The view of society presented in "All the Myriad Ways" is a grim one. Take away people's certitude about physical reality, and some of them lose control. Perhaps they all do; perhaps in one timeline every human being kills him or herself because of what Crosstime reveals about the multiple universes. This bleak view of human nature is intended more as a comment on the absurdity of the concept of forever-branching timelines, but it nonetheless suggests that human beings need to have fundamentally consistent views of how the universe works. In this view, Niven is not unique.

Changes in understanding the universe wrought by Galileo, Newton, Darwin, and Einstein have brought confusion and dismay to some. When American astronauts landed on the moon, news wires had many reports of suicides by people who could not adjust their perceptions of the world to encompass human beings actually...