[rytill]

There are many effective ways to argue against what you're saying, but I'll choose the easiest.

You said "perhaps" it doesn't matter. Well, perhaps it does matter. If there is even a small chance it does matter, we might as well act like it matters.

[izzydata]

I'm not actually advocating for or against anything. I'm mostly suggesting there are some assumptions being made and that some concepts need to be better defined so it can be better understood what kind of framework we are thinking in. I think it matters when talking about things at the scale of the universe.

[anamax]

> Well, perhaps it does matter. If there is even a small chance it does matter, we might as well act like it matters.

Ah, Pascal's Wager.

There's a small chance that you giving me $100 matters, so surely I'm going to find a check in my mail box next week, right?

[anigbrowl]

The problem with philosophical abstractions is that you can conceive of just about any possibility. As a crude example, just about any baby you see might grow into a future dictator worse than Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot combined. Is it really ethical to do anything without first of all screening all children under 3 to ascertain the probability that one of them will wipe out all life on earth by age 40? Shouldn't this be the top priority of our species?

...and so on.