The Beginning of Infinity

Final A Year of Books pick, announced December 28, 2015 — closing the year on epistemology and the unbounded growth of knowledge.

“Not the easiest read, but it made me smarter.”

Naval recommends it as the deepest available account of why good explanations—not data—are the engine of all human progress.

“[David Deutsch's] books have inspired me more than anyone else's, and i think hold a big clue about how we get from here to agi.”

December 2022 tweet from @sama. Altman has repeatedly named The Beginning of Infinity as his favorite book in interviews, most prominently in a 2025 conversation with Mathias Doepfner.

Flagged green (particularly great); Deutsch's epistemology of progress is a direct intellectual ancestor of Progress Studies, which Collison co-founded with Tyler Cowen.

“This 21st-century statement of the ideals of the Enlightenment offers fresh insight on a vast number of topics, including the workings of human cognition, the ways of science, and the drivers of progress. A major inspiration for "Enlightenment Now."”

From Pinker's One Grand list; a major inspiration for his own Enlightenment Now.

Listed in the 'Science, Philosophy, Evolution, History of Human Civilization' section of Li Lu's published Recommended Book List (Himalaya Capital, May 2020).

“Technology, which is really knowledge, enables this”

On his personal beliefs page at nat.org, Friedman links the word 'knowledge' to the Wikipedia entry for The Beginning of Infinity, signaling it as the source of his view of technology as knowledge.