Talk:The Fabric of Reality

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when was the book published?

I'm mainly responsible for the content of the page at this time, and I'm willing to work on it, but I'd need more guidance than 'requires cleanup' and 'unclear or unconfusing'. Maybe someone else would be better able to respond to such broad stimuli. Rats 17:02, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

I notice that someone has put the four strands into an enumerated list and has dropped "quantum physics" in favor of "philosophy of science". This is a mistake. (See page 31 of FoR for the four strands: quantum physics, epistemology, the theory of computation, and the theory of evolution.) I'll fix this, but if the fix is unfixed I'll assume my work here is done. Rats 17:02, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

I've corrected the enumerated list and embellished it a bit. This may or may not meet the concerns raised by the {clean-up} and {simplify} flags. But I don't know what remains to clean up, and simplifying seems less to the point than piquing curiosity about the complexities of the book. The article shouldn't attempt to create an illusion of simplicity. RTFB! Or maybe, as I suggested above,

I rather think the article should, more directly, attempt to create the appearance of simplicity, because such an appearance would not be illusory. As far as philosophy goes, Deutsch is an autodidact, and not a terribly good one. It's hard to imagine a more simplistic and, well, stupid epistemological theory than Popper's, and I doubt you'll find an epistemologist in ten who thinks it's still a serious candidate for anything.
It's very popular among scientists, though.1Z 01:48, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
Yes, I know. To be fair, I'll admit that there's probably lots of mediocre science that's overrated by philosophers too.
More to the point: this article has the appearance of someone who read a book, thought it was neat, and decided to write a Wikipedia article in lieu of a book report. This is a common problem, and the results are this: nothing presented in the article is connected in any clear way to how it is perceived in the rest of the relevant fields. It's an elaboration of a lot of fairly idiosyncratic views on other people's views and their importance. It should largely be cut for length, and contextualized in current academic debates. The problem is that, like so many scientists-turned-amateur philosophers, like Dawkins or Penrose, Deutsch doesn't really have any serious standing in those fields. This is a book of pop-philosophy, unfortunately, and in that light I'm doubtful its content need significant elaboration here.

someone with greater simplifying skills should take over at this point. I'll remove the flags, but if they're hoisted again without any specific suggestions, I'll defer to others. Rats 17:58, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Has anyone noticed that the demand for simplification is contradictory to the demand for contextualisation?1Z 02:04, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
I don't think so. The claim is that there's both too much internal detail (hence, "book report") and too little external data ("relevance"). These are compatible aims, especially since the article is almost entirely internal detail. A reasonable synthesis of these would still leave more internal detail detail than context, probably, and it would a be more valuable article. (Another problem that crops up when articles are written like this one is that the vocabulary used to describe what's in the book is almost entirely the vocabulary idiosyncratic to the book; this makes it difficult or impossible to assess its relation to other work. Of course, some of this author's terminology--not all of it--is explicitly borrowed. An encyclopedia article aims to be outside the book and connect it to the rest of the world for people who haven't already read it.)
Deutsch's take on the CT thesis is contextualised, so is his take on modal relaism. I don't really see what you are complaining about. Some specific examples would help. 1Z 14:28, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] See also: simulated reality

An internal link to the Simulated reality page has been added and then dropped. It is actually quite relevant, since Deutsch discusses the subject in Fabric Of Reality. (The current page is rather WP:POV, but that is a separate issue).

Also, the omission of any link to Quantum computing is puzzling, since Deutsch is an acknowledged expert in the field.1Z 15:57, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] knowledge paradox, request for clarification

It is not clear from the article why is the creation paradox not possbile from within parallel worlds. the knowledge is created in one, and then is transmitted to another. This inconsistency in the article must be resolved. --Procrastinating@talk2me 13:30, 1 October 2007 (UTC)