Ask Dr. Jeremy III— it's back

Q1: If you had a device that could for sure 100% tell you how good a person is objectively, what would you do with it[?]

A1: Such a device can’t exist. “Goodness” is a contrived notion that is entirely subjective. No person is objectively more “good” than another. See Hume’s law for proof. However, if it did, I’d make a TikTok account where I asked it random celebrities and gave them “goodness” scores. 

Q2: I keep having a prophetic dream wherein [I] am lying in my own grave and a raven sits atop my tombstone and speaks to me. What does this mean?

A2: Dreams mean basically nothing; they’re just your brain trying to make sense of random stuff that goes on in your head while you sleep. Anyone who tells you differently is a fool.

Q3: I have got an interesting philosophical question for you: If you could press a button that would instantly replace yourself with an exact physical and mental copy [with the] same memories [and] same personality, would that be you, and if not, who just walked away?

A3: Absolutely magnificent question. This is known as the teletransportation paradox. First off, the personality thing can be ignored. Scientists are fairly certain, from a neuroscientific standpoint, that if you were to be replaced perfectly on an atomic scale, then you would have the exact same personality and memories; this is because personality and memories are stored in the connections between your neurons (brain cells), which have a physical basis. The real question here, as you’ve put it, is whether or not you’d be the “same person.” In other words, would it still be you in your body? In philosophical terms, the you here is your consciousness.

I personally believe that, no, it would not be you in your body, even if you were replaced atom by atom, Ship of Theseus style. My reasoning for this is the following: replacing yourself atom by atom is really the same thing as making a copy of yourself. The original is gone, and new atoms have taken their place. From there, why do we even need to do replacement: because the atoms themselves aren’t the same (just identical), it would literally be the same thing to create a copy of yourself, with the original you still there. Obviously, this copy of yourself wouldn’t be you—it would be a copy of you that believes he’s you, but it wouldn’t be your consciousness in him. You would still be there. So, in the same way, it doesn’t matter what you do with your body, but creating a copy of yourself would not move your consciousness (or you) over. It would just “replace” you with another version of yourself that thinks he’s you. Another way of thinking of this is like Cut-and-Paste vs. Copy-and-Paste on a keyboard. If you’ve ever used CTRL-X instead of CTRL-C to save a click when moving text, your computer is really just deleting whatever you selected and copying it somewhere else: it’s not actually moving the text. In the same way, your brain wouldn’t get moved, just deleted and copied.

In sum, replacing yourself with an exact physical and mental copy would kill you (the you that’s you would no longer experience anything) and instead create a copy of you who thinks he’s you and has (as stated) all your memories. 

Q4: How can you say you’re “Jewish” but not support Israel?

A4: Jews should not support Israel. A very large committee of unbiased UN experts–who know more than we both–recently voted that Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza (by the very definition of genocide). As Jews, it is our responsibility to ensure that what happened to our people in the Holocaust (and many other times throughout history) is not brought upon others. Still, even if you don’t think it’s a genocide, the fact remains that about 20,000 children have been killed in Palestine during the Gaza war. That’s twenty thousand innocent hearts set to silence, all for the choice of one. 

Even disregarding the ongoing genocide in Gaza, I believe it is unethical and un-American to have countries that exist to serve a religion. Theocracies should not exist. I don’t believe Jews should have a country of their own, just like I don’t believe that Muslims or Christians or anybody, should have a country for their own religion either. 

Q5: While most world religions address profound questions such as the afterlife, what do you hope is true? Do you lean toward a traditional vision, like heaven or enlightenment, a bleaker view of nothingness after death, or something more abstract, perhaps an endless conversation with an all-knowing entity that shares complete knowledge of everything?

A5: Amazing question. The most appealing afterlife to me is some sort of Hindu-based eschatology. Rejoining a universal energy–like a spark returning to a flame–sounds pretty nice. I hope with all my heart that some sort of afterlife exists, and I’m honestly not too picky. Nothing scares me more than nothingness for eternity (see Terror Management Theory).