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/XCeE292fDi

[Conjecture Institute @ConjectureInst]

The overwhelming majority of all mathematical theorems are trivial or meaningless, much as the overwhelming majority of all possible books are sheer babble.

The creative mind of the mathematician alone can sift through the computer’s database of theorems and, in light of his mathematical ideas, identify the interesting ones and explain their significance.

~Conjecture Institute Fellow @PaulRRobichaud & President @ChipkinLogan

[Conjecture Institute @ConjectureInst]

https://t.co/OMOfBZqbtb

[Conjecture Institute @ConjectureInst]

Far from being robber barons or feudal masters, the world’s most successful technological entrepreneurs play a fundamental role in the progress that leads to greater human flourishing.

~Conjecture Institute @SaulZimet in @Quillette

[Conjecture Institute @ConjectureInst]

A thought experiment about Wigner’s friend could, in principle, distinguish between collapse and many worlds theories of quantum mechanics.

It’s also “the thought experiment that led to the idea of quantum computing.”

Conjecture Institute Fellow @maria__violaris explains. 👇

[Dr Maria Violaris @maria__violaris]

Does quantum mechanics have a missing piece?

In the latest episode of The Royal Institution's new video series "Puzzling Science", I address what many physicists feel is the biggest puzzle of quantum theory, the famous measurement problem: https://t.co/Uyymosv8KF

I demystify everything from Schrödinger's cat to Wigner's friend and quantum computing, all while solving a multiverse-themed jigsaw.

Watch to the end to find out if I ever complete the final piece of the quantum puzzle...!

[Conjecture Institute @ConjectureInst]

https://t.co/AklUu019h5

[Conjecture Institute @ConjectureInst]

What do the daily swings of the stock market, 9/11, Europe’s migrant crisis, and trade deals between weapon manufacturers and governments have in common?

We have good, non-conspiratorial explanations for all of them that, in turn, cohere with the rest of our best explanations from history, economics, institutional dynamics, and memetics (culture).

The conspiracist insists that ‘what we’re told’ about any of the above is ‘not the real story’, that they are instead explained by the schemes of a secret cabal that places its own interests ahead of the public’s.

They invoke additional ontological baggage to explain events for which we already have a non-conspiratorial explanation. They invoke the conspiracy but never do the work of resolving the role of this cabal with all of the rest of our understanding of society.

~Conjecture Institute Cofounder @astupple & President @ChipkinLogan

[Mises Media @mises_media]

Buchanan said the left launched the culture war. @DrJeffDegner argues the left are only the shock troops, and that the real enemy of Western culture is the modern nation state: monetary, fiscal and regulatory power acting together.

[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