Read in Spring 2021, below from my successful application to Titans of Investing which included a question about the last book I read for pleasure
The last book I read for pleasure was The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch, which I finished during spring break two weeks ago. The book was heavily philosophical because it is a structural teardown and reconstruction of what it even means to think, learn, and to develop knowledge. Because of the depth of material, its condensed, few-sentence key takeaways will feel trite, but here goes.
Off the bat, Deutsch explains the significance of humans (directly countering nihilism), by detailing how absurd knowledge creation truly is, and how limitless knowledge is in countering or adjusting against natural condition. Essentially, creativity is humanity’s biggest tool and our known universe’s most significant process. In detailing creativity, he introduces “explanations”, which are our most pure expressions of knowledge, and gives us parameters to categorize them by starting depth, reach, and base.
This mental model changes your learning perspective to immediately think not by anecdotes or empiricism, but by consistency in logic, which is a superpower in the age of Googling random supporting statistics for any argument. Finally, he explains why “infinity” doesn’t equate to “insignificance” by walking through the following: problems exist and are solvable, yet within each solution more problems are inevitable.
Despite this recursion into infinite problems, solving them at every step is valuable and necessary, because while ultimate truth is unattainable, progress can be made towards it. To Deutsch, the pursuit of knowledge is about reaching the asymptote.