The Fabric of Reality

The Science of Parallel Universes - and Its Implications

By: David Deutsch

Narrated by: Walter Dixon

Length: 14 hrs and 26 mins

Publisher's summary

Author of the New York Times best seller The Beginning of Infinity, David Deutsch, explores the four most fundamental strands of human knowledge: quantum physics, and the theories of knowledge, computation, and evolution - and their unexpected connections. Taken together, these four strands reveal a deeply integrated, rational, and optimistic worldview. It describes a unified fabric of reality that is objective and comprehensible, in which human action and thought are central.

With new preface exclusive to the audiobook, read by the author.

©1997, 1998 David Deutsch (P)2018 David Deutsch

Deeply provocative.

A fascinating and provocative examination of the implications of quantum physics and their impacts on the intellectual quest for understanding of life and existence. Provocative and challenging. I found it most satisfying.

Good, but not so great as I thought it would be

That David Deutsch is an extraordinary thinker I already knew, and that book do provide a lot of insights in the ways in wich our knowledge is interrelated, however I certainly didn't expect to see basically every philosophical and scientific position that disagrees with him being so misrepresented. Specially through the end of the book he seems to argues for the many-worlds interpretation as a solution to the free will problem, I fail to see how it could be, if anything a multitude of universes in wich every choice is already taken makes even less of free will that the other possibilities, our choices don't affect anything and seems to be pretty futile, since we can only at max choose what universe would we inhabit (though he don't state how), this is a collapse in morality since you can't have any significant impact on the overall well-being of the whole reality or even a local part of it, you just choose the outcome that will be better for you but objectively they all come true anyway. if that's how reality is like I'm ok with it, I wouldn't argue on moral grounds, I think we must accept the truth whatever it takes us, but he's pulling the moral argument and putting in a multiverse interpretation that I don't see fit. The Omega point discution is more optimist thought, I do believe that we are simulating/computation machines and will evolve to even greater levels eventually simulating whole new worlds and constious beings in it, in fact some would argue it had already happen and we're in it, but there's no way to know, anyway, I think that are some ways in wich a sufficient inteligent computer in the far end of the universe could simulate or even recreate other universes and that might be a strange way in wich universes reproduce, we can even think of a natural selection of universes (Type I universes I mean) in wich the ones that develop such advanced civilizations have greater chance of being reproduced.

Smart thinker, hard for a layman

As someone who is merely intrigued by quantum physics, as opposed to studying it or using it in a career, a lot of this was pretty dense. The boring narrator didn’t help. The author also has a very pompous attitude towards those he disagrees with, yet backs up his own theories with very convoluted 10 minute logic puzzles. In general the topics are fascinating though.

Fantastic read

Fantastic read. I highly recommend reading Beginning of Infinity first as it lays some philosophical groundwork that will clarify some things.

The second best science book I have read

This an excellent introduction to the Multiverse Interpretation of Quantum Theory. It is also a great background for The Beginning of Infinity also by the author

One of the best books I’ve ever read but one of the worst readers

David Deutsch is a certified genius and this book is required reading for all of humanity. I didn’t realize until I read this book:
1) I was a “reductionist” for thinking of us as a Tegmark “atom heap” (Deutsch argues matter creates mind AND mind creates matter);
2) it’s explanatory not predictive power that makes theory valuable;
3) “many worlds” is the best explanation for quantum theory measurements;
4) when considered together, his “four strands” of Popperian Epistemology, Darwin/Dawkins evolution, Turing/quantum computation, and quantum theory all have more to say about each other than they do about reality alone;
5) there is no “foundation” and it’s fallibility all the way down;
6) the meat computers in our head are already “AI”;
And much more.
HOWEVER it would be hard to conceive a WORSE reader for this book. The “performance” was utterly robotic and fake sounding. The reader seemed to be able to mouth vocalizations that are understandable as “English language sounds” while simultaneously avoiding any kind of meta data (pauses in the correct spaces, emphasis, inflection, etc) that would convey MEANING and UNDERSTANDING of English as a language, much less this book. I seriously thought the joke at the end was going to be that it turned out to have been read by a computer. A bad computer...
David Deutsch has such a wonderful voice and sense of humor — I would so love it if he were to read this book himself. The other sad coda here — this SAME terrible reader reads David Deutch’s other book the “beginning of infinity.” Bummer.

Pompous and Verbose

I don’t think he makes a very good case for parallel universe is, he just keeps insisting that obviously they exist and then describes how one can take them into account in analysis

Great narration

I like listening to this book while going to sleep. The narrator has a soothing voice and the book is very interesting

Too complex for audio version

The book is about very complex subjects and the figures (pictures) in the book are supposed to help understand the complex ideas of Quantum Mechanics. But since the figures cannot be seen in an audio version then why was the audio version made for such a complex subject matter? There was no warning or alert informing the buyer of the audio version that the book has illustrations. It is a loss of productivity and wealth when one invests in creating formats that have low impact. Oh well, I lost money for the audio version but the subject is fascinating and worth reading about so I will now buy the print version.

Profound and eye opening

The author breaks down the current state of scientific theory about our universe so that anyone can understand it. I learned a lot, and particularly lived his argument against solipsism, which prior to reading this I would have taken far more seriously. His explanation of how it mirrored the views of the Spanish Inquisition by taking our best explanation and adding extra complexity was very convincing. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to know what our current best explanations are for the world around us.