“That the truth consists of hard-to-vary assertions about reality is the most important fact about the physical world.”
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David Deutsch
David Elieser Deutsch is a British physicist at the University of Oxford who is often described as the "father of quantum computing". He is a visiting professor in the Department of Atomic and Laser Physics at the Centre for Quantum Computation (CQC) in the Clarendon Laboratory of the University of Oxford. He pioneered the field of quantum computation by formulating a description for a quantum Tur…
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science · British theoretical physicist (born 1953) · physicist · computer scientist · university teacher · non-fiction writer · theoretical physicist · also David Deutsch, David Elieser Deutsch, Deutsch
Born 1 January 1953 · Q543682
30 published statements · 0 followers
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2026· 2 entries
“The search for hard-to-vary explanations is the origin of all progress”
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2022· 1 entry
Was awarded the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, shared with Charles H
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2021· 5 entries
Published video “The Beginning of Infinity is coming to Germany”.
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Published video “Der Anfang der Unendlichkeit mit David Deutsch”.
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Published video “Popper's problem-oriented epistemology (with David Deutsch and Eli Tyre)”.
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Won Isaac Newton Medal (2021).
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Was awarded the Isaac Newton Medal and Prize
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2020· 1 entry
Published video “"Knowledge Creation and its Risks" - David Deutsch on AGI - Centre for the Future of Intelligence”.
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2019· 4 entries
Published video “What is the 'Fun Criterion'? (David Deutsch – behind the scenes)”.
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Published video “Why has AGI not been created yet?”.
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Published video “Possible Minds - Beyond Reward and Punishment (narrated by David Deutsch)”.
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Published video “David Deutsch Live Stream”.
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2017· 2 entries
Won ICTP Dirac Medal (2017).
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Received the Dirac Medal of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP)
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2013· 1 entry
Published video “Why Are Flowers Beautiful?”.
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2011· 1 entry
Published video “David Deutsch on the AV Referendum (UK)”.
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2008· 1 entry
Awarded Fellow of the Royal Society (2008).
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1998· 2 entries
Won IOP Dirac Medal (1998).
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And the Edge of Computation Science Prize in 2005
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1993· 8 entries
“Our best theories are not only truer than common sense, they make more sense than common sense...”
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“Surely it is more interesting to argue about what the truth is, than about what some particular thinker, however great, did or did not think.”
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“To say that prediction is the purpose of a scientific theory is to confuse means with ends. It is like saying that the purpose of a spaceship is to burn fuel. … Passing experimental tests is only one of many things a theory has to do to achieve the real purpose of science, which is to explain the world.”
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“The quantum theory of parallel universes is not the problem, it is the solution. It is not some troublesome, optional interpretation emerging from arcane theoretical considerations. It is the explanation—the only one that is tenable—of a remarkable and counter-intuitive reality.”
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“Experience is indeed essential to science, but its role is different from that supposed by empiricism. It is not the source from which theories are derived. Its main use is to choose between theories that have already been guessed. That is what ‘learning from experience’ is.”
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“The misconception that knowledge needs authority to be genuine or reliable dates back to antiquity, and it still prevails. To this day, most courses in the philosophy of knowledge teach that knowledge is some form of justified, true belief, where ‘justified’ means designated as true (or at least ‘probable’) by reference to some authoritative source or touchstone of knowledge.”
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“If something is permitted by the laws of physics, then the only thing that can prevent it from being technologically possible is not knowing how.”
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“Could it be that the moral imperative not to destroy the means of correcting mistakes is the only moral imperative? That all other moral truths follow from it?”
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1992· 1 entry
To produce the Deutsch–Jozsa algorithm, one of the first examples of a quantum algorithm that is exponentially faster than any possible deterministic classical algorithm
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1953· 1 entry
Born 1953-01-01.
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