This is actually a huge pet peeve of mine. Just because there are an infinite number of possibilities doesn’t mean anything is possible

Let’s investigate the list of natural numbers. 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. It stretches on for infinity, but nowhere in this infinite set will you find the number 2.5. Or negative 1. Or countless other examples.

Next let’s consider a warehouse with an infinite number of CDs, each burned with a copy of the Donkey Kong Country soundtrack. Each of these discs are different. They have slight differences in the label, diameter, and flatness, due to manufacturing tolerances. They have different random bits that get flipped sometimes due to solar particle collision and quantum variation, which may eventually make different discs unreadable. They decay over the centuries at different rates, due to temperature and sun exposure differences in the warehouse (climate control for an infinite space is very expensive).

Each of these discs are, materially speaking, completely different from one another. But, from the perspective our or limited human perception, they are for the time being completely interchangeable. Whichever one you select, you will listen to and have the same experience.

This is by far the most likely scenario if we indeed live in a multiverse. An infinite number of earths, with an infinite number of you, lives filled with all the same mistakes and triumphs, all reading this comment together right now.

I suppose then you’d have been more satisfied with the example of an infinite number of grains of sand, each polished smooth and strewn across an infinite beach.

Or simply an infinite expanse of empty space, each with unique coordinates, yet unable to be differentiated in the absence of any reference.

The point being, infinity itself is a concept we defined a certain way. And no part of that definition mandates variation. People who hear “infinity” and immediately conclude that, in one universe they are a singer, and in another they are an astronaut, and in another still they weren’t born at all, etc., are making an incorrect assumption about the nature of infinity itself.

Framed another way, we have exactly one example of a possible universe. Tell me, what creative force do you believe in which would intervene to ensure other universes play out differently?

We have reached the root of the disagreement.

Do things naturally spread out randomly? Given the same hand reaching into the same lottery box, does some inherent law of the universe guarantee that the number drawn is totally unpredictable?

Given our predicament of having limited information, and limited capacity for understanding, I agree that statistical models are some of the best tools we have, and a very practical way of navigating the world. Many things are effectively random to us, after all. We cannot hope to comprehend every variable at play when all of the numbers cascaded into the bucket.

But how random is it really? The electrical signals firing in your brain are as random and quantum as we could possibly imagine, yet somehow, you experience a single continuous consciousness, waking up as yourself morning after morning. How could that be possible if cause-and-effect were superseded by some principle of inherent chaos? Do you propose this randomness is merely too subtle to detect? In that case, it would be unfalsifiable, leaving us forced to conclude that the hand always draws the same number.