History of post ‘Fun Criterion vs Whim Worship’

Revision 4 · Aug 22, 2025 2:01am · View this (the most recent) version (v5)

@@ -60,7 +60,7 @@ How is this possible? Why do otherwise rational men do blatantly irrational thin

At the height of the Enlightenment, as reason came close to winning the age-old war mysticism had started against it, people had to choose between these fundamentally incompatible sides. They are incompatible because [one cannot possibly compromise](https://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/compromise.html#order_2) on truth and falsehood or reason and unreason without departing from truth and reason, respectively. But, [in the words](/posts/why-people-like-kant-and-why-they-re-wrong) of devoted Kantian Friedrich Paulsen, people’s “heart[s]” still “clung” to unreason; due to the incompatibility I’ve described, they felt torn in two. Kant designed his ‘philosophy’ to [absolve them from the responsibility of choosing between reason and unreason](/posts/why-people-like-kant-and-why-they-re-wrong): he limited science to the material world and mysticism to morality. In Kant’s own words (!) from his *Critique of Pure Reason*, “the doctrine of morality asserts its place and the doctrine of nature [ie, science] its own” ([B xxix](https://www.google.com/books/edition/Critique_of_Pure_Reason/qqeX8MJurLkC); blaming the fields for his own choice), and “I had to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith […]” ([B xxix-xxx](https://www.google.com/books/edition/Critique_of_Pure_Reason/qqeX8MJurLkC); bold emphasis removed). He then relegated philosophy to the role of arbiter between the two. In short, he *split* science and morality to *unify* reason and unreason. This way, he made it seem possible for people to have their cake and eat it, too.

If you’re wondering how it was possible for physicists to do scientifically brilliant work for Nazis, say, thus physically and morally enabling their crimes; if you’re wondering how the land of poets and thinkers, as Germany has often been described, spiraled as far down into the abyss as it did, *that’s* how: Kant laid the groundwork.[^4] A well-integrated mind is both moral *and* scientific, but the Kantian split -figuratively turns+causes people -into schizophrenics.[^5]+to develop split personalities.[^5] That said, consider once more those ostensibly brilliant minds such as Oppenheimer with his four-leaf clover or Mitchell with his experiments in ‘extrasensory perception’:

> % source: Ayn Rand. Ibid. (p. 109). Emphasis mine.
> [W]hat if one of those men gained political power and had to consider the question of whether to unleash a nuclear war? As a Kantian, he would have to make his decision, not on the grounds of reason, knowledge and facts, but on the urgings of faith, i.e., of feelings, i.e., on *whim*.

Revision 3 · Aug 06, 2025 7:16pm · View this version (v4)

@@ -58,7 +58,7 @@ To understand the gravity of this error, we have to put it in the context of the

How is this possible? Why do otherwise rational men do blatantly irrational things? It’s because the philosophical undercurrent of our age, which most people never make explicit to themselves but nevertheless absorb uncritically from the culture around them, endorses such mixtures. This undercurrent originated in today’s form with Immanuel Kant.

At the height of the Enlightenment, as reason came close to winning the age-old war mysticism had started against it, people had to choose between these fundamentally incompatible sides. They are incompatible because [one cannot possibly compromise](https://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/compromise.html#order_2) on truth and falsehood or reason and unreason without departing from -reason+truth and -truth,+reason, respectively. But, [in the words](/posts/why-people-like-kant-and-why-they-re-wrong) of devoted Kantian Friedrich Paulsen, people’s “heart[s]” still “clung” to unreason; due to the incompatibility I’ve described, they felt torn in two. Kant designed his ‘philosophy’ to [absolve them from the responsibility of choosing between reason and unreason](/posts/why-people-like-kant-and-why-they-re-wrong): he limited science to the material world and mysticism to morality. In Kant’s own words (!) from his *Critique of Pure Reason*, “the doctrine of morality asserts its place and the doctrine of nature [ie, science] its own” ([B xxix](https://www.google.com/books/edition/Critique_of_Pure_Reason/qqeX8MJurLkC); blaming the fields for his own choice), and “I had to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith […]” ([B xxix-xxx](https://www.google.com/books/edition/Critique_of_Pure_Reason/qqeX8MJurLkC); bold emphasis removed). He then relegated philosophy to the role of arbiter between the two. In short, he *split* science and morality to *unify* reason and unreason. This way, he made it seem possible for people to have their cake and eat it, too.

If you’re wondering how it was possible for physicists to do scientifically brilliant work for Nazis, say, thus physically and morally enabling their crimes; if you’re wondering how the land of poets and thinkers, as Germany has often been described, spiraled as far down into the abyss as it did, *that’s* how: Kant laid the groundwork.[^4] A well-integrated mind is both moral *and* scientific, but the Kantian split figuratively turns people into schizophrenics.[^5] That said, consider once more those ostensibly brilliant minds such as Oppenheimer with his four-leaf clover or Mitchell with his experiments in ‘extrasensory perception’:

Revision 2 · Aug 05, 2025 7:50am · View this version (v3)

@@ -78,7 +78,7 @@ Deutsch has said mixed things applying to the reversal between values and emotio

On the other hand, Deutsch [more recently said](https://nav.al/deutsch-files-ii) in an interview with Naval Ravikant that “if you want to explain how things come about by this process ‘thought’, then it leads to certain conclusions, such as […] following the fun.” But *following* the fun is the reversal Rand warns against. Has Deutsch reversed the roles to appease irrational people? It wouldn’t be his first attempt at appeasement: contrary to Rand’s stance that “a rational man never distorts or corrupts his own standards and judgment in order to appeal to the irrationality, stupidity or dishonesty of others”,[^7] Deutsch [hides his unpopular views about animal insentience](/posts/views-on-animal-sentience-in-the-beginning-of-i). Ravikant, who has [spouted](https://x.com/naval/status/1702091318246490398) irrationalities such as “Science and spirituality are both the search for truth” (you will recognize Kant all over the comments), repeats the reversal error in front of millions of followers by [citing](https://x.com/arjunkhemani/status/1834942974100177322) Deutsch as saying to “just do whatever’s fun […]”. Tanett [says](https://youtu.be/5e2LWxaqQUQ?t=70) she has “always disliked” the word ‘fun’; that she has “always thought that [it] is too misleading because it can get mistaken for […] mindless fun.” But she also [endorses](https://x.com/Untrulie/status/1941112294014067193) the view that “the true productivity hack is having your emotions be aligned with what you’re doing”, which, she concludes, is “literally the Fun Criterion!!” That description is better than just *mindless* fun, but as I’ve explained, mere alignment is not enough.

Recall Kant’s attempt to make reason and unreason coexist, his attempt to limit reason; then, note Tanett’s [claim](https://x.com/reasonisfun/status/1937825159911809489) that “if you try to learn [about certain falsehoods] *intellectually* aka explicitly, *it won’t typically work*” – by which she means: reason (the intellect) is limited. Note her -[claim](https://youtu.be/idvGlr0aT3c?t=831)+[claim](https://youtu.be/idvGlr0aT3c?t=885) from her conversation with Deutsch that “you can +do *deliberation by intuition*”, by which she means: let your thought processes be guided by emotions for which you cannot account. Lastly, note her [claim](https://youtu.be/idvGlr0aT3c?t=831) from the same conversation that “you can just kind of do *without thinking* in an explicit way; you can just kind of *follow your -intuitions*”; or her [claim](https://youtu.be/idvGlr0aT3c?t=885) from the same conversation that “you can do *deliberation by intuition*”+intuitions*” – by which she means: be rational, except when you don’t feel like it. This is not something +an *unapologetic*, *unreserved* -advocates+advocate of reason would say. (Italics mine throughout this paragraph. To Deutsch’s credit, he pushes back against some of Tanett’s nonsense. One commenter on their conversation even [recognizes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idvGlr0aT3c&lc=UgzlhgNyFFcOUei5NrF4AaABAg) similarities to Kant, comparing the fun criterion to “Kant’s free play of faculties […]”.)

Since emotions are *automatic* responses, they are not part of a deliberate process. They are the result of practiced deliberation. Rand [likened](https://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/emotions.html#order_2) the subconscious to a computer which a) you can program with your conscious mind and b) gives you “print-outs” of your value judgments in the form of emotions. So the same goes for fun: the associated emotions should be print-outs, reflections of your value judgments. Due to the immediate, automatic nature of emotions, one has to take great care not to mistake one’s emotions for oracles, ie infallible sources of truth. Just because emotions are lightning fast does not mean they are infallible or even reliable.[^8]

@@ -93,7 +93,7 @@ Tools such as schedules can help you be more productive. But Deutsch has a deep-
> % link: https://takingchildrenseriously.com/creativity-and-untidiness/
> I find that if I have to do something at a fixed time—for instance, I have to give a lecture—then I find myself increasingly unable to work in the period before the lecture, because I am aware in the back of my mind that whatever trains of thought I embark upon cannot be open-ended. This ‘planning blight’ often begins even on the previous day. That’s why I try to arrange my life so that there are as few fixed-time obligations as possible.

Now, if this was just some random guy saying this, you would immediately recognize the quoted stance for what it is: a hangup and irrationality not deserving of further consideration. -Now, to+To Deutsch’s credit, he has [made it clear](https://youtu.be/idvGlr0aT3c?t=17) that he doesn’t want to give life advice – but some might still cargo-cult him. He is a luminary scientist, after all. And people often credit unreason for the achievements of reason while blaming reason for unreason’s shortcomings. So let’s consider his stance.

There’s a grain of truth in what Deutsch is saying: creativity cannot be scheduled or planned; the growth of knowledge is unpredictable. Likewise, you can’t plan the growth of a city; you can’t plan your life. These things *evolve* – just consider how [ugly](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/77/8e/f3/778ef36acf60a822ade98186c1b752da.jpg) planned cities often are and how [beautiful](https://img0.oastatic.com/img2/59755036/max/wandern-in-monschau.jpg) unplanned, evolved cities can be. But you *can* plan a building; you *can* plan your day, your week, and even beyond that. You can and should have long-range personal goals. And those goals, your long-range plans, can evolve as you correct errors. Fun, however, is [short-range, spur of the moment](https://courses.aynrand.org/works/the-conflicts-of-mens-interests-2/) – if you focus too much on fun, you could inadvertently pursue something that’s fun today but destroys you tomorrow. Delaying a bit of fun now to have more fun later is not necessarily a compromise or irrational if it means achieving a greater value by one’s own light.

@@ -105,9 +105,9 @@ To give another example, I have been reviving my interest in rollerblading latel

Now, imagine a talented rollerblader – he is very good and has serious ambitions but dreads fixed-time commitments. This fear will necessarily limit how far he can take his ambitions because he won’t be able to, say, show up to a competition on time. Organizers won’t just relax that requirement; the real world does not work that way.

To-do lists are another example. I like making them and setting goals for the day. If I don’t make them, I may get sidetracked in such a way that I trade a higher value for a lower one if I don’t notice it while it’s happening. To-do lists can help me notice that: they help me hold myself -accountable.+accountable, leading to a sense of accomplishment that would be hard to get without them. Same goes for schedules and especially deadlines, which provide a sense of urgency; they make a project matter more. With practice, one can reduce the use of such tools over time, but the requisite knowledge does not come automatically. Creative work does not happen automatically; beyond a certain level of complexity, it takes positive time-management skills that need to be developed.

More generally, whenever a fixed-time commitment interferes with an otherwise open-ended train of thought, I write down open problems to work on once the commitment is over. The resulting list helps me resume my train of -thought anytime.+thought. It doesn’t always work perfectly, but again, it’s a skill one can practice. And for problem situations that are complex enough, going only off of memory is too error prone anyway. (Check out my tool [Veritula](https://veritula.com) to track problems and criticisms and resume work on a given problem situation anytime.)

Sometimes, life gets in the way – even if you don’t have any fixed-time commitments, there’s still sleep, hunger, bathroom breaks, and so on. What’s the big deal? Your subconscious keeps working on problems in the meantime anyway; it may even surprise and delight you with a solution later. A simple fixed-time commitment like a lecture shouldn’t result in “planning blight”.

Revision 1 · Aug 05, 2025 5:54am · View this version (v2)

Fix some typos and improve language overall

@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
# Fun Criterion vs Whim Worship
Physicist David Deutsch has proposed the *fun criterion:* a new mode of criticism and criterion of rationality. Proponents of the fun criterion claim that it boosts productivity and helps resolve inner conflicts. But the -philosphical-historical+philosophical-historical context and some of Deutsch’s statements cast doubt on both the validity of his criterion and the motivations of some of its proponents.

Deutsch [says](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idvGlr0aT3c) there are three different types of ideas (examples mine):

@@ -35,7 +35,7 @@ That said, I think there are two major gaps in the fun criterion as I understand

Deutsch [has said](https://www.dwarkesh.com/p/david-deutsch?open=false#§fun-criterion) that he does not think of fun itself as an emotion. In his view, fun is, again, the state where all your ideas are affecting each other via the evolution that occurs inside your mind; a state of unconflictedness. However, he [considers](https://youtu.be/idvGlr0aT3c?t=354) emotions part of the trifecta of ideas affecting one’s thought processes; [he says](https://youtu.be/idvGlr0aT3c?t=529) when there’s a conflict of ideas across categories, “it affects you via your feelings, it affects you via your mood, it affects you via things that can’t be easily stated in words, *but* they can be felt.” For example, he [speaks](https://youtu.be/idvGlr0aT3c?t=850) of a “nameless dread” inexplicitly signaling to us what not to do in certain situations. And we have no direct, explicit visibility into whether we have attained the state of fun; it is emotions that tell us whether we have. So, since emotions still figure prominently in Deutsch’s view of fun, I see no reason not to continue speaking of fun as an emotional phenomenon.

Now, emotions can serve either a proper or irrational role in your mind, depending on how you use them. According to Objectivism, the *rational* role of emotions is that of quickly returning an evaluation of a concrete based on your value judgments. Emotions, [says](https://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/emotions.html#order_2) founder of Objectivism Ayn Rand, “are lightning-like estimates of the things around you, calculated according to your values.” -Rand+Deutsch even uses nearly the same categories of ideas as -Deutsch when+Rand: she [describes](https://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/emotions.html#order_1) emotions as the products of “man’s premises, held consciously or subconsciously, explicitly or implicitly.” She also [explains](https://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/emotions.html#order_1) emotions as “estimates of that which furthers man’s values or threatens them, that which is *for* him or *against* him—lightning calculators giving him the sum of his profit or loss.” An example I [recently gave](https://youtu.be/uh1W0J9NCfY) on [Edwin de Wit’s](/commenters/edwin-de-wit) podcast in this context is seeing someone physically abuse a child: that would cause you to feel *disgust*. In this example, disgust is rational because it’s an *effect* of the violation of your values: the value of physical integrity and wellbeing, and the notion that *all* people, including children, deserve freedom from physical harm.

Many people have mistaken ideas about reason: they think it’s ‘cold’ and mechanical, like pure math or logic, with no room for emotions. Not only is that not true, it’s also a defamation of math and logic, both of which are creative fields. However, emotions *can* cause irrationality:

@@ -58,7 +58,7 @@ To understand the gravity of this error, we have to put it in the context of the

How is this possible? Why do otherwise rational men do blatantly irrational things? It’s because the philosophical undercurrent of our age, which most people never make explicit to themselves but nevertheless absorb uncritically from the culture around them, endorses such mixtures. This undercurrent originated in today’s form with Immanuel Kant.

At the height of the Enlightenment, as reason came close to winning the age-old war mysticism had started against it, people had to choose between these fundamentally incompatible sides. They are incompatible because [one cannot possibly compromise](https://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/compromise.html#order_2) on truth and falsehood or reason and unreason without departing from reason and truth, respectively. But, [in the words](/posts/why-people-like-kant-and-why-they-re-wrong) of devoted Kantian Friedrich Paulsen, people’s “heart[s]” still “clung” to unreason; due to the incompatibility I’ve described, they felt torn in two. Kant designed his ‘philosophy’ to [absolve them from the responsibility of choosing between reason and unreason](/posts/why-people-like-kant-and-why-they-re-wrong): he limited science to the material world and mysticism to morality. In Kant’s own words (!) from his *Critique of Pure Reason*, “the doctrine of morality asserts its place and the doctrine of nature [ie, science] its own” ([B xxix](https://www.google.com/books/edition/Critique_of_Pure_Reason/qqeX8MJurLkC); blaming the fields for his own choice), and “I had to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith […]” ([B -xxix-xxx](https://www.google.com/books/edition/Critique_of_Pure_Reason/qqeX8MJurLkC),+xxix-xxx](https://www.google.com/books/edition/Critique_of_Pure_Reason/qqeX8MJurLkC); bold emphasis removed). He then relegated philosophy to the role of arbiter between the two. In short, he *split* science and morality to *unify* reason and unreason. This way, he made it seem possible for people to have their cake and eat it, too.

If you’re wondering how it was possible for physicists to do scientifically brilliant work for Nazis, say, thus physically and morally enabling their crimes; if you’re wondering how the land of poets and thinkers, as Germany has often been described, spiraled as far down into the abyss as it did, *that’s* how: Kant laid the groundwork.[^4] A well-integrated mind is both moral *and* scientific, but the Kantian split figuratively turns people into schizophrenics.[^5] That said, consider once more those ostensibly brilliant minds such as Oppenheimer with his four-leaf clover or Mitchell with his experiments in ‘extrasensory perception’:

@@ -67,7 +67,7 @@ If you’re wondering how it was possible for physicists to do scientifically br

Recall that fun is an emotional phenomenon and that the reversal Rand warns against follows precisely from Kant’s philosophy. In short, the reversal says: “Be rational, except when you don’t feel like it.” (P. 110)

If proponents of the fun criterion don’t want mystics to misappropriate it, the former should do more to emphasize that one should not be *driven* by one’s emotions, including the -emotional phenomena+emotions associated with fun. The fun criterion must be clearly defined in opposition to Kant – otherwise, it will end up merely a continuation of the sorry Kantian tradition of appeasing and accommodating irrationality and, as such, be doomed to failure.

Deutsch has said mixed things applying to the reversal between values and emotions. On the one hand, he [says](https://youtu.be/idvGlr0aT3c?t=747) that following your feelings just because they’re your feelings is both “impossible” and “overtly irrational”. He also knows that value judgment comes first. Consider this passage from his book:[^6]

@@ -130,7 +130,7 @@ I’ve seen this movie. It does not end well.

Deutsch’s stance on schedules has not changed in ~30 years; he seemed unable during our collaboration to agree to a formal contract or timelines, leading to indefinite delays at his mercy. This placed an almost unbearable strain on the project, and it was on me as project manager to shield the rest of the team from this strain. My managerial stance is to be *available* to people whenever they need me; to *provide* everything they need and [“carry water”](https://www.amazon.com/Captain-Class-Hidden-Creates-Greatest/dp/0812997190) for them to do their best work; and to *get out of their way* otherwise. In the end, it was the people who did operate on conventional schedules who got the project done despite Deutsch’s involvement, not because of it. And I believe those people had more fun on the project than he did – again, there’s a link between the voluntary use of productivity tools and self-accountability on the one hand and fun on the other, in that order.

Some of Deutsch’s fans responded with incredulity to my [piece on his aversion to accountability](/posts/where-s-david-deutsch-s-accountability). Surely a brilliant mind like his couldn’t have such an aversion? Recent negotiations with Deutsch and a third party around an audiobook adaptation, which fans of the translation keep requesting, illustrate the problem. A professional narrator would have to record the audiobook; the director (me) would, among other things, check the recording for accuracy by comparing it to the text. Being not only a native speaker of the target language but also intimately familiar with the book already, that’s easy for me. I also know a great narrator whom I once hired out of my own pocket to record [one chapter](/posts/ein-traum-von-sokrates) of the translation for marketing purposes. At the time, Deutsch initially wanted to check the recording himself in the name of error correction, but I was able to convince him to let me work on my own terms for two reasons. First, he isn’t qualified to check for errors: he once described his command of German to me as that of a six-year-old (which is fairly accurate and not false humility talking). For the translation, the vast majority of error correction occurred between me and our copy editor, whereas-a Deutsch’s reviews, though valuable overall, repeatedly contained elementary false positives. Second, he wouldn’t block translations or recordings of languages he doesn’t speak at all and thus could not possibly check himself. So why block one now?

As I recall, the actual work for that one chapter ended up taking less time than getting the rights from Deutsch in the first place, but after some hemming and hawing, he agreed to let me work on my own terms. The ensuing collaboration between me and the narrator was frictionless, productive, and as an effect, fun – and it culminated in a flawless recording in a timely manner because we were able to work autonomously. I could have hired the same narrator again virtually on the spot to record the rest of the book – he was available. Without being artificially slowed down or any other arbitrary friction, I believe the project would have taken only a few months and resulted in another flawless recording. Creating an audio adaptation of this exceptional book for generations to come – now *that* would have been a great long-range goal. At the time of writing, it could have been halfway done. But it never happened.

@@ -172,7 +172,7 @@ Going into more detail on Temple would be out of scope for this article – read

I believe Deutsch could make rapid progress again if he 1) learned to use productivity tools such as schedules, got more organized, reduced his workload, etc; and 2) got justice against Temple. In the meantime, however, the fun criterion is not a sufficient solution.

In short, Deutsch’s thoughts on fun are not as valuable [as I originally thought](/posts/unconflicted). I still think *The Beginning of Infinity* is a superlative book, and he’s had many invaluable ideas, but judging by his *methods*, his thought processes, he’s not as rational as I originally thought. It isn’t entirely clear whether the fun criterion has *caused* the bad outcomes I’ve mentioned or whether it merely hasn’t helped avoid them. What is clear, however, is that it does *not* work as a standard of value or tool of cognition. It *can* work as a mode of criticism and defense against authoritarianism. It’s worth exploring and there’s something of value there, but its proponents should define it in clear opposition to the Kantian tradition. Tanett and others seem to abuse the fun criterion to attack reason, thus continuing that tradition (maybe without -being aware of it).+realizing). Deutsch seems inspired by objectivism but also breaks with it significantly. In its denial of dismissing ideas based on category, the fun criterion may be a necessary condition for rationality, but it is not a sufficient one. On the contrary, it looks like it has at times devolved into whim worship. Discretion advised.

---

Original · Aug 05, 2025 1:53am · View this version (v1)

# Fun Criterion vs Whim Worship
Physicist David Deutsch has proposed the *fun criterion:* a new mode of criticism and criterion of rationality. Proponents of the fun criterion claim that it boosts productivity and helps resolve inner conflicts. But the philosphical-historical context and some of Deutsch’s statements cast doubt on both the validity of his criterion and the motivations of some of its proponents.

Deutsch [says](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idvGlr0aT3c) there are three different types of ideas (examples mine):

1. **Explicit ideas:** you can express them in words, such as scientific theories.
2. **Inexplicit ideas:** you cannot (currently) express them in words, such as the knowledge of how to keep your balance when riding a bike.
3. **Unconscious ideas:** you are not consciously aware of them but you still have them. Some biases fall under this category, for example.[^1]

These types are approximate, and every explicit idea has an inexplicit component. Sometimes, two explicit ideas conflict, and it’s relatively easy to describe the conflict to yourself and then solve it. They can be brought into direct conflict through logic and experiment. But that’s harder to do when ideas conflict from within or across at least one non-explicit category, eg when an explicit idea conflicts with an inexplicit or unconscious one, or when inexplicit ideas conflict with each other, and so on. All sorts of conflicts can happen in your mind. To solve them, you need conjecture, criticism, and error correction. But again, reasoning about conflicts between ideas is harder when the ideas involved are of different and/or non-explicit types: they cannot be readily translated from one type to another.

The problem Deutsch wants to address is: how can you solve such a conflict, and how do you know when you’ve solved it, without translating the ideas involved?

Here’s his answer. All the different types of ideas share an environment: your mind, which, from the perspective of any given idea, is largely made up of all the other ideas in that mind. And even though the different types can’t always be translated into each other or directly criticized by each other, conjecture and criticism take into account what the ideas are and what they do. Then, the ideas affect each other via the evolution[^2] that happens in your mind. “[I]deally, you want to get in a state of mind where [your ideas are] all affecting each other. And when they’re all affecting each other, you’re having fun”, says Deutsch.

This is what he calls the *fun criterion.*

Deutsch [later](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5e2LWxaqQUQ) clarified that the fun ‘criterion’ isn’t strictly a criterion in the sense that it tells you in advance whether something is going to be fun. Instead, it’s meant as a *mode of criticism:*

> % source: David Deutsch, *Reason Is Fun Podcast*, episode 1, ‘What is “fun”? What is suffering?’
> % link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5e2LWxaqQUQ
> We already have criteria for choosing between ideas – namely, whether they are good explanations, basically whether we think they’re true or false. ‘Fun criterion’ sounds as though you can kind of evaluate in advance what’s going to be fun. […] I think it’s more accurate to say that [lack of] fun is a mode of criticism rather than a criterion. [I]f something seems to be not fun, that is prima facie a criticism of it. [Y]ou may still decide that you have to do it because you don’t yet have enough knowledge to not do it […] but if something you are doing, or propose to do, isn’t fun, then there’s something unsolved there, it’s something that has to be answered.

When something stops being fun, that’s information you can use to reconsider or abandon it, make changes to it, etc. Still, both Deutsch and Lulie Tanett, close associate of Deutsch’s and arguably the second biggest proponent of the idea, have been calling it a ‘criterion’ pretty consistently. Since people familiar with the idea will most readily recognize it under that name, I call it a criterion throughout this article, for continuity.

The fun criterion has several benefits. First, unlike any other approach before it, it does not set up an authority, ie one type of idea that gets to steamroll over the other types. For example, more scientistically minded people may categorically prefer their explicit ideas over their inexplicit ones. They may deny inexplicit ideas any validity or even their existence. Conversely, as Deutsch points out, romantics may always prefer their inexplicit ideas over explicit ones. As he explains, these are irrational approaches because one should judge ideas by content, not type. In other words, the fun criterion prevents an instance of the fallacy objectivists identified as [‘context dropping’](https://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/context-dropping.html). The criterion correctly views ideas as existing in the context of all the other ideas in a mind, and of the evolution occurring in that mind. In this sense, the fun criterion strikes me as a criterion of *rationality:* a necessary condition one has to meet to be rational.

Second, and as a result of its anti-authoritarian stance, the criterion emphasizes the importance of being [unconflicted](/posts/unconflicted): when you’re having fun, your thought processes are in harmony; no part of you is *thwarting* another; you are not your own enemy. You are not in conflict with yourself about what to do next – at least not in a permanent type of (what I believe Deutsch would call) [‘active’](https://takingchildrenseriously.com/what-sort-of-conflict-is-coercion/) conflict. Think of how much energy people waste being in conflict with themself, like those who force themselves to go to the gym. The fun criterion is an effective defense against toxic ideas like ‘no pain no gain’ or ‘choose your pain’. Life doesn’t have to be difficult in that sense. It’s possible and desirable to have fun all the time.

Third, as a mode of criticism, fading fun acts as an *error-correction signal.* If you do something that’s fun at first but then stops being fun, that tells you there’s an error to correct somewhere. You can introspect about what you’re doing and why – maybe you could do something else instead. But if you do something that isn’t fun to begin with, yet you keep doing it anyway, you miss out on that signal and have a harder time correcting the error. In Popperian epistemology – which Deutsch is a proponent of – preserving the means of error correction is key. Without error correction, knowledge cannot grow. In other words, fun has epistemological significance and should be taken seriously. Fun isn’t frivolous; it’s serious business.

Fourth, and these are my own thoughts, the fun criterion could be a promising new perspective to study other creative processes such as the economy. Maybe one can think of the economy as a creative process where all actors – individuals, businesses, buyers, producers, etc – affect each other in some ideally frictionless way via the evolution of ideas *across* minds. In that sense, the objectivist insight that [the interests of rational men do not conflict](https://courses.aynrand.org/works/the-conflicts-of-mens-interests-2/) is the societal counterpart to the role of fun inside a single mind. In the same way profits (or lack thereof) are error-correction signals in economic pursuits, fun (or lack thereof) is an error-correction signal in personal pursuits. In the same way rational men are in harmony with each other, a rational mind is in harmony with itself, meaning the ideas inside that mind are in harmony with each other[^3] – and the underlying explanation qua evolutionary process might be the same.

That said, I think there are two major gaps in the fun criterion as I understand it. The first relates to *emotions*, the second to *productivity.*

Deutsch [has said](https://www.dwarkesh.com/p/david-deutsch?open=false#§fun-criterion) that he does not think of fun itself as an emotion. In his view, fun is, again, the state where all your ideas are affecting each other via the evolution that occurs inside your mind; a state of unconflictedness. However, he [considers](https://youtu.be/idvGlr0aT3c?t=354) emotions part of the trifecta of ideas affecting one’s thought processes; [he says](https://youtu.be/idvGlr0aT3c?t=529) when there’s a conflict of ideas across categories, “it affects you via your feelings, it affects you via your mood, it affects you via things that can’t be easily stated in words, *but* they can be felt.” For example, he [speaks](https://youtu.be/idvGlr0aT3c?t=850) of a “nameless dread” inexplicitly signaling to us what not to do in certain situations. And we have no direct, explicit visibility into whether we have attained the state of fun; it is emotions that tell us whether we have. So, since emotions still figure prominently in Deutsch’s view of fun, I see no reason not to continue speaking of fun as an emotional phenomenon.

Now, emotions can serve either a proper or irrational role in your mind, depending on how you use them. According to Objectivism, the *rational* role of emotions is that of quickly returning an evaluation of a concrete based on your value judgments. Emotions, [says](https://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/emotions.html#order_2) founder of Objectivism Ayn Rand, “are lightning-like estimates of the things around you, calculated according to your values.” Rand even uses nearly the same categories of ideas as Deutsch when she [describes](https://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/emotions.html#order_1) emotions as the products of “man’s premises, held consciously or subconsciously, explicitly or implicitly.” She also [explains](https://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/emotions.html#order_1) emotions as “estimates of that which furthers man’s values or threatens them, that which is *for* him or *against* him—lightning calculators giving him the sum of his profit or loss.” An example I [recently gave](https://youtu.be/uh1W0J9NCfY) on [Edwin de Wit’s](/commenters/edwin-de-wit) podcast in this context is seeing someone physically abuse a child: that would cause you to feel *disgust*. In this example, disgust is rational because it’s an *effect* of the violation of your values: the value of physical integrity and wellbeing, and the notion that *all* people, including children, deserve freedom from physical harm.

Many people have mistaken ideas about reason: they think it’s ‘cold’ and mechanical, like pure math or logic, with no room for emotions. Not only is that not true, it’s also a defamation of math and logic, both of which are creative fields. However, emotions *can* cause irrationality:

> % source: Ayn Rand, *Playboy* interview
> % date: March 1964
> % link: https://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/emotions.html#order_3
> An emotion is an automatic response, an automatic effect of man’s value premises. An effect, not a cause. There is no necessary clash, no dichotomy between man’s reason and his emotions—provided he observes their proper relationship. A rational man knows—or makes it a point to discover—the source of his emotions, the basic premises from which they come; if his premises are wrong, he corrects them. He never acts on emotions for which he cannot account, the meaning of which he does not understand. In appraising a situation, he knows why he reacts as he does and whether he is right. He has no inner conflicts, his mind and his emotions are integrated, his consciousness is in perfect harmony. His emotions are not his enemies, they are his means of enjoying life.

This “harmony” could be considered the ‘unconflictedness’ I highlighted above. Continuing:

> % source: Ayn Rand, ibid.
> But [man’s emotions] are not his guide; the guide is his mind. This relationship cannot be reversed […]. If a man takes his emotions as the cause and his mind as their passive effect, if he is guided by his emotions and uses his mind only to rationalize or justify them somehow—*then* he is acting immorally, he is condemning himself to misery, failure, defeat, and he will achieve nothing but destruction—his own and that of others.

[Simply put](https://courses.aynrand.org/works/the-conflicts-of-mens-interests-2/), emotions, including those associated with fun, *are not tools of cognition.* So, unless phrased carefully, the fun criterion risks speaking to people who would rather feel than think *while pretending to be rational* because they seem to be following a criterion of rationality suggested by a luminary scientist.

To understand the gravity of this error, we have to put it in the context of the recent history of philosophy. The dominant philosophy of our age is not one of pure reason but of what objectivists call ‘mixed premises’. Many people are partly rational, partly irrational; partly honest, partly liars; partly good, partly evil, and so on. Even some of the (ostensibly) most rational people indulge in irrationalities:

> % source: Ayn Rand. *Philosophy: Who Needs It.* ‘From the Horse’s Mouth’ (pp. 108-109). 1975. Kindle Edition.
> There was a story in the press that during the first test of an atom bomb in New Mexico, Robert Oppenheimer, head of the Los Alamos group who had produced the bomb, carried a four-leaf clover in his pocket. More recently, there was the story of Edgar Mitchell, an astronaut who conducted ESP [extrasensory-perception] experiments on his way to the moon. There was the story of a space scientist who is a believer in occultism and black magic.

How is this possible? Why do otherwise rational men do blatantly irrational things? It’s because the philosophical undercurrent of our age, which most people never make explicit to themselves but nevertheless absorb uncritically from the culture around them, endorses such mixtures. This undercurrent originated in today’s form with Immanuel Kant.

At the height of the Enlightenment, as reason came close to winning the age-old war mysticism had started against it, people had to choose between these fundamentally incompatible sides. They are incompatible because [one cannot possibly compromise](https://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/compromise.html#order_2) on truth and falsehood or reason and unreason without departing from reason and truth, respectively. But, [in the words](/posts/why-people-like-kant-and-why-they-re-wrong) of devoted Kantian Friedrich Paulsen, people’s “heart[s]” still “clung” to unreason; due to the incompatibility I’ve described, they felt torn in two. Kant designed his ‘philosophy’ to [absolve them from the responsibility of choosing between reason and unreason](/posts/why-people-like-kant-and-why-they-re-wrong): he limited science to the material world and mysticism to morality. In Kant’s own words (!) from his *Critique of Pure Reason*, “the doctrine of morality asserts its place and the doctrine of nature [ie, science] its own” ([B xxix](https://www.google.com/books/edition/Critique_of_Pure_Reason/qqeX8MJurLkC); blaming the fields for his own choice), and “I had to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith […]” ([B xxix-xxx](https://www.google.com/books/edition/Critique_of_Pure_Reason/qqeX8MJurLkC), bold emphasis removed). He then relegated philosophy to the role of arbiter between the two. In short, he *split* science and morality to *unify* reason and unreason. This way, he made it seem possible for people to have their cake and eat it, too.

If you’re wondering how it was possible for physicists to do scientifically brilliant work for Nazis, say, thus physically and morally enabling their crimes; if you’re wondering how the land of poets and thinkers, as Germany has often been described, spiraled as far down into the abyss as it did, *that’s* how: Kant laid the groundwork.[^4] A well-integrated mind is both moral *and* scientific, but the Kantian split figuratively turns people into schizophrenics.[^5] That said, consider once more those ostensibly brilliant minds such as Oppenheimer with his four-leaf clover or Mitchell with his experiments in ‘extrasensory perception’:

> % source: Ayn Rand. Ibid. (p. 109). Emphasis mine.
> [W]hat if one of those men gained political power and had to consider the question of whether to unleash a nuclear war? As a Kantian, he would have to make his decision, not on the grounds of reason, knowledge and facts, but on the urgings of faith, i.e., of feelings, i.e., on *whim*.

Recall that fun is an emotional phenomenon and that the reversal Rand warns against follows precisely from Kant’s philosophy. In short, the reversal says: “Be rational, except when you don’t feel like it.” (P. 110)

If proponents of the fun criterion don’t want mystics to misappropriate it, the former should do more to emphasize that one should not be *driven* by one’s emotions, including the emotional phenomena associated with fun. The fun criterion must be clearly defined in opposition to Kant – otherwise, it will end up merely a continuation of the sorry Kantian tradition of appeasing and accommodating irrationality and, as such, be doomed to failure.

Deutsch has said mixed things applying to the reversal between values and emotions. On the one hand, he [says](https://youtu.be/idvGlr0aT3c?t=747) that following your feelings just because they’re your feelings is both “impossible” and “overtly irrational”. He also knows that value judgment comes first. Consider this passage from his book:[^6]

> % source: David Deutsch, *The Beginning of Infinity*, chapter 5
> % link: https://books.apple.com/us/book/the-beginning-of-infinity/id451546463
> Deciding ‘I should do whatever pleases me most’ [when determining what sort of life to want] would give you very little clue, because what pleases you depends on your moral judgement of what constitutes a good life, not vice versa.
>    [I]f I ask you for advice about what objectives to pursue in life, it is no good telling me to do what […] I prefer, because I don’t know what I prefer to do until I have decided what sort of life I want to lead or how I should want the world to be.

On the other hand, Deutsch [more recently said](https://nav.al/deutsch-files-ii) in an interview with Naval Ravikant that “if you want to explain how things come about by this process ‘thought’, then it leads to certain conclusions, such as […] following the fun.” But *following* the fun is the reversal Rand warns against. Has Deutsch reversed the roles to appease irrational people? It wouldn’t be his first attempt at appeasement: contrary to Rand’s stance that “a rational man never distorts or corrupts his own standards and judgment in order to appeal to the irrationality, stupidity or dishonesty of others”,[^7] Deutsch [hides his unpopular views about animal insentience](/posts/views-on-animal-sentience-in-the-beginning-of-i). Ravikant, who has [spouted](https://x.com/naval/status/1702091318246490398) irrationalities such as “Science and spirituality are both the search for truth” (you will recognize Kant all over the comments), repeats the reversal error in front of millions of followers by [citing](https://x.com/arjunkhemani/status/1834942974100177322) Deutsch as saying to “just do whatever’s fun […]”. Tanett [says](https://youtu.be/5e2LWxaqQUQ?t=70) she has “always disliked” the word ‘fun’; that she has “always thought that [it] is too misleading because it can get mistaken for […] mindless fun.” But she also [endorses](https://x.com/Untrulie/status/1941112294014067193) the view that “the true productivity hack is having your emotions be aligned with what you’re doing”, which, she concludes, is “literally the Fun Criterion!!” That description is better than just *mindless* fun, but as I’ve explained, mere alignment is not enough.

Recall Kant’s attempt to make reason and unreason coexist, his attempt to limit reason; then, note Tanett’s [claim](https://x.com/reasonisfun/status/1937825159911809489) that “if you try to learn [about certain falsehoods] *intellectually* aka explicitly, *it won’t typically work*” – by which she means: reason (the intellect) is limited. Note her [claim](https://youtu.be/idvGlr0aT3c?t=831) from her conversation with Deutsch that “you can just kind of do *without thinking* in an explicit way; you can just kind of *follow your intuitions*”; or her [claim](https://youtu.be/idvGlr0aT3c?t=885) from the same conversation that “you can do *deliberation by intuition*” – by which she means: be rational, except when you don’t feel like it. This is not something *unapologetic*, *unreserved* advocates of reason would say. (Italics mine throughout this paragraph. To Deutsch’s credit, he pushes back against some of Tanett’s nonsense. One commenter on their conversation even [recognizes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idvGlr0aT3c&lc=UgzlhgNyFFcOUei5NrF4AaABAg) similarities to Kant, comparing the fun criterion to “Kant’s free play of faculties […]”.)

Since emotions are *automatic* responses, they are not part of a deliberate process. They are the result of practiced deliberation. Rand [likened](https://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/emotions.html#order_2) the subconscious to a computer which a) you can program with your conscious mind and b) gives you “print-outs” of your value judgments in the form of emotions. So the same goes for fun: the associated emotions should be print-outs, reflections of your value judgments. Due to the immediate, automatic nature of emotions, one has to take great care not to mistake one’s emotions for oracles, ie infallible sources of truth. Just because emotions are lightning fast does not mean they are infallible or even reliable.[^8]

The proper role of fun is that of feedback, mirroring back to you – fallibly! – whether your ideas are all affecting each other. But if you were to reverse this relationship, ie chase fun and then rationalize your choices based on your feelings, you should expect bad outcomes: an unproductive life at best, misery and destruction at worst.

This brings me to my second criticism of the fun criterion: from what I’ve seen, its proponents have not emphasized [productivity](https://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/productiveness.html) enough. In fairness, Tanett [endorses](https://x.com/Untrulie/status/1941112294014067193), as previously quoted, the view that “the true productivity hack is having your emotions be aligned with what you’re doing”, but I’m not aware of any evidence that she’s particularly productive, whereas I do have some personal knowledge to the contrary. Note also the reversal in her statement: fun – meaningful, substantive fun – is the *effect* of productivity, not its cause. It makes no sense to desire effects without causes, as objectivists say. In *this* regard, the fun criterion drops the context of means. It also drops the context of range, of long-range goals; that one’s short-range and long-range goals should be aligned. Fun being an emotional phenomenon, and given the immediacy of emotions, a focus on fun automatically favors the short range over the long range.

Tools such as schedules can help you be more productive. But Deutsch has a deep-seated aversion to schedules:

> % source: David Deutsch, ‘Creativity and untidiness’, interview by Sarah Fitz-Claridge, *Taking Children Seriously* 21
> % date: 1996
> % link: https://takingchildrenseriously.com/creativity-and-untidiness/
> I find that if I have to do something at a fixed time—for instance, I have to give a lecture—then I find myself increasingly unable to work in the period before the lecture, because I am aware in the back of my mind that whatever trains of thought I embark upon cannot be open-ended. This ‘planning blight’ often begins even on the previous day. That’s why I try to arrange my life so that there are as few fixed-time obligations as possible.

Now, if this was just some random guy saying this, you would immediately recognize the quoted stance for what it is: a hangup and irrationality not deserving of further consideration. Now, to Deutsch’s credit, he has [made it clear](https://youtu.be/idvGlr0aT3c?t=17) that he doesn’t want to give life advice – but some might still cargo-cult him. He is a luminary scientist, after all. And people often credit unreason for the achievements of reason while blaming reason for unreason’s shortcomings. So let’s consider his stance.

There’s a grain of truth in what Deutsch is saying: creativity cannot be scheduled or planned; the growth of knowledge is unpredictable. Likewise, you can’t plan the growth of a city; you can’t plan your life. These things *evolve* – just consider how [ugly](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/77/8e/f3/778ef36acf60a822ade98186c1b752da.jpg) planned cities often are and how [beautiful](https://img0.oastatic.com/img2/59755036/max/wandern-in-monschau.jpg) unplanned, evolved cities can be. But you *can* plan a building; you *can* plan your day, your week, and even beyond that. You can and should have long-range personal goals. And those goals, your long-range plans, can evolve as you correct errors. Fun, however, is [short-range, spur of the moment](https://courses.aynrand.org/works/the-conflicts-of-mens-interests-2/) – if you focus too much on fun, you could inadvertently pursue something that’s fun today but destroys you tomorrow. Delaying a bit of fun now to have more fun later is not necessarily a compromise or irrational if it means achieving a greater value by one’s own light.

For example, you may decide to grit your teeth getting through a not-so-fun level of a video game in exchange for the promise of greater fun in later levels and the accomplishment of beating the game – and thus accept the delay gladly. However, delaying fun can also be the result of authoritarian ideas about what to do with one’s time, such as spending years pursuing a college degree one does not like just because it’s the ‘safe route’ (which is actually dangerous because it comes at the risk of significant psychological damage). One has to judge each situation individually, based on all available facts of reality, and come to an [honest](/posts/core-objectivist-values#honesty), [conscientious](/posts/core-objectivist-values#conscientiousness) evaluation of whether the tradeoff is worth it. In the end, a rational man “lives and judges long-range”, [argues Rand](https://courses.aynrand.org/works/the-conflicts-of-mens-interests-2/) – whereas a focus on fun only has limited range.

If done right, schedules can help you be more methodical and productive *and* align your short-term goals with your long-term ones – and thus have more fun and be more creative throughout your life. If a fixed-time obligation gets in the way of a train of thought, just write down your current problem situation and ideas so you can pick up where you left off later. *Being methodical and having fun are not incompatible.*[^9] On the contrary, [this gym influencer](https://www.instagram.com/reel/DMWquhpuPsx/) shows that *not* having goals, how *not* being methodical in the gym, leads to lethargy and paralysis – and those aren’t fun.

To give another example, I have been reviving my interest in rollerblading lately. I look up tutorials online and largely follow them. I study *prerequisites*, *progressions*, and *regressions* because it’s safer, tried and true, and ultimately quicker. But I also remain open to spur-of-the-moment changes if I discover a more interesting problem during practice. After practice, I go home and take notes: what went well and what to work on next.

Now, imagine a talented rollerblader – he is very good and has serious ambitions but dreads fixed-time commitments. This fear will necessarily limit how far he can take his ambitions because he won’t be able to, say, show up to a competition on time. Organizers won’t just relax that requirement; the real world does not work that way.

To-do lists are another example. I like making them and setting goals for the day. If I don’t make them, I may get sidetracked in such a way that I trade a higher value for a lower one if I don’t notice it while it’s happening. To-do lists can help me notice that: they help me hold myself accountable. Same goes for schedules and especially deadlines, which provide a sense of urgency; they make a project matter more. With practice, one can reduce the use of such tools over time, but the requisite knowledge does not come automatically. Creative work does not happen automatically; beyond a certain level of complexity, it takes positive time-management skills that need to be developed.

More generally, whenever a fixed-time commitment interferes with an otherwise open-ended train of thought, I write down open problems to work on once the commitment is over. The resulting list helps me resume my train of thought anytime. It doesn’t always work perfectly, but again, it’s a skill one can practice. And for problem situations that are complex enough, going only off of memory is too error prone anyway. (Check out my tool [Veritula](https://veritula.com) to track problems and criticisms and resume work on a given problem situation anytime.)

Sometimes, life gets in the way – even if you don’t have any fixed-time commitments, there’s still sleep, hunger, bathroom breaks, and so on. What’s the big deal? Your subconscious keeps working on problems in the meantime anyway; it may even surprise and delight you with a solution later. A simple fixed-time commitment like a lecture shouldn’t result in “planning blight”.

Maybe Deutsch’s aversion to schedules comes from his rejection of [compulsory schooling](/posts/the-right-to-education-is-bad). He’s right to reject the methods school uses [*as tools of oppression*](/posts/the-true-purpose-of-schools) – but they can still be helpful for learning when used voluntarily. For example, the concept of ‘attention spans’ is used to coerce and control children, but when used voluntarily, they can help people spend time on the things they want to spend time on. There are apps that help people reduce their time on social media ([something Deutsch has struggled with](https://www.wired.cz/clanky/a-man-with-an-iphone-thats-real-intelligence#:~:text=I%25C2%25A0gradually%2520got%2520a%25C2%25A0taste%2520for%2520them%2520and%2520became%2520%E2%80%94%2520I%25C2%25A0don%E2%80%99t%2520want%2520to%2520say%2520addicted%2520to%2520them%2520%E2%80%94%2520but%2520I%25C2%25A0was%2520using%2520them%2520too%2520much%2520and%2520decided%2520to%2520cut%2520down.%2520I%25C2%25A0actually%2520managed%2520to%2520do%2520that%252C%2520to%2520about%2520one%2520tweet%2520a%25C2%25A0day.)): they help people *reduce* self-coercion by *increasing* self-accountability. Unfortunately, some parents install those same apps on their children’s phones to control them. Slaves were right to put down the tools they were forced to pick crops with, but those who voluntarily pick crops should still use the same tools if it makes them more productive, and thus have more fun, by their own light.

Put another way, as we experience coercion, sometimes we can only fight it by rejecting the tool that’s being used to coerce us. The specifics vary by situation and are largely determined by the oppressor. For example, a child who’s being forced to learn math in school has no way to reject the coercion without also rejecting math. But that doesn’t mean math is bad in general. Many of the people who resisted forced vaccines during the Covid pandemic did so to resist force, not to resist vaccines – but were then slandered as anti-vaxxers, just as children are often slandered as being irrationally opposed to math when they are actually rationally opposed to force. And so on. Being a victim of coercion, separating it conceptually from its tools is an extremely difficult mental task, but it can be done.

Think of the delight and joy you get from a project well done. Wouldn’t you rather get that joy sooner than later? Then why not use tools such as schedules, deadlines, to-do lists, etc, that help you get it done sooner?

Although it’s true that creativity cannot be scheduled, I would not want to spend a single day in the mind of someone who dreads fixed-time commitments. Something is wrong there, to the point of dysfunction, and the fun criterion alone has not helped. The mind has a proper function; it can be used or abused. But the fun criterion has an undertone of ‘anything goes, there are no wrong answers’, in which case it devolves from genuine philosophical contribution to psychological bandaid. I know from personal experience working with Deutsch for about two years to [translate one of his books](/posts/the-beginning-of-infinity-der-anfang-der-unend), *The Beginning of Infinity*, that he isn’t very productive. Contrary to the book’s advocacy of rapid progress,[^10] it seemed that, whether the project got done next month, or next year, or not at all, made no real difference to him. Consider also that it took him ten years to write the book in the first place (averaging less than two chapters per year), even though he had already come up with many of the ideas featured in the book long before he started writing it.

In a [recent interview](https://www.wired.cz/clanky/a-man-with-an-iphone-thats-real-intelligence), a fixed-time obligation which “began a few minutes late” because “the professor had gotten caught up in his work and lost track of time”, Deutsch told his interviewer that he is “afraid to say” that he is working on three (!) books. Asked when readers can expect them, he replied:

> % source: David Deutsch, *Wired* interview, ‘A Man With an iPhone, That’s Real Intelligence’
> % date: March 2025
> % link: https://www.wired.cz/clanky/a-man-with-an-iphone-thats-real-intelligence
> I don’t know, everything always takes too long for me. My previous two books each took ten years to write, and the third one has taken over ten years, and now I’m writing two more books. I can’t tell at all.

I’ve seen this movie. It does not end well.

Deutsch’s stance on schedules has not changed in ~30 years; he seemed unable during our collaboration to agree to a formal contract or timelines, leading to indefinite delays at his mercy. This placed an almost unbearable strain on the project, and it was on me as project manager to shield the rest of the team from this strain. My managerial stance is to be *available* to people whenever they need me; to *provide* everything they need and [“carry water”](https://www.amazon.com/Captain-Class-Hidden-Creates-Greatest/dp/0812997190) for them to do their best work; and to *get out of their way* otherwise. In the end, it was the people who did operate on conventional schedules who got the project done despite Deutsch’s involvement, not because of it. And I believe those people had more fun on the project than he did – again, there’s a link between the voluntary use of productivity tools and self-accountability on the one hand and fun on the other, in that order.

Some of Deutsch’s fans responded with incredulity to my [piece on his aversion to accountability](/posts/where-s-david-deutsch-s-accountability). Surely a brilliant mind like his couldn’t have such an aversion? Recent negotiations with Deutsch and a third party around an audiobook adaptation, which fans of the translation keep requesting, illustrate the problem. A professional narrator would have to record the audiobook; the director (me) would, among other things, check the recording for accuracy by comparing it to the text. Being not only a native speaker of the target language but also intimately familiar with the book already, that’s easy for me. I also know a great narrator whom I once hired out of my own pocket to record [one chapter](/posts/ein-traum-von-sokrates) of the translation for marketing purposes. At the time, Deutsch initially wanted to check the recording himself in the name of error correction, but I was able to convince him to let me work on my own terms for two reasons. First, he isn’t qualified to check for errors: he once described his command of German to me as that of a six-year-old (which is fairly accurate and not false humility talking). For the translation, the vast majority of error correction occurred between me and our copy editor, whereas a Deutsch’s reviews, though valuable overall, repeatedly contained elementary false positives. Second, he wouldn’t block translations or recordings of languages he doesn’t speak at all and thus could not possibly check himself. So why block one now?

As I recall, the actual work for that one chapter ended up taking less time than getting the rights from Deutsch in the first place, but after some hemming and hawing, he agreed to let me work on my own terms. The ensuing collaboration between me and the narrator was frictionless, productive, and as an effect, fun – and it culminated in a flawless recording in a timely manner because we were able to work autonomously. I could have hired the same narrator again virtually on the spot to record the rest of the book – he was available. Without being artificially slowed down or any other arbitrary friction, I believe the project would have taken only a few months and resulted in another flawless recording. Creating an audio adaptation of this exceptional book for generations to come – now *that* would have been a great long-range goal. At the time of writing, it could have been halfway done. But it never happened.

I knew from the start that negotiations with Deutsch were doomed to failure. Among other reasons, he has the kind of noncommittal attitude and aversion to responsibility you’d normally find in a committee, not one man. But I decided to help this third party in case I was wrong.

Owning the copyright of the translation, Deutsch would need to permit derivative works, including audiobooks. Even though he already checked the entire translation despite his “rudimentary” command of German (his description, not mine), he once again wanted to check any audio recordings for accuracy before publication “since [he has] to stand by the book as [his] work.” He also wrote:

> % source: David Deutsch
> % date: 2025-06-29
> What I’d like is: I don’t receive anything. I don’t pay anyone anything or have ny [sic] obligation to anyone. You have no obligation except that before you market an audio version, I get to check whether it’s accurate and has no deletions or additions.

Not being qualified to check recordings for accuracy, performing such checks would be too difficult for him. Also, recall his already overwhelming workload of three books in the making. So, contrary to his stance on fun and being unconflicted, he would have to coerce himself to perform them, just as he implicitly told me he did when he complained about how difficult checking the written translation was for him. Meaning: delays.

From experience, agreeing to a schedule was not an option, both because of his “planning blight” and because the suggestion had previously failed – during our collaboration to translate the book, he seemed repulsed by the mere thought of deadlines. So, in an effort to secure the ability to complete the audiobook autonomously and in a timely manner, a contractual guarantee that no changes would be made (beyond the smallest changes reasonably required to adapt the text to audio, eg around images) was offered but apparently not enough for him. Instead, he seemed to have forgotten having previously been persuaded of his involvement being unnecessary and repeated his desire to check for accuracy and review any changes himself:

> % source: David Deutsch
> % date: 2025-07-11
> I am willing to give you the right to make and publish an audio narration, without adding or removing anything without my permission, and to keep the proceeds, so long as I retain ownership of the copyright in all other respects and have no duties whatever under this agreement. I would expect to examine the audio before publication to check that nothing has been added or removed, but do not undertake to do so nor will my examination constitute an endorsement.

At least he’s being upfront – he gave me no such warning before our collaboration. But consider what his statements mean. Audiobooks aren’t cheap to produce; and, again, some changes would have to be made to adapt the text to audio format. Therefore, somebody would have to invest significant amounts of time and money while hoping that one day, Deutsch *maybe* gets around to checking the recording (roughly 20 hours) for accuracy whenever he feels like it. In other words, Deutsch wanted maximum control without responsibility. Which means: chaining the project to the arbitrary schedule of his whim. Which means: having his cake and eating it, too. The real world does not work that way – the more control you have, the more responsibility you have. Needless to say, it is impossible to work under such conditions, and the third party declined.

> % source: Ayn Rand. *Philosophy: Who Needs It* (p. 77). ‘An Open Letter to Boris Spassky.’ 1974. Kindle Edition.
> A man who is afraid to sign a letter, who fears any firm commitment […] is not a great, confident mind, but a tragically helpless victim, torn by acute anxiety and, perhaps, by a sense of treason to what might have been a great potential.

What business is it of ours if Deutsch doesn’t make much progress and coerces himself, or if Tanett recommends “productivity hacks” while not being very productive herself? Shouldn’t it be left for them to discover a solution? The answer is that they have publicly advocated things, as public intellectuals, which they either do not themselves follow, or they do and it has led to bad outcomes. If someone touts the importance of being unconflicted but ends up consistently conflicted themself, if they emphasize addressing hangups but then fail to address them for decades, if they propose a criterion they either fail to meet or, again, if they do meet it, it leads to bad outcomes, that’s notable and worth commenting on in the same public venue they chose.

How do we square Deutsch’s hangups around schedules and his lack of productivity with his significant achievements and discoveries in physics and philosophy? As was the case with Oppenheimer and his four-leaf clover, I suspect Deutsch made his advances *despite* his hangups; that he could be far more productive without them. It is, again, common for people to erroneously credit unreason for the achievements of reason. Recall also that the bulk of his advances is from decades ago.

But it gets worse. Deutsch’s more recent lack of progress seems to have deteriorated even further because of trauma due to the [abuse](/posts/elliot-temple-s-toxic-group#verbal-abuse) he experienced at the hands of someone named [Elliot Temple](/posts/what-you-should-know-about-elliot-temple) – a bad, dangerous person whose name many in the space recognize with horror. Temple claims to be Deutsch’s former student and runs a group in which Deutsch initially participated but which Temple later [turned into a cult](/posts/elliot-temple-s-toxic-group#:~:text=I'm%20terrified%2C%20and%20will%20be%20unable%20to%20work). He brags about his ability to [“break anyone”](/posts/elliot-temple-s-toxic-group#:~:text=I%20can-,break%20anyone,-.%20I%20can%20ask) by flooding them with overwhelming amounts of soul-crushing, crippling, demoralizing criticism. This included verbally abusing Deutsch repeatedly by telling him to “die in a fire”, in the name of some perverted notion of ‘rationality’.

Temple has openly taken credit for [messing up Deutsch’s mind and productivity](/posts/elliot-temple-s-toxic-group#:~:text=When%20he%20tries%20to%20write%2C%20he%20thinks%20of%20me%20and%20what%20criticism%20I%20might%20say%2C%20and%20he%20can’t%20deal%20with%20it.). From a post Temple has since quietly deleted from his cult’s forum:

> % source: Elliot Temple, since deleted, 2022-01-02
> DD [David Deutsch] is scared of my criticism. He can’t see me as someone who doesn’t matter who no one will listen to. In his mind, my critiques matter so much that it’s hard for him to write anything in public where I could see it and comment. LT \[Lulie Tanett] told me that this is why he basically hasn’t written anything since BoI \[his latest book, from 2011\]. When he tries to write, he thinks of me and what criticism I might say, and he can’t deal with it.

Temple bullied Deutsch to the point he [told Temple](/posts/elliot-temple-s-toxic-group#:~:text=terrified%2C%20and%20will%20be%20unable%20to%20work%20for%20at%20least%20a%20day%20now.%20And%20who%20knows%20how%20long%20after%20that.%20Receiving%20an%20e%2Dmail%20from%20you%20is%20sheer%20fear%20and%20revulsion%20before%20I%20even%20look%20at%20it.) he was “terrified, and will be unable to work for at least a day now. And who knows how long after that. Receiving an e-mail from you [Temple] is sheer fear and revulsion before I even look at it.” Temple seems proud of having had this effect on Deutsch; many of Temple’s victims have since [spoken out against him](/posts/elliot-temple-s-legacy-of-harm). Although Deutsch’s “planning blight” and aversion to schedules predate his association with Temple by years, Temple still carries a significant part of the blame by making the problem far worse, by his own explicit admission. That’s not to mention that he has a [history](/posts/elliot-temple-s-toxic-group#pattern-of-domination-and-authority) of trying to dominate several other intellectual leaders by breaking them in front of their followers in order to recruit those followers to his cult.

Going into more detail on Temple would be out of scope for this article – read my detailed [exposé](/posts/what-you-should-know-about-elliot-temple) of him for more. Suffice it to say that, unlike Deutsch’s fear of schedules, his fear of Temple is completely rational, and unaddressed injustices have a mentally crippling effect. However, contrary to his public advocacy of resisting bullies,[^11] I’m not aware that Deutsch has taken any meaningful steps to stand up to Temple. On the contrary, Deutsch has acted irresponsibly by not disowning Temple, thus contributing to readers of his outdated endorsements of Temple being seduced into joining the cult.

I believe Deutsch could make rapid progress again if he 1) learned to use productivity tools such as schedules, got more organized, reduced his workload, etc; and 2) got justice against Temple. In the meantime, however, the fun criterion is not a sufficient solution.

In short, Deutsch’s thoughts on fun are not as valuable [as I originally thought](/posts/unconflicted). I still think *The Beginning of Infinity* is a superlative book, and he’s had many invaluable ideas, but judging by his *methods*, his thought processes, he’s not as rational as I originally thought. It isn’t entirely clear whether the fun criterion has *caused* the bad outcomes I’ve mentioned or whether it merely hasn’t helped avoid them. What is clear, however, is that it does *not* work as a standard of value or tool of cognition. It *can* work as a mode of criticism and defense against authoritarianism. It’s worth exploring and there’s something of value there, but its proponents should define it in clear opposition to the Kantian tradition. Tanett and others seem to abuse the fun criterion to attack reason, thus continuing that tradition (maybe without being aware of it). Deutsch seems inspired by objectivism but also breaks with it significantly. In its denial of dismissing ideas based on category, the fun criterion may be a necessary condition for rationality, but it is not a sufficient one. On the contrary, it looks like it has at times devolved into whim worship. Discretion advised.

---

To learn more about rationality, being unconflicted, and having meaningful fun, read the rich objectivist literature on these topics, especially the essays ‘The “Conflicts” of Men’s Interests’, ‘Mental Health versus Mysticism and Self-Sacrifice’, ‘The Psychology of Pleasure’, ‘Doesn’t Life Require Compromise?’ (all from the book *The Virtue of Selfishness*), ‘The Metaphysical Versus the Man-Made’, ‘The Missing Link’,  ‘Selfishness Without a Self’, and ‘From the Horse’s Mouth’ (from *Philosophy: Who Needs It*). If there’s only one thing you take away from my article, it’s to study multiple schools of thought instead of just one.

[^1]: I have only begun to study it, but the objectivist field of [*psycho-epistemology*](http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/psycho-epistemology.html) seems to offer a cornucopia of research avenues into the subconscious.
[^2]: When Deutsch mentions evolution, he doesn’t mean *biological* evolution – instead, he references philosopher Karl Popper’s discovery that a mind grows knowledge through an evolutionary process of alternating conjecture and criticism. In other words, the evolution of *ideas*. For my own thoughts on what that evolution might look like in detail, read [my Neo-Darwinian approach](/posts/the-neo-darwinian-theory-of-the-mind).
[^3]: Ideas do conflict *logically* all the time, but they do *not* and cannot conflict in the sense that a resolution of such a conflict would require or permit a compromise on (meaning a departure from) truth, rationality, justice, etc.
[^4]: Podcaster Dan Carlin and historian Dan Stone [discuss](https://youtu.be/paO72-zA650?t=10604) this phenomenon (though without reference to Kant). Carlin says:

   > […] I was struck by the little things, like that there were geraniums planted along the way [from the train station to the concentration camp]. If you were making a horror movie, there’s something worse about putting geraniums along the side than just making it like a bunch of cattle going to slaughter. […]

   Stone’s response:

   > […] With respect to the geraniums and so on, again, it’s become a kind of well-worn cliché […], this trope of the land of the poets and thinkers also being the land of murderers. If you think about the piano-playing murderer in *Schindler’s List* or *The Pianist* or whatever. […] George Steiner wrote about this kind of thing in his essays in the 1960s, and it remains the case today that we’re still kind of shocked when we see these murderous people we want to think of as crazy sadists and so on sitting down to play a Bach sonata. At the end of the film *Conspiracy*, which is the film about the Wannsee conference, which is one of the few truly great docu-dramas about the holocaust, at the end of that film, you see Heidrich and Eichmann settling down with a brandy listening to classical music […]. This is something that continues to shock us, and it shouldn’t shock us anymore because we understand this dialectic of civilization and barbarism that characterizes the Third Reich.

[^5]: If you’re wondering how the physical sciences have been able to make progress at all since the Kantian split: Rand attributes this progress, though slowing down, to the “momentum of the Aristotelian past […]”. *Philosophy: Who Needs It.* ‘From the Horse’s Mouth’ (p. 108). 1975. Kindle Edition.
[^6]: h/t Edwin de Wit.
[^7]: Ayn Rand. *The Virtue of Selfishness.* ‘The “Conflicts” of Men’s Interests.’ https://books.apple.com/us/book/the-virtue-of-selfishness/id357924903
[^8]: The same is true of memories, even (no, especially!) those that come easily.
[^9]: For the polar opposite of Deutsch’s approach, see Cal Newport’s article [‘Deep Habits: The Importance of Planning Every Minute of Your Work Day’](https://calnewport.com/deep-habits-the-importance-of-planning-every-minute-of-your-work-day/) (h/t Moritz Wallawitsch). Note in particular (bold emphasis in the original):

   > Sometimes people ask if controlling time will stifle creativity. I understand this concern, but it’s fundamentally misguided. If you control your schedule: (1) **you can ensure that you consistently dedicate time to the deep efforts that matter for creative pursuits**; and (2) **the stress relief that comes from this sense of organization allows you to go deeper in your creative blocks** and produce more value.

[^10]: For example, at the end of chapter 9:

   > Like every other destruction of optimism, whether in a whole civilization or in a single individual, [the destructions of the mini-enlightenments in Athens and Florence] must have been unspeakable catastrophes for those who had dared to expect progress. But we should feel more than sympathy for those people. We should take it personally. For if any of those earlier experiments in optimism had succeeded, our species would be exploring the stars by now, and you and I would be immortal.

[^11]: In *The Beginning of Infinity* chapter 10, Deutsch speaks through a character in a play: “It is our custom to defy anyone who seeks our submission.” And: “[Y]ou said that you honour Athenians for our openness to persuasion. And for our defiance of bullies. But it is well known that those are virtues!”