Author’s note: I’d written this for a philosophy class my last semester at MIT. The main thesis here is pretty contrived, forced, and probably wrong, but is in my opinion, interesting nonetheless. I’ve found that I frequently come up with counterintuitive claims for which I do my damndest to argue for, and although I usually get things wrong, sometimes I find myself convinced that somewhere in the aftermath is a nugget of wisdom; this particular piece is not such a case——in fact, I no longer agree with anything I’ve written here. Why then am I sharing it? It’s so that future me, who is hopefully many times more intelligent than present me, has something to shake his head at over a sandwhich, much in the same way that a Kindergarten teacher would shake their head fondly at the broken writing of their kindergartners; I’ll get something right eventually…