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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.

— David Deutsch The Beginning of Infinity (2011)

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More quotes by David Deutsch

Let me define that [wealth] in a non-parochial way as the repertoire of physical transformations that they would be capable of causing.

The Beginning of Infinity (2011)

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.

The Beginning of Infinity (2011)

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)

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?

The Beginning of Infinity (2011)

Since building a universal virtual-reality generator is physically possible, it must actually be built in some universes.

The Fabric of Reality (1997)

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: David Deutsch (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.