I read that as

“Jesus was a short, brown, skinned, jewish man”

I was right flummoxed for a moment there.

I think they mean that the US would put trade pressure on countries doing any tech trade with China, not specifically preventing it punishing American companies from using Chinese chips.

Unfortunately the United States is still a big economy regardless of their politics and Manny is right that the US would throw their weight behind anti China policies to the detriment of other nations.

How successful such a move would be is up to debate.

I mean same for photography, tv, film and even artistic renderings. They probably consumed a lot of media and can draw parallels and contrasts just from those.

This makes some sense. Clearly the friend is a bit of a conspiracy theorist, or trolling. There’s a decent chance they are younger too. That being said you’re the only person with a reasonable feasible explanation that might get through to the friend.

I think the disconnect here is between objective and subjective meaning. In an infinite multiverse, ‘reality’ isn’t a singular objective truth—it’s a collection of subjective experiences. But that doesn’t erase meaning; it just means meaning is something we assign, not something inherent.

You’re right that if every possible outcome exists, no single timeline is ‘objectively’ special. But in fiction (and arguably in reality), what matters is the perspective we focus on. A story isn’t weakened by the existence of other timelines—it’s strengthened by the fact that, out of infinite possibilities, this particular one is being told. The act of choosing a narrative is what gives it weight.

It’s the difference between nihilism (‘nothing matters, so why care?’) and absurdism (‘nothing matters* inherently, so we get to decide what does’). A multiverse doesn’t have to make things meaningless—it can highlight how rare and significant certain choices are, precisely because most versions of a person might not make them (e.g., Invincible).

I get the sense you’re resistant to this because it feels like it undermines objective meaning. But what if meaning was never objective to begin with?