Conjecture Institute

Optimism.
Co-founded by President @ChipkinLogan and Board Members @DKedmey & @astupple.

[Conjecture Institute @ConjectureInst]

Over 400 people have registered for our Defend the West conference!

WHEN: 1/13/2027

WHERE: Online (free)

Speakers include:
@DavidDFriedman
@sapinker
@SRCHicks
@yaronbrook
@alananewhouse
@johanknorberg
@DeirdreMcClosk
@michaelshermer
@ToKTeacher
@jasoncrawford
Nadine Strossen

Save your spot (link below)

[Conjecture Institute @ConjectureInst]

https://t.co/umKXPzPVea

https://t.co/umKXPzPVea

[Conjecture Institute @ConjectureInst]

Every great idea is a rare find in an infinite space of possibilities, and the real question is how minds avoid getting lost.

~Conjecture Institute Fellow @dela3499

[Conjecture Institute @ConjectureInst]

https://t.co/cua0QhbyfS

[Conjecture Institute @ConjectureInst]

Can you catch a biomolecule acting quantum mechanically without looking inside it? ⚛️

Plants pass captured light along chains of molecules. Whether quantum effects help has been debated for years.

Conjecture Institute Fellow @GiusDiPietra and Senior Scientists Chiara Marletto and Vlatko Vedral propose a workaround: send in a single photon. If the molecule can spread it across many places at once, the molecule itself can’t be classical.

Their model suggests the test survives the warm, noisy conditions of living things. Next step: a real biological system.

[Conjecture Institute @ConjectureInst]

@bkrish_da_ish 🙏

[Conjecture Institute @ConjectureInst]

Our society, [the] society of the West, quintessentially [is] not the society that makes the right decisions all the time.

It’s the society that corrects errors.

That’s what the West is good at.

And I have pointed out from time to time that the optimistic view and the error correcting view and the Popperian view—that prophecy is impossible and everybody’s fallible and all those things—imply that there’s no limit to the size of error that we can make.

The individuals or groups or society as a whole can make arbitrarily large errors.

And the important thing then, the important difference between different societies and different groups and different subcultures, is therefore how good they are at correcting errors.

~@DavidDeutschOxf with Conjecture Institute Advisor @peterboghossian & @ReidN in Bold Conjectures, Volume I: Select Interviews of David Deutsch

[Conjecture Institute @ConjectureInst]

@bkrish_da_ish All proceeds certainly go to Conjecture Institute!

[Conjecture Institute @ConjectureInst]

@bkrish_da_ish Enjoy! All of our books are free at Conjecture Press, by the way 🙂

[Conjecture Institute @ConjectureInst]

https://t.co/njdToYUzDZ

[Conjecture Institute @ConjectureInst]

@yudapearl @AkaLazarus Satire - yes (can persuade people by exposing errors)

Shame - no (cannot persuade people since it does not expose errors)

[Conjecture Institute @ConjectureInst]

Individualism & Egalitarianism

It is the individual—not the tribe, not the family, not the society—who has the capacity to explain the world, to understand it, to suffer, to be happy, to make choices, to create explanatory knowledge.

This kind of individualism is a devastating criticism of every collectivistic idea past and present—collective justice, guilt by blood, racism, classism, and policies intended to help a ‘community’ as defined by the set of all individuals with a particular characteristic.

Moreover, there is only one kind of individual—any person is as capable of making progress, experiencing any physically possible qualia, and generating knowledge as any other.

It is in this sense that egalitarianism is true.

People are not equal in terms of skill, interest, genes, phenotype, wealth, opportunity, nor life experience.

But people are equal with respect to their ability to generate new knowledge and continuously solve the endless stream of problems that defines their lives.

Indeed, knowledge creation is the most egalitarian enterprise in existence.

~Conjecture Institute President @ChipkinLogan

[Conjecture Institute @ConjectureInst]

3 is the smallest number that enables error correction.

If you encode info with 2 bits, & 1 goes wrong, you can detect the error but not correct it. You can’t decode the original info.

If you encode info with 3 bits, & 1 goes wrong, you can correct the error, by resetting to the majority state.

-Conjecture Institute Fellow @maria__violaris

[Conjecture Institute @ConjectureInst]

@danieltrichards @SashaShrugged @Libertyseedsco Congratulations!

[Conjecture Institute @ConjectureInst]

@bkrish_da_ish @mboudry @chellivia @HumanProgress 💯

https://t.co/7CekuXfaJg

[Conjecture Institute @ConjectureInst]

https://t.co/DjwJ2JQCTc

[Conjecture Institute @ConjectureInst]

“Western civilization…is the only hand that allows itself to be bitten...”

Conjecture Institute Senior Philosopher @mboudry with @chellivia of @HumanProgress on why all our complaining is a sign of freedom.

[Conjecture Institute @ConjectureInst]

https://t.co/ircSSs65wI

[Conjecture Institute @ConjectureInst]

“It’s a very optimistic stance to think that we could be wrong about everything, and we could make progress.”

Conjecture Institute Fellow @arjunkhemani tells Fellow @maxdesalle how privacy makes that progress possible.
👇

[Conjecture Institute @ConjectureInst]

https://t.co/kHo54k9WEa

[Conjecture Institute @ConjectureInst]

How is life possible without design?

In 1961, Eugene Wigner argued that self-reproduction was nearly impossible under laws not tailored for life.

Conjecture Institute Senior Scientist Chiara Marletto answered him with constructor theory. 🧬

[Conjecture Institute @ConjectureInst]

https://t.co/njdToYU1Or

[Conjecture Institute @ConjectureInst]

Since children are fully capable of creating knowledge, they are full-status people who are just as cosmically significant as adults.

~Conjecture Institute Cofounder @astupple w/ President @ChipkinLogan