Non-existence of free will. I’ve held this one for a long time, and I think it’s one that generally rubs people the wrong way and for that reason it comes off as contrarian. I am not sure that I am a determinist per se, but I do believe that free will implies that there is something “spiritual” that isn’t just some combination of nature and nurture that guides our actions. There may be randomness in our actions, but I don’t think that satisfies what I would consider to be free will. From this follows naturally another idea that is somewhat controversial that I also believe: consciousness is not a distinct thing that exists outside of the physical material of the body.

Utilitarianism. I believe utilitarianism has been gaining traction, but I also believe it’s still under appreciated as a core methodology for ethical and political thinking. I believe we should be thinking about consequences and expected value of our actions in a much more quantified way than we do now. Effective altruists have talked about this for a while, but it need not be boxed to a specific movement. Overall, if we see the world as possible outcomes with different probabilities of occurring, and we see our actions as ways to change those probabilities, we simply must acknowledge that some outcomes are better than others and begin to work towards increasing the probabilities of those better outcomes.