The Beginning Of Infinity - by David Deutsch

A deep dive into big questions on human existence and progress. I enjoyed the technical, academic approach into themes like evolution, culture, philosophy, the physics of it all, and its core theme: knowledge. It’s not always explicit in the text, but it also touches very relevant subjects nowadays like climate change, energy, religion and even social media. Added to more scientific ones like quantum physics, biology and mathematics.

Not an easy read, as it sometimes dives too much into technicals and rationalizations that make the text feel like it’s questioning even its own arguments. However, even if there’s some harder chapters, there are many mind-bending and very relatable ones. For me in particular: “Optimism”, “Unsustainable”, “The Spark” and “The Evolution of Culture”.

The stronger argument (and mostly central theme of the book) is that humans, after several historical attempts to enter the state of an ever increasing snowball of knowledge, are currently favoring a society that’s increasingly open to change through constant conjecture and criticism of its own knowledge. We are now culturally seeking good explanations more and more. Explanations strong enough that are very hard to be refuted, and these come from the rationalizations of science. As long as there aren’t any proven physical laws preventing it, infinity of existence is merely blocked by a lack of knowledge. Which is a solvable problem.

A special mention to the “A Dream of Socrates” chapter, which I was able to relate to deeply. It covers a back-and-forth conversation (probably fictional) between Socrates and Apollo on the pointlessness of thinking we should ever achieve certainty in our beliefs and how much of an interesting life it is to simply seek truth on how the world works.