14 quotes
Genes embody knowledge about their niches. Everything of fundamental significance about the phenomenon of life depends on this property, and not on replication per se.
The Fabric of Reality (1997)
Since building a universal virtual-reality generator is physically possible, it must actually be built in some universes.
The Fabric of Reality (1997)
It is possible to build a virtual-reality generator whose repertoire includes every possible environment.
The Fabric of Reality (1997)
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.
The Fabric of Reality (1997)
Mathematical knowledge may, just like our scientific knowledge, be deep and broad, it may be subtle and wonderfully explanatory, it may be uncontroversially accepted; but it cannot be certain.
The Fabric of Reality (1997)
The next chapter is likely to provoke many mathematicians. This can't be helped. Mathematics is not what they think it is.
The Fabric of Reality (1997)
A prediction, or any assertion, that cannot be defended might still be true, but an explanation that cannot be defended is not an explanation.
The Fabric of Reality (1997)
The overwhelming majority of theories are rejected because they contain bad explanations, not because they fail experimental tests.
The Fabric of Reality (1997)
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.
The Fabric of Reality (1997)
Time travel may be achieved one day, or it may not. But if it is, it should not require any fundamental change in world-view, at least for those who broadly share the world view I am presenting in this book.
The Fabric of Reality (1997)
Quantum computation is … nothing less than a distinctly new way of harnessing nature … It will be the first technology that allows useful tasks to be performed in collaboration between parallel universes, and then sharing the results.
The Fabric of Reality (1997)
Our best theories are not only truer than common sense, they make more sense than common sense...
The Fabric of Reality (1997)
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.
The Fabric of Reality (1997)
Reality contains not only evidence, but also the means (such as our minds, and our artefacts) of understanding it. There are mathematical symbols in physical reality. The fact that it is we who put them there does not make them any less physical.
The Fabric of Reality (1997)