He is a non-stipendiary Visiting Professor in the Department of Atomic and Laser Physics at the Centre for Quantum Computation (CQC) in the Clarendon Laboratory of the University of Oxford. He pioneered the field of quantum computation by being the first person to formulate a description for a quantum Turing machine, as well as specifying an algorithm designed to run on a quantum computer. He is also a proponent of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.
He laid the foundations of the quantum theory of computation, and has subsequently made or participated in many of the most important advances in the field, including the discovery of the first quantum algorithms, the theory of quantum logic gates and quantum computational networks, the first quantum error-correction scheme, and several fundamental quantum universality results.
(1953 – )
– David Deutsch Quotes –
The overwhelming majority of theories are rejected because they contain bad explanations, not because they fail experimental tests.
~ David Deutsch
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.
~ David Deutsch
The truly privileged theories are not the ones referring to any particular scale of size or complexity, nor the ones situated at any particular level of the predictive hierarchy, but the ones that contain the deepest explanations.
~ David Deutsch
It is possible to build a virtual-reality generator whose repertoire includes every possible environment.
~ David Deutsch
Our best theories are not only truer than common sense, they make more sense than common sense.
~ David Deutsch
Is the human race a universal constructor?
~ David Deutsch
Every problem that is interesting is also soluble.
~ David Deutsch
I myself believe that there will one day be time travel because when we find that something isn’t forbidden by the over-arching laws of physics we usually eventually find a technological way of doing it.
~ David Deutsch
Quantum computation is… a distinctively new way of harnessing nature… It will be the first technology that allows useful tasks to be performed in collaboration between parallel universes.
~ David Deutsch
Our best theories are not only truer than common sense, they make more sense than common sense.
~ David Deutsch
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.
~ David Deutsch
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.
~ David Deutsch
Since building a universal virtual-reality generator is physically possible, it must actually be built in some universes.
~ David Deutsch
The quantum theory of parallel universes is not the problem, it is the solution.
~ David Deutsch
A prediction, or any assertion, that cannot be defended might still be true, but an explanation that cannot be defended is not an explanation.
~ David Deutsch
Necessary truth is merely the subject-matter of mathematics, not the reward we get for doing mathematics.
~ David Deutsch
It is possible to build a virtual-reality generator whose repertoire includes every possible environment.
~ David Deutsch
The overwhelming majority of theories are rejected because they contain bad explanations, not because they fail experimental tests.
~ David Deutsch
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.
~ David Deutsch
In the long run, the distinction between what is interesting and what is boring is not a matter of subjective taste but an objective fact.
~ David Deutsch
The truly privileged theories are not the ones referring to any particular scale of size or complexity, nor the ones situated at any particular level of the predictive hierarchy—but the ones that contain the deepest explanations.
~ David Deutsch
There are mathematical symbols in physical reality. The fact that it is we who put them there does not make them any less physical.
~ David Deutsch
What computers can or cannot compute is determined by the laws of physics alone, and not by pure mathematics.
~ David Deutsch
Inherently insoluble problems are inherently boring.
~ David Deutsch
