Worthwhile if you have the patience

Listening to this book was one of those "good/bad" experiences for me. I'm going to start with the bad, so hang around if you want to hear the good. The first seven chapters were a monumental waste of my time, primarily because they are spent delivering a critique of many various schools of philosophical thought that Deutsch doesn't like. This is a clever approach, since it allows Deutsch to casually dismiss concepts with which he disagrees later in the book as instrumentalist, reductionist, empiricist, or whatever label he can most easily apply at the moment to get you to not consider counter-ideas very closely (there are lots of them). Where no such labels apply, he casually pronounces things "good" or "bad," or perhaps "parochial," which is a simple stand-in for "bad" and is dramatically overused throughout the book. He never, at least that I noticed, communicates the least uncertainty with words like "I think" or "my idea is this," even when discussing fairly controversial topics. This is a book of pronouncements from a truly gigantic ego. Though I frequently agreed with his positions on things, it was also common for me to think of objections that I would have liked to discuss, but the author had simply moved on. Things get better in chapters 8-12 and then meander around from one topic to the next with very little tying them together other than possibly the theme of evolution. That would have been fine, but some interesting topics were covered in a rather cursory way. Deutsch seems to accept, for example, the popular sci-fi saw that we will be able to upload our minds into computers, without any discussion at all of the difficulties this might pose when we don't currently understand either memory or consciousness very well. Indeed, it seems precisely like the kind of "prophesy" that the author dismisses elsewhere in the book, and yet the idea doesn't receive the same disrespect. When discussing climate change, his perspective is more or less to expect the problem to be solved, since that's what humans are good at doing - solving problems. He fails to examine the possibility that humans will invent excellent solutions, and perhaps already have, but that those solutions will never be implemented due to political and social forces that favor inaction whenever preventive, rather than reactive, measures are called for.
The heart of the book is in chapters 8-11, which is where Deutsch is most in his element. He attacks the topics of quantum theory and the multiverse in a way that I found to be quite thought-provoking, and any book that provokes thought is, in my opinion, worth reading (or listening to). This should come as no surprise, since Deutsch has made his name in the field of quantum computing, but what really helps is the very clear voice that he uses throughout the book. He does have a talent for explanation, even when the subject matter is complex, so I would recommend the book for that reason alone. I think he managed to nudge my understanding of quantum theory forward a bit, and for that I'm grateful.
So the book gets three stars from me, which means that I found it a valuable listen, but it's far from perfect. Skip the first 7 chapters. Really. Once you get to the end of chapter 11, keep going as long as it holds your interest, but don't be afraid you'll miss something great if you don't finish.

65 people found this helpful

A Perspective Shifter

This book has flaws. Dr. Deutsch makes a few generalizations that I found a bit unfair -- related to physiological research and sustainability as it relates to environmentalism.

BUT!

It's a perspective shifter.
I think about progress and humanity and our place in the universe differently.
I think about science and the scientific method differently.
It gave me glue to connect concepts I've found and liked from other books.

It's deep. It's complex. It's not "easy".

But certainly valuable.

Kudos.

43 people found this helpful

Deutsch is a master of sophistry.

Would you try another book from David Deutsch and/or Walter Dixon?

Deutsch no. Dixon yes.

Were the concepts of this book easy to follow, or were they too technical?

Not that hard.

Have you listened to any of Walter Dixon’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

never before

What character would you cut from The Beginning of Infinity?

Deutsch

Any additional comments?

David Albert wrote an excellent and friendly review of this book in The New York Times Sunday Book Review of 08/12/2011. Despite it’s positive tone, it reassured me that I made the correct decision to stop listening to it. Sadly, it took me about 12 hours to decide that. Deutsch is smart and eloquent, but he's a master sophist. He writes clearly and skillfully, but treats his conjectures as facts. A term I once heard for this is “lying the truth”. He convinces himself that things are actually the way he thinks they are, and then he writes as if that is the case, which in his created mindset, it is. He covers many topics. For those where you have some knowledge, the holes in his certainty are obvious. For those where you don’t have some knowledge, you’re in danger of accepting some ideas as truths that are no more than pure speculation on his part.

35 people found this helpful

Breathtaking

If you could sum up The Beginning of Infinity in three words, what would they be?

Formidable
Intellectual
Virtuosity

Any additional comments?

The Beginning of Infinity delivers a wonderfully dizzying display of intellectual virtuosity. I find it hard to conceive of the depth of preparation that must have gone into preparing the amazing synthesis that is provided by Deutsch in this light hearted, weightily significant masterpiece. At many points in the book, its depth of insight, its level of surprise, its ability to reach for the important in phenomena from sub-sub-sub-microscopic through to ultra-cold of deep space, from the soul-crushing impact of static societies through to the freewheeling exploration of world-views and universes had me exclaiming (sometimes to the surprise of others as I lived the book between my ear buds over several days). Deutsch tackles giants (Dawkins, Hofstadter and Dennet and many many more) without perceptible fear of authority - addressing the magic of their insights and the folly of their oversights with candid and calculated precision. I loved his portrayal of people as universal explainers / makers of meaning. I loved the picture he creates of the acceleration of possibility now that evolution is released from the constraints of the biological. I loved his firm hold on the possibility for repeatedly stepping beyond gloom that is available only to participants in dynamic society. I loved the brightly lit lobby of Infinity Hotel and its implications for metaphor in learning. And I was frustrated to all hell that Deutsch still failed to convince me on multiverses despite clearly thinking in the spaces where I always find objections (over the blithe extrapolations over orders of magnitude between observed phenomena in the quantum world to make proclamations about implications in the world of emergent phenomena we inhabit in our macroscopic lives) - perhaps I just need to listen to that section three more times ....

Dixon's consistently fresh presentation throughout this gargantuan task is a credit to him - a really great read.

My strong impression is that this is an audiobook that no English-speaking person anywhere should fail to listen to and luxuriate in - in this case, "life changing" is for real. Thank you both for slipping its explosive reality into my unsuspecting June 2015.

30 people found this helpful

Covers nothing to everything

One of my favorite books and provided me with many insights into our place in the universe and how we know the things we know. Deutsch explains the very small to the very large. He provides a reasonable explanation of the measurement problem in physics and a consistent theory on multiple universes. His survey of different schools of philosophies is one of the best I've read. He even has a detailed chapter on developing the most efficient election process which doesn't fully fit the theme of the book, but he explains it so well it becomes an intriguing chapter.

After reading the book, you will have an appreciation for the infinity and understand what is meant by 'everything possible will happen with certainty".

27 people found this helpful

You have to take the bad with the good

I am not sure if this book is an optimistic anti-dogmatic prescription for unlimited progress or anti-religious liberal ravings about how people should think. Maybe it is a bit of both.

Some nits: The author describes Good Explanations and criticism as the key to progress. Near the end of the book he suggests calling Good Explanations, instead, misconceptions (which I find better, but still not quite right). I would instead use the less loaded term of Story. With a Good Explanation being a Falsifiable Predictive Story. The author also uses Testable which is not quite right. I like Falsifiable as being more to the point.

I was quite unimpressed by the dialog and the description of the multi-worlds interpretation as a Good Explanation.

This book has some of the same undercurrents as The Singularity is Near, but is more rambling, less focused, and more philosophical. Although there were a lot of interesting ideas in this book, there was also quite a lot missing. It seems to me there is much more to a really Good Explanation than is implied, and there is more yin-and-yang to conservative verses progressive than the author presents.

Nevertheless it is a good listen for anyone interested in thinking about how the scientific method really works. Unfortunately some parts are pretty boring or just tedius.

24 people found this helpful

Three books in one, but not necessarily a value

When writing a review, I like to wait a few weeks after listening to a book. I find, when I look back, that my memory is able to distill some of salient points and I am better able to reflect on the essence of a particular book. As far as this work is concerned, here are the reflections that come to mind:

1. In my opinion, there seems to be a theme, perspective, tone, whatever one wishes to call it, by physics/hard science authors that their particular field entitles them to comment on or critique general issues or questions with a greater weight or authority than others. This also tends to create hyperbolic and grandiose titles like "The Begining of Infinity: Explanations that Transformed the World.No doubt this is related to the rigorous standards of their discipline. One may have heard such statements like " there is nothing else but physics" (I am heavily paraphrasing). In particular, one section of this book asks us to believe that even beauty is objective, can be given criteria and scientifically explained. That's right, beauty is no longer in the eye of the beholder but is subject to the laws of physics too. Thus, following these suggestions to their conclusions, all art curriculums should be replaced by science courses and legitimate beholders will have first interned at Fermilab.

Very often however, they neglect to point that their positions, postulations and conclusions are based on a particular interpretation and not necessarily on proven fact, though they would have us think otherwise. In this case, the author is known for espousing ideas based on the many worlds interpretation of quantum physics, hardly a widely accepted view. Listening to this book, one would never know that.

2. I liked the beginning of the book. It started well and I felt it had some promise, but about mid-way through it seemed to go off the rails a bit. Beginning about the time the author is imagining dialogs with Socrates, I began to lose the thread of the material. By the time it was finished, some 12 hours later, I felt and still feel like there were a couple of different books buried in the contents. It was as if the author had gone back and picked out particular essays or short works over his career and tried to stitch them together into some sort of coherent framework. Perhaps in one of the many alternate quantum worlds this and similar techniques are more successful.

3. One of the books' main arguments, as I found some 18 hours in, is that in the authors view, mankind has potential limited only by the laws of physics. Given time, anything that is possible will be achieved (more or less - again I am paraphrasing). In my opinion, the gentleman is far too sanguine with regard to humans and human nature. The last couple of hours seemed almost pollyanna-ish. Perhaps I am being too hard, it was after all very close to a listening marathon, but I seriously doubt anyone would suggest that this book is an example of the objective beauty it suggests. It did, in fact, infinitely transform me in a being 20 hours older than I was before.

19 people found this helpful

Brilliant but difficult to understand

Would you listen to The Beginning of Infinity again? Why?

I'd HAVE to listen to it again if I want to understand some of the many highly abstract intellectual concepts introduced by Deutsch. I think this is a compelling read anyway. I will listen again.

Were the concepts of this book easy to follow, or were they too technical?

No. I wouldn't say they were too technical, just above my intellectual and cognitive "pay grade" in some areas. I suspect most listeners will feel the same way. Though I personally have a PhD in an admittedly unrelated-to-physics but nonetheless a very analytical and technical field, I simply could not follow certain discussions, such as the one relating to Quantum Mechanics.

What does Walter Dixon bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

He was competent and a clear enunciator. However, I think actually READING a physical book would be better in this case: It would enable one to go back to prior sentences or pages to reread them. The nature of his book is such that if you didn't understand the initial paragraphs of a topic he introduces, the odds are good that you won't understand the rest of the discussion. His arguments are like building blocks.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

Yes, "Infinity Hotel" was one. Another was a discussion of his views, which I share, on how mankind should deal with the prospects of global warming.

Any additional comments?

Deutsch is absolutely a genius. I am not convinced he is necessarily right when he tries to extend his scientific reasoning to completely unrelated fields, but he definitely makes you think in a completely new light. I'd say "Bravo". This is a very important book.

18 people found this helpful

This book is a wild ride!

Wow. I do not pretend to understand even the 20th part of the ideas in this book. Who would have thought that a physicist and mathematician could express himself so eloquently on so many disparate subjects? This book is all over the map; it's a wild romp through an amazing mind. David Deutsch's ego must be at least the size of the Milky Way Galaxy--no, wait, that's too "parochial", too provincial by N orders of magnitude! Well, I guess it does take some bravado to take on evolution, quantum mechanics, history, universality, even knowledge itself, and still find time for politics, philosophy, artificial intelligence, and a conversation with Socrates. Along the way, as Deutsch manages to drop an amazing idea you never heard before into just about every paragraph, his major theses boils down to two things: first, good explanations lead to an infinity of knowledge, while bad explanations have only the power to fool us; and secondly, there will always be problems, but they can be solved if we can separate the good explanations from the bad ones.

Doing that in the real world we live in every day is hard, way harder than I think Deutsch realizes. We are fallible human beings who more often than not ignore even the most elegant of explanations with impunity. That said, being inside his head for the last couple of days was a privilege indeed.

By the way, the reader did a great job of not being in the way!

18 people found this helpful

Perhaps the most important book written so far.

Accessible language, a joy to listen to across the multitude of fascinating subjects. A complete software upgrade for your brain.

15 people found this helpful