Quantum computation is a distinctively new way of harnessing nature. It will be the first technology that allows useful tasks to be performed in collaboration between parallel universes.
David DeutschRead
Where we have good, testable explanations, they then have to be tested, and we drop the ones that fail the tests.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of testing explanations to ensure their validity and reliability.
David Deutsch highlights the scientific method's core principles: the necessity of having explanations that can be rigorously tested, and the willingness to discard those that do not withstand scrutiny. This reflective process is essential for advancing knowledge and understanding the world around us.
In practice
In a scientific conference, when discussing research findings, one might quote this to emphasize rigorous testing.
Quantum computation is a distinctively new way of harnessing nature. It will be the first technology that allows useful tasks to be performed in collaboration between parallel universes.
Science is objective. And in my view we cannot take any experimental results seriously except in the light of good explanations of them.
If you canβt program it, you havenβt understood it.
Feeling insignificant because the universe is large has exactly the same logic as feeling inadequate for not being a cow.
Discovering a new explanation is inherently an act of creativity.
To me quantum computation is a new and deeper and better way to understand the laws of physics, and hence understanding physical reality as a whole.
I belonged to a small minority of boys who were lacking in physical strength and athletic prowess. ... We found our refuge in science. ... We learned that science is a revenge of victims against oppressors, that science is a territory of freedom and friendship in the midst of tyranny and hatred.
Pluto's orbit is so elongated that it crosses the orbit of another planet. Now that's... you've got no business doing that if you want to call yourself a planet. Come on, now! There's something especially transgressive about that.
Modern science says: 'The sun is the past, the earth is the present, the moon is the future.' From an incandescent mass we have originated, and into a frozen mass we shall turn. Merciless is the law of nature, and rapidly and irresistibly we are drawn to our doom.
Experiments with animals have long been handicapped by our anthropocentric attitude: We often test them in ways that work fine with humans but not so well with other species.
Something can be real - actually existing, not merely illusory - and yet not be fundamental. Scientists used to think that heat, for example, was a fluidlike substance called 'caloric' that flowed from hot objects to colder ones.
All of my life, I have been fascinated by the big questions that face us, and have tried to find scientific answers to them. If, like me, you have looked at the stars, and tried to make sense of what you see, you too have started to wonder what makes the universe exist.
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