
Human Potential:
- Humans have the capacity to create new knowledge and transform resources into valuable outcomes.
- Each individual has the potential for fundamental breakthroughs that could completely change how we think about sustainability, biosphere, and Earth's resources.
Good Explanations:
- Good explanations are hard-fought knowledge that meets current criticisms and rivals.
- They are hard to vary because they were hard to come by, making them resistant to easy alternatives or rival explanations.
- Falsifiability is an essential aspect of good explanations in science, allowing for testability within the context of the explanation.
- Making narrow and risky predictions is often associated with good explanations, as it demonstrates a willingness to stick one's neck out and make precise claims.
Knowledge Creation:
- Knowledge perpetuates itself in the environment through successful replication or transmission.
- Successful genes contain valuable knowledge for survival while successful ideas or information can be passed down through generations.
- New knowledge expands the range of available resources by finding new uses for existing ones or discovering entirely new resources.
Evolution vs Human Creative Thought:
- Biological evolution is limited in its range because it lacks foresight. It cannot see a problem and conjecture a solution before natural selection begins.
- Human creative thought allows for problem-solving beyond what can be achieved through biological evolution. Humans have explanatory creativity, enabling them to create ideas that are not simply incremental improvements on existing viable things but the result of non-viable steps.
Humans:
- Humans possess explanatory creativity, allowing them to imagine things that do not yet exist and create ideas that are not simply the culmination of viable things.
- Understanding human behavior requires understanding what humans are trying to achieve and whether they will succeed or not. This level of understanding goes beyond the laws of physics and requires knowledge in various fields including science, mathematics, philosophy, and morality.
Taking Children Seriously:
- Traditional education systems focus on transmitting knowledge faithfully and promoting obedience rather than fostering creativity.
- Taking children seriously means recognizing that they have their own interests and desires, which may not align with traditional educational expectations.
- Children's preferences or disinterests in certain subjects can be understood as a desire to pursue other activities or topics. It is important to engage them in meaningful ways and provide opportunities for creative problem-solving.
Non-Locality in Quantum Physics:
- Non-locality arises from interpretations of quantum theory that include wave function collapse. These interpretations do not maintain unitary principles throughout all processes.
- The Everettian interpretation offers a way to express quantum theory without invoking non-locality. It considers the wave function as a single function in a higher-dimensional space rather than multiple functions localized in different regions of space-time.