I will get it done muscle. Uh, you don't wanna take the, you don't wanna take the trash out. The trash sucks and, and it smells, and you don't wanna do it. But you have to do it, so you're gonna do it. Your perspective here is that if we were to construct a rational society, it would be people doing things that are in alignment with what they want to do. And in the interim between where we are now and hopefully a future world where that's the case, you're gonna have to apply some of this. But the goal is to use less and less of it over time?
- DDDavid Deutsch
Less and less. That's, uh, less and less over time, but also less and less in your life. So, so, um, first of all, the answer is to get, get it over with.
- CWChris Williamson
[laughs]
- DDDavid Deutsch
So because you, you should be l- leading your, your good life, not, not, um, uh, not being overwhelmed by the bad things. And then once you've, once you're getting it over with, you, you can improve the situation. There are no situations or almost no situations in everyday life that cannot be improved a little. So you can apply knowledge to getting it over with a little, you know? Uh, uh, I don't know. Buy, buy a better, um, uh, rubbish bin which i- is not so disgusting to empty.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- DDDavid Deutsch
Or, um, live in a place where the rubbish bin emptying is easier or is a shorter way, or, uh-
- CWChris Williamson
Buy a different type of bags that you enjoy seeing briefly as you take it toward the... Yeah.
- DDDavid Deutsch
Exactly. Exactly. Um, so, um, uh, and then there's the, there's also the, the opportunity to just learn to enjoy it. So, uh, the, the, the... Even taking the rubbish out has aspects that one can enjoy. You... For example, if one has been working on the computer all day and, and, uh, one's, one's limbs are, are, have forgotten how to move-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm
- DDDavid Deutsch
... then at least going out with, with the rubbish, uh, takes you into the fresh air.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- DDDavid Deutsch
And, and you can see the neighborhood and, uh, you, you can say hello to the person, uh, across the road, uh, who is also p- taking out their rubbish and so on. So there, there's nothing that, that can't be improved at least a bit. And, and y- it's, it's bad to be in the state of mind that I should have discipline, and therefore reducing it is reducing the good thing. It's not. [laughs] Reducing the thing you don't like is always good.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- 1:03:24 – 1:09:16
The Philosophy Behind a Good Life
- CWChris Williamson
You mentioned the, the good life. What have you come to believe about how people should prioritize their focus in order to achieve something that resembles a good life?
- DDDavid Deutsch
Like with many things, um, uh, diversity is the key. So I don't think there's a formula which applies to, to everybody. In fact, I don't think there's a formula that applies to any two people. A- any two people are very different. In fact, more different than we are really capable of understanding. Uh, hu- humans are... Individual humans are as different from each other as humans in general are from other species. It's ev- ev- every person is like a different species. So what, what, uh, some people, um, like to live a life of intellectual problem-solving. There, there is a, a wonderful, um, uh, passage in Popper's autobiography where he says that the, the thing to do in life is to, uh, find a problem, fall in love with it, live with it for the rest of your life. Get, get married to it. Live with it for the rest of your life until death do you part. And if you happen to solve it, then the, the, the tone in which he says that is, "If you're unlucky enough to happen to solve it, then there will be delightful problem children."
- CWChris Williamson
Ah. [laughs]
- DDDavid Deutsch
So that... And, and, uh, it's quite interesting that he uses the phrase problem children deliberately to highlight the fact that problem in his philosophy has these two opposite meanings. So we can say, um, you know, problem children i- is, is a term, a sort of euphemism that was invented for children that you would not want to live with. Whereas he is using it for something that you really ought to live with. And, and, uh, uh, a lot of, um, people who are the survivors of doing unusual things and then advocate that people should do these unusual things, they often, uh, gloss over the difference between, uh, the, you know, the good discipline and bad discipline, good problem and bad problem. And they will say things that are exactly right for them because they were following the, the good path, if I can put it that way. But, uh, it's often taken to mean that, that you have to knuckle down and do your chores and then your homework and then go to bed. And, uh, that's the, uh, which is the opposite of what you should be doing, even though it can be described in the same words.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm. Yeah, I, uh... There's this line from John Steinbeck which is pretty fun. He says, "I wonder why progress looks so much like destruction." And when doing a, a little bit of thinking about my golden retriever ... translation of, uh, your worldview en masse, civilizationally, across time, individually, you know, existentially. Um, it kind of... I think that's, that's probably, that's not a bad summation. I wonder why progress looks so much like destruction, or you could say feels so much like destruction, or is accused of being so much of destruction.
- DDDavid Deutsch
Yes, the last one is perhaps the best 'cause-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm
- DDDavid Deutsch
... what it feels... It could feel either way. That's the trouble. Uh, you can't really tell from the outside necessarily, 'cause people can force themselves as well as being forced by other people.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- DDDavid Deutsch
And they, they can be pursuing a very hard path which they want to pursue, which is joyful to them, without that being noticeable either. The, the only time that that's noticeable, the only times that that's noticeable, is when the thing they're pursuing happens to have a good reputation. Like, like if somebody spends 10 hours a day practicing chess or, or, uh, practicing some martial art or whatever it is, people will see what they're doing. That they, they are, they are adopting the discipline and making themselves power through to, to, uh, being good at this thing, which, which society thinks is a good thing. But a very similar thing, like a video game, which is almost the same thing psychologically, but which is socially frowned on, people will say, "That's not a good thing to be devoting yourself to." They will be blind to the, um, effort and creativity that's going into it, and they will instead try to apply discipline in the opposite direction.
- CWChris Williamson
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- 1:09:16 – 1:11:54
What is David Working On?
- CWChris Williamson
You mentioned that you were working on a book. That's a fiction book. Have you got anything else that's in the pipeline as well, or is that it?
- DDDavid Deutsch
Yes. Uh, at least two other books. One, one is a textbook o- on quantum mechanics, uh, quantum theory rather, which I'm writing with, uh, Sam Kuipers and Chiara Marletto, my colleagues. And 'cause we, we think that existing textbooks and existing ways of teaching, um, quantum, quantum theory are just misconceived in many ways, and we, we want to get it right. So that's one thing. Another thing is I'm, I'm writing, uh, the, the third book in my, uh, sort of sequel to my first two books, uh, Fabric of Reality and The Beginning of Infinity.
- CWChris Williamson
Uh-huh.
- DDDavid Deutsch
I'm writing another one. Very difficult. It's... I, I, I, h- I think, I think [laughs] it's an example of mountaineering rather than, um, uh, being forced. But-
- CWChris Williamson
Taking the trash out
- DDDavid Deutsch
... but yeah. Um, but it's, um, uh, tentatively called Irrationality, though I don't quite like the title because it gives the wrong impression, at least at first. Um, the, the subtitle at the moment is, um, How Thinking Works and What the Obstacles to It Are. So that's, I think, a better title, but it's a bit clunky.
- CWChris Williamson
And whilst doing textbook plus difficult third album to previously quite complex initial two books, you also got the fiction book put together as well.
- DDDavid Deutsch
Yes. And I've als- [laughs] I've also got my day job. So apart from those three, yes.
- CWChris Williamson
Oh, well, at least you're keeping yourself busy. David Deutsch, ladies and gentlemen. David, you're awesome. I appreciate you. It's very nice to hear a, a fellow accent as well. Um, what should people be looking out for over the next couple of months? When... Is there something gonna drop before the end of the year? One of the books, one of the fiction book. Do we know when that's gonna come out?
- DDDavid Deutsch
I think that's unlikely in the next couple of months, but, uh, in the next year, fingers crossed, yes.
- CWChris Williamson
Excellent.
- DDDavid Deutsch
One of, one of them may drop.
- CWChris Williamson
Beautiful. David, I appreciate you very much. Thank you for today.
- DDDavid Deutsch
Thank you for having me. Very pleasant.
- CWChris Williamson
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Episode duration: 1:11:54
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