Imitation

The ability to create and use explanatory knowledge gives people a power to transform nature which is ultimately not limited by parochial factors, as all other adaptations are, but only by universal laws. This is the cosmic significance of explanatory knowledge – and hence of people, whom I shall henceforward define as entities that can create explanatory knowledge. — David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World

The most important of all limitations on knowledge – creation is that we cannot prophecy: we cannot predict the content of ideas yet to be created, or their effects. This limitation is not only consistent with the unlimited growth of knowledge, it is entailed by it. — David Deutsch, N/A

Using our explanations, we ‘see’ right through the behaviour to the meaning. Parrots copy distinctive sounds; apes copy purposeful movements of a certain limited class. But humans do not especially copy any behaviour. They use conjecture, criticism and experiment to create good explanations of the meaning of things – other people’s behaviour, their own, and that of the world in general. That — David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World

Whenever we try to improve things and fail, it is not because the spiteful (or unfathomably benevolent) gods are thwarting us or punishing us for trying, or because we have reached a limit on the capacity of reason to make improvements, or because it is best that we fail, but always because we did not know enough, in time. — David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations that Transform The World

From the least parochial perspectives available to us, people are the most significant entities in the cosmic scheme of things. They are not ‘supported’ by their environments, but support themselves by creating knowledge. Once they have suitable knowledge (essentially, the knowledge of the Enlightenment), they are capable of sparking unlimited further progress. — David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World

It would be astonishing if the details of a primitive, static society’s collapse had any relevance to hidden dangers that may be facing our open, dynamic and scientific society, let alone what we should do about them. — David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations that Transform The World

It is inevitable that we face problems, but no particular problem is inevitable. We survive, and thrive, by solving each problem as it comes up. And, since the human ability to transform nature is limited only by the laws of physics, none of the endless stream of problems will ever constitute an impassable barrier. So a complementary and equally important truth about people and the physical world is that problems are soluble. By ‘soluble’ I mean that the right knowledge would solve them. It is not, of course, that we can possess knowledge just by wishing for it; but it is in principle accessible to — David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations that Transform The World

As I said, imitation is not at the heart of human meme replication. — David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World

Suppose that the lecturer had repeatedly returned to a certain key idea, and had expressed it with different words and gestures each time. The parrot’s (or ape’s) job would be that much harder than imitating only the first instance; the student’s much easier, because to a human observer each different way of putting the idea would convey additional knowledge. — David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World

The assumption that progress in a hypothetical rapacious civilization is limited by raw materials rather than by knowledge. — David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations that Transform The World