A Practical Guide to Popper's Epistemology (via David Deutsch)

Where does knowledge come from? How do we decide that one explanation is better than another? These are foundational questions across every field of human inquiry.

In The Fabric of Reality (TFoR), David Deutsch presents a powerful defense of Popperian epistemology — the view that knowledge grows through bold conjectures and the systematic elimination of errors. Deutsch argues that this framework is one of humanity’s four most fundamental explanatory theories, alongside quantum physics, evolution by natural selection, and the theory of computation.

In this article, I will outline what I understand Popperian epistemology to assert.

Life Expectancy <> Vulnerability

In his book, How the World Really Works, Vaclav Smil explains the relationship between life expectancy and vulnerability. In short, the more we extend our life expectancy, the more we increase our vulnerability to comorbidities of old age.

Slavoj Žižek's Definition of Critical Reading

A critical reading, Žižek suggests, works like a short circuit—by connecting unlikely texts or ideas, especially pairing major works with marginal or disavowed ones, it shocks us into seeing what the original text disavows or cannot articulate. This method doesn’t reduce meaning but reveals its hidden assumptions and ideological blind spots.