Conjecture Institute

Conjecture Institute Fellow Dimitri Vallein is building an alternative to Hollywood with optimistic science fiction stories, immersive technology, and a philosophy of progress.   Read the article here: https://conjectureinstitute.org/articles/fellow-spotlight/dimitri-vallein

Denying the truth of Western superiority means never investigating why the West makes so much more progress than the rest of humanity. It means failing to discover the institutions, principles, and values that underlie the progress that the West has made. It means taking for granted the necessary ingredients for how a society can transform from a worse one to a better one. It means putting those v...

Conjecture Institute Fellow Paul Raymond-Robichaud proved that the universe can be local and real after all—vindicating Einstein’s dream and unsettling a century of quantum orthodoxy. Our Spotlight Article series highlights our Fellows’ history, contributions, interests, and ideas. More to come. Read or listen to the web version of our article about Paul and his work here .

Jaber is a Fellow of Conjecture Institute. A computer science graduate and educational Youtuber focused on science and philosophy communication, Jaber's videos and interviews are dedicated to promoting Enlightenment values, progress, optimism in Deutsch's sense, the open/dynamic society and a Critical Rationalist attitude. His is one of the only Arabic-speaking channels that offers deep dives into...

In explaining the regularities of an economy, of the conditions under which wealth can and cannot grow, we may begin with the fact that man acts purposefully—that is, he employs some scarce means to achieve some desired ends. This is typically called the action axiom, but I prefer to call it the action conjecture. As with many apparently simple principles in science and philosophy, the action conj...

With his advent of a tradition of criticism, materialism, and the notion of universal principles, Thales gave every subsequent philosopher and scientist indispensable tools of reason that have lasted for thousands of years.   Read the entire module: https://conjectureinstitute.org/courses/business/history_of_ideas_module_1.pdf

Physicist Julian Barbour discusses the ideas in his essay, Gravity Without Absolutes. Julian's essay is one of several written for our upcoming compendium, Bold Conjectures, Volume II: Essays Across Physics.

In this module, we will explore the content and shortcomings of four laws of thermodynamics.   Read the module: https://conjectureinstitute.org/courses/constructor-theory/Constructor%20Theory%20Module%203.pdf   Visit Conjecture Institute: https://conjectureinstitute.org/

Physicist Abdullah Afzal discusses the ideas in his essay, Effective Field Theory and the Shape of Realism (cowritten with Hassaan Saleem).   Abdul and Hassaan's' essay is one of several written for our upcoming compendium, Bold Conjectures, Volume II: Essays Across Physics.

Conjecture Institute Fellow Charles Bedard discusses the ideas in his essay, Another Triumph of Locality: Colliding Histories Skew Handshakes.   Charles' essay is one of several written for our upcoming compendium, Bold Conjectures, Volume II: Essays Across Physics.

Conjecture Institute Fellow Sam Kuypers discusses the ideas in his essay, The Fate of Spacetime: What Many Worlds Means for Gravity.   Sam's essay is one of several written for our upcoming compendium, Bold Conjectures, Volume II: Essays Across Physics.

As we saw in Module One, all dynamical laws of motion are time-reversal symmetric: if the trajectory of a system from state A to state B is allowed by particular laws of motion, then the trajectory of that system from state B to state A is also allowed by those same laws.   Yet this fundamental reversibility sits in stark tension with the one-way processes we observe all around us.   Since 1870, a...

While Newtonian mechanics, quantum mechanics, and general relativity consist of radically different conceptual frameworks and mathematical infrastructure, they are all expressible in what David Deutsch and Chiara Marletto call the prevailing or traditional conception. If you know the current positions and velocities of the planets, Newton’s laws let you calculate where they will be next year, or w...

The scope of a scientific theory is not a matter of subjective preference, and that judging a theory by its scope is a mistake. Judging a scientific theory by its structure—for example, whether or not it consists of algebraic equations and dynamical laws of motion—is also a mistake. Absent a good explanation for why a given theory’s scope is too great, or why a given theory’s structure renders it...

Philosophy is often divided into three branches: metaphysics or ontology (what is existence, why do reality’s constituent parts behave the way they do, what constrains and explains Nature’s regularities), epistemology (how knowledge grows, how people come to know what we think we know), and morality (what one should and should not do, how to choose some values over others).   Read: https://www.con...

A good explanation is not only hard to vary, but it must also cohere with the rest of our explanations and actually explain what we are trying to explain.   These three constraints imply that the search for good explanations will always be nontrivial. In fact, the deeper our explanations of the world, the more constrained the space of good explanations becomes   Read: https://www.conjectureinstitu...

Evidence-based anything is an illusion. There is no evidence-based science, evidence-based policy, evidence-based argument (see this very paragraph).   In reality, a mind first guesses—conjectures—an idea. This could be a scientific idea, a moral idea, an economic idea, a political idea, an idea about beauty—anything.   One then criticizes it: is it internally consistent? Does it cohere with our o...

Taking Schrödinger Seriously, Module 1: What Is the Schrödinger Equation?, by Conjecture Institute Fellow Maxime Desalle   By the end of this module, you will be able to: -Identify each symbol in the Schrödinger equation and explain what it represents, -Describe what the wave function is and why it must be complex (here, complex means ‘having both real and imaginary components’), -Explain why the...

People, Reason, & Reality Part I: Reason: Module 1: The Paths to Adopting an Idea, by Conjecture Institute President Logan Chipkin   The relationships between errors, problem solving, thinking, and rationality are not as straightforward as common sense might suggest.   Read: https://www.conjectureinstitute.org/courses/people-reason-reality/Logan%20%E2%80%93%20Reason%20Module%201%20-%20Google%2...

Conjecture Institute President & Cofounder Logan Chipkin speaks with Oxford physicist and Conjecture Institute Senior Scientist Chiara Marletto about constructor theory, a theory in fundamental physics that seeks to express all of the laws of physics in terms of transformations that are possible, transformations that are impossible, and why. Logan and Chiara discuss constructor theory’s motiva...

Conjecture Institute Advisor, Lord Daniel Hannan is in conversation today about democracy, free trade and freedom broadly. Lord Hannan has a comprehensive website containing his work which is found at https://danielhannan.info/ while his Youtube channel is a catalogue of speeches, talks, interviews, lectures and more defending the ideas and ideals of the Enlightenment and Western Civilization. Cha...

Maria is fellow of Conjecture Institute https://www.conjectureinstitute.org/ and physicist with her own Youtube Channel where she takes deep dives into many aspects of quantum theory - especially quantum computation. Subscribe to her channel here:    / @maria_violaris  

Oxford physicist Vlatko Vedral speaks with Conjecture Institute President Logan Chipkin about quantum information theory, testing whether or not gravity is classical, whether spacetime is fundamental or emergent, and more.   Get Vlatko's new book, Portals to a New Reality: Five Pathways to the Future of Physics: https://a.co/d/cqCIK8x   Learn more about Vlatko's work: https://www.vlatkovedral.com...

Eric is a freelance writer and host of The Falsifiable Podcast, a show in which Eric explores both current events and evergreen topics in science, culture, and politics through a Popperian lens. He is currently working on a book that serves as a one-stop shop for anyone interested in epistemology in general—and Popperian epistemology in particular. Eric's podcast can be found here: https://youtube...

In this episode Conjecture Institute Advisor David Deutsch takes a deep dive into the problems that plague existing academic institutions and, crucially, the ways research (in particular fundamental research in science) tends to be funded. David explains his own experiences in finding a career in physics early in his life, how things have changed and therefore what problems now beset young researc...