Thread: Tell me about your most controversial view.

Got to be a sign of maturity: 4 pages on this topic without degenerating into flamewar.

Um...
I wear an anti-MS, pro-Free Software badge, but right now I can't think of anything controversial I feel really zealous about, which is sad. So heres my metaphysics and philosophy, which is unusual enough to make up for lack of zeal. It's highly unoriginal but not very wide spread.

Ia) Maths is universal. If 2+2=5 then it's because you assign different meanings to the symbols I use. Symbols are just that: conventions for communication. The actual math is the same for the fish-eyed zombies in the dimension next door.
Ib) Math has meaning in and of itself. If you have a set of rules for manipulating symbols which allow you to add two numbers, then that set of rules [b]is[/i] addition. It doesn't matter that you have to convert your idea of a number, in all it's platonic abstractness, into a sequence of digits before the rules can work, or that you have to do the reverse and interpret the answer
2a) We are math. The universe runs on a set of rules, and it can all be boiled down to maths - This Means You. The entire universe could be simulated on a sufficiently large enough computer. A turing machine could do it. A finite state machine could do the interesting bits; it might not be able to cope with an indefinitely expanding universe, but if our universe ends up continually expanding, there'll still be a finite amount of matter and energy so it'll end up very cold and very boring anyway. If quantumn mechanics really is significant, it would slow down a classical computer simulation but it would still work, and theres nothing non-mathematical about the quantum computer than could run it at full speed.
2b) Our universe only real because we are in it. The simulated universe would seem just as real; we may well be in it. You can simulate other universes by choosing different rules and starting conditions, and they would be just as real. They *are* just as real, they "exist" outside of simulations in our universe, just as much as our universe "exists".

This is controversial because it completely denies spirituality. Spiritual ideas come naturally and are widely held as self evident. Ironically, ideas about meaning: that the world has an all pervasive meaning in which we are central, that it was created by intelligence, that who you are has a meaning beyond your body and lifetime, that what you do has an absolute moral meaning (good or bad) that derives from these sources.

I could go on. Suffice it to say that I believe you're limiting yourself if you think your life is just a dream in a greater reality. Ideas stolen from GEB, author Douglas Hofstadter; if they're mangled somewhat then the fault is purely my own.