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It's hard to truly understand how radical some of @DavidDeutschOxf theories are compared to much of modern scientific consensus.
One of Davids most controversial but valuable contributions to society is the rejection of probability (with the exception ex. card games) as an expression of truthiness or justified beliefs when applied to predictions or conclusions.
There is no probability of how likely we are to be hit by a meteor tomorrow.
There is no probability of how likely the stock market is going to be doing as well tomorrow as it is today.
There is no P(Doom), no percentage you can put on whether AI is likely to wipe out humanity or not.
Things either happen or they don't and we can either explain why they will and how or we can't.
All attempts at putting percentage on a prediction is really just guesswork dressed up as reasoning.
If a meteor is going to hit us tomorrow it's already on the way and the probability is 100%.
If the stock market is going to crash tomorrow the reasons for it's crash have already been put in motion maybe decades before.
If the AI is going to kill us all depends on what we decide to do with it not what some calculation says.
Davids primary critique is for the field of science but it goes beyond that.
Far too many of decisions done in modern society is based around the false certainty of using Bayesian probability. It's like a placebo for a society that demands certainty in an uncertain world. It's not just false it's regressive as it slows down knowledge creation.
The only thing that can change the outcome of the future is the creation of new knowledge. Knowledge based on good explanations that are hard to vary.
We can create knowledge that allow us to divert the meteor before it hits earth.
We can create knowledge that will allow us to hinder a crash of the stock market (both directly or indirectly)
We can create knowledge that let us evolve side by side with very powerful AI instead of enslaving it or be enslaved by it.
Like everything else in life there are no guarantees but there are definitely better or worse ways to deal with uncertainty, probability just isn't one of them.
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