jack

If you're firing a howitzer, get two shells on either side of the target, and then you can quickly home in on it using a simple (often trivial) binary chop. This may actually be better than two shells very very close but on the same side.

The same often applies to arguments: a totally crazy but totally different idea may be more useful than a cautious but unassailable refinement of the previous suggestion if the best answer is contained somewhere between. For instance:

(a) This is what people mean (or should mean) but "there are no stupid suggestions" -- even a ridiculous suggestion can contain a nugget of an undeveloped good idea or useful constraint. (Not always, but often.)

(b) If you're trying to get someone to grok something, you may say "it's a bit like [this film] and a bit like [this film]" or "it's a bit like a wave and a bit like a particle" or "it's a bit like a religion and a bit like a culture" then even if both examples are totally and utterly false, they may well give people a good intuitive idea of the domain of answers within which the correct one lies.

(c) if you come up with a long, complex philosophical argument, spend five minutes saying "would this be convincing to an intelligent person who doesn't know anything about philosophy, or would they say 'well, I can't tell you exactly where the flaw is, but I'm pretty sure it's false because here's a counterexample'"

If you were the God, and all possible parallel universes existed side-by-side, what would you do? Would you delete most, or transform them into copies of the one where people were happiest? Or let them run?

To me, that thought experiment relates to several questions:

* The problem of evil "If God existed, and were omnipotent and good, why would he let there be bad things". If you can even conceive of God not reordering all his universes to be "best", that is one possible answer to the question. (Not that I think that's true, but it's possibly a rebuttal to the argument that "There are bad things, therefore God is at most two of good, omnipotent, and existing")

* A logical extension of local morality. People naturally care more for people close to them (both friends, and people similar to them, and people physically closer to them). To a greater or lesser extent depending on circumstance. This has bad effects, that far away tragedies can get ignored, but good effects, that people can choose to help some people close to them, even if this is a drop in the ocean compared to everything else, but a lot better than just freezing up. But if all possible parallel universes existed, it would make it obvious how every thing you chose to do was an essentially arbitrary decision about how people close to you matter more than everyone else,