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…there are an infinite number of identical copies of you on an infinite number of identical copies of Earth. You all always make identical decisions.

…there are an infinite number of identical copies of Earth, except that each of them is also occupied by Thor.

…as above, but it’s the Thor from Marvel Comics.

…there are an infinite number of Earths with alternate histories because they have dragons on them.

…on an infinite number of those Earths, the dragons are all nazis.

…billions of times every second, an infinite number of identical copies of you spring into existence in the depths of space and immediately die freezing and suffocating.

…there are an infinite number of people who are just like you except they’re serial killers.

…identical copies of everyone you love are being tortured to death right now.

…by identical copies of you.

…there’s still no god.

…there’s no hope of ever fixing the universe’s horrors, because if it were possible it would have been done already.

…an infinite number of identical copies of me are hoping that the universe isn’t infinite.

(Loosely inspired by Common Sense Atheism and a passage from Neil Gaiman’s American Gods.)

…that everything is made out of math. Our universe (and any multiverses of which it may be a part) is a mathematical object which happens to describe us; nothing more and nothing less. (Physicist Max Tegmark explains the theory here, in a manner much clearer than I could hope to achieve.)

…that reductionism is the only sensible way to account for phenomena not traditionally classified as physics. Phrased another way, everything is physics and we’ve just mucked up our system of classification. Nothing exists that cannot be fully understood by understanding its component parts; “emergence” may be a convenient shorthand for certain kinds of complex behavior, but no new properties or information are ever actually introduced.

…that there is no real morality as it is conventionally understood. No system of ethics is written into the fabric of our universe; the most that can be said is that people are real, that they really do have preferences, and that those preferences can be described by some kind of mathematical function (though probably not one that satisfies the Von Neumann-Morgenstern axioms).

…that brains are not computers in any useful sense. Granted, they’re almost certainly Turing-equivalent and I expect it will not be many more decades before they can be simulated by computers, but it is not helpful to think of them as digital machines. They are made out of meat, and so they do meat-things. Biology has more to contribute to our understanding of the human mind than computer science does, and computer scientists would often do well to remember this.

…that there are no such things as faeries.

…that computer programs can be persons.

…that at some point in the next century or so, a superintelligent machine will be built and the human era will end. I am increasingly convinced that it will end badly.

…that there are a few parts of humanity worth attempting to save, though not many.

…that whether or not they are art, video games can be as valuable as movies or literature or music, and for many of the same reasons.

…that being human is an offense great enough to make most everyday prejudices unnecessary.

…that there’s nothing wrong with sex. Or having two boyfriends. Or two girlfriends. Or some more complex combination thereof.

…that politics isn’t worth worrying about in the vast majority of cases.

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