The Fabric of Reality

The Science of Parallel Universes - and Its Implications

By: David Deutsch

Narrated by: Walter Dixon

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.

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.

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