Cognitive Dissonance
A great many people, when first beginning to explore philosophy, will hit upon the idea that reality is not what it appears to be; in ye olden days, it was common to describe it as a dream or a vision, but, in a post-Matrix world, the zeitgeist has shifted such that people tend to describe this creaky old philosophical trope in terms of giant computer simulations instead. Regardless of the precise form, this is a very common idea, yet not one quite so common as to disabuse people of the notion that they are unique great geniuses when they first hit upon it. Said list of people now apparently includes a great many high-level political cronies, such as those at Bank of America:
Top bank analysts claim there’s a 50% chance our world is a computer simulation and we’re all plugged into a Matrix-style virtual reality.
And they also reckon if it’s true — then there’s no way we’ll ever find out about it.
The Bank of America’s Merrill Lynch made the astonishing claim in a research note citing comments by top scientists, astrophysicists and philosophers.
If you think this is breaking news, just wait until next week, when they unveil their startling conclusion that there’s a 70% chance that you’re being stalked by a giant, ferocious, man-eating tiger — but you’ll never be able to find it, because the tiger is invisible.
It’s one thing to claim that the whole world is a video game, but it’s quite another to assign some blindingly arbitrary "probability" to it and then prance around the room like you’re doing science. Maybe Bank of America’s top-flight research philosophers make more sense in their white papers than they do in tabloid summaries, but the statement that "[m]any scientists, philosophers, and business leaders believe that there is a 20-50% probability that humans are already living in a computer-simulated virtual world" provides us with no real information except that many scientists, philosophers, and business leaders have forgotten which orifice they’re meant to speak from.
Of course, no crony pseudo-philosophy jamboree would be complete without nebbish extraordinaire Elon Musk!
SpaceX founder Elon Musk is one of those who is almost certain our world is run by artificial intelligence developed by a future civilization…
Speaking earlier this year, Musk told an audience at Code Conference 2016 in California: "If you assume any rate of improvement at all, then the games will become indistinguishable from reality, just indistinguishable."
And, when pressed on the topic, he continued to muse on why we should be grateful for being jacked into the Matrix.
"If civilisation stops advancing, then that may be due to some calamitous event that stops civilisation," he said.
If civilization stops advancing, that may be because civilization has stopped advancing? Somebody give this man another honorary doctorate! Or maybe just a whole bunch more of my money so he can build overengineered toy cars for Hollywood celebrities.
#NeverJohnson
At this point, even your humble narrator is surprised, but Gary Johnson continues to get worse and worse every time he opens his mouth. The whole debacle almost makes me feel sorry for Rand Paul, who I spent most of a year character-assassinating and who never had a glowing profile published in Politico describing him as somewhat more of an authoritarian leftist than Chairman Mao:
During a debate at May’s Libertarian convention, Johnson was the only candidate of five to raise his hand when asked who supported the Civil Rights Act and the concept of driver’s licenses. He has come out against "religious-freedom" bills that he’s said would legalize anti-gay discrimination. Johnson told me he was against the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision ("I don’t believe corporations are people") and for a revenue-neutral carbon tax to combat climate change (though he would later reverse himself on this following a libertarian uproar). There had also been an eye-opening moment on the streets of Cleveland during the Republican National Convention, when we’d been walking behind a cigarette-wielding Ohioan. As the smoker’s exhaust wafted in our faces, I remarked offhand that — with the advent of e-cigarettes — I thought there was a good libertarian case for banning regular cigarettes. "I do too," replied the health-obsessed triathlete, recounting his support for anti-smoking efforts in New Mexico.
Over at Target Liberty, Robert Wenzel has been fanatical about pointing out every horribly illibertarian thing Donald Trump says and does, all for the purpose of demonstrating that Walter Block’s ill-considered Libertarians For Trump is, in fact, ill-considered. I believe it’s worth noting that Dr. Block has stated that he believes libertarians should vote for Trump if they live in a state where the contest is likely to be close, but that Johnson should be the choice in other states. I must respectfully disagree with Dr. Block on this one; if one is a libertarian, and if one wishes, for some reason, to vote for any of these goobers, Trump is the correct choice in all cases. He’s horribly illibertarian, for sure, but Johnson is no better, and at least Trump isn’t dragging the libertarian name through the mud in the process.
In brief: not only is it time to end Libertarians For Trump, it’s also long past time to end Libertarians For Johnson. Now who wants to tell the Libertarian Party?
Johnson’s views on other issues, meanwhile, betray a basic centrism — against affirmative action but supportive of the Black Lives Matter movement, philosophically in favor of the death penalty but against its use in practice, pro-Second Amendment but open to legislation to keep guns from suspected terrorists and the mentally ill.
Gary Johnson, put simply, occupies a unique set of coordinates on the map of American politics.
Dear Politico: there is nothing "unique" about refusing to take a stand on any issue whatsoever. I just spent an entire year making fun of Rand Paul for doing the same thing, for Pete’s sake! It’s almost like these people don’t even read Last Week in Weird.
Literally Hitler
Many of these migrants when they are unable to find an honest way of life turn to robberies, kidnappings, extortion, and in the worst cases join the ranks of organized crime
Can you believe the horrible, racist drivel that keeps coming out of that horrible racist Nazi Donald Trump’s mouth? Sometimes, as with the above, I honestly can’t tell if it’s a quote from a Trump speech or a passage from Mein Kampf.
Or a quote from Mexican newspaper El Mañana, which is where that passage actually came from. It turns out that public opinion in Mexico is tilting strongly in favor of a border wall to control the flow of immigrants; of course, the Mexican people want the wall not on the northern border, but the southern:
It seems Mexico agrees with Donald Trump’s plans to build a wall to keep out illegal immigrants — but only on its southern border with Central America.
Mexicans are calling for the border wall to keep out Guatemalans, Salvadorans and Hondurans fleeing violence in their own countries.
They complain ‘hordes’ of immigrants pass through on their way to the United States — who are then simply deported back to Mexico rather than their home countries by the US.
Since it’s already been proven by Social Justice Scientists that it’s impossible for Mexicans to be racist, and there’s no other possible reason to want to build a border wall, I guess we’ll just have to blame this on Trump somehow. Probably he used his filthy stolen money to build an orbital mind-control laser, and he’s using it to project his racism onto those pure, innocent Mexicans.
On the subject of scientific proof that Donald Trump is actually a dead German politician, his hilarious bull-rushing of the media last week revealed the tidbit that the number of generals supporting him is now 164. No word yet on whether or not scientists have decoded the hidden meaning in this new number, but I do believe Last Week in Weird has scooped them all: clearly it should be read as "IGA," the nickname for Japanese game developer Koji Igarashi. The Japanese, as everybody knows, were allied with the Germans in World War II — yet more proof that Trump is really a Nazi! He thinks he’s so smart.
Update your scorecards
As any fule kno, the worst, most irrational thing one can possibly be is a conspiracy theorist. As such, it’s of critical importance that we all avoid thinking for ourselves, and stick to engaging in rote virtue signaling to demonstrate that we believe only approved truth and not horrible conspiracy truth.
Just so we’re all on the same page here, it’s absolutely established truth that the crazy, lunatic idea that Hillary Clinton is in poor health is an absurd conspiracy theory. She just had a bout of pneumonia — the kind that makes you say weird things, fall down stairs, and collapse at public events, and that you need to wear special blue glasses to recover from. Nothing unusual about that! On the other hand, it definitely is not conspiracy theorizing to believe that these alleged "health problems" are because she was secretly poisoned by Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. That’s just science fact, friends.
Bennet Omalu, the forensic pathologist who has made the NFL so uncomfortable with his discovery of chronic traumatic encephalopathy in the brains of deceased players, suggests that Hillary Clinton’s campaign be checked for possible poisons after her collapse Sunday in New York.
Omalu, whose story was famously told in the movie "Concussion," made the suggestion on Twitter, writing that he advised campaign officials to "perform toxicologic analysis of Ms. Clinton’s blood." …
He wasn’t giving up on Twitter, adding that his reasoning is that he does not trust Russian President Vladimir Putin or Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee who has expressed admiration for Putin.
Mr. Omalu was rather nonspecific on the subject of how and why Trump and Putin would have poisoned Mrs. Clinton, and also why they would poison her just enough to make her fall down but not enough to incapacitate or kill her. Your humble narrator certainly isn’t a famous movie star forensic pathologist, and he freely admits that everything he knows about poison he learned from reading Advanced Dungeons & Dragons sourcebooks, but he is compelled to wonder what the transmission vector for a controlled dose of falldownium possibly could be. Perhaps Mr. Omalu will provide more details once he’s had time to review some classic James Bond films.
Not that there’s any real reason, since, as we all know, Hillary Clinton is in perfect health. This was conclusively proven this past week, when we learned that her health is so robust that she even gets perfect scores on tests that haven’t been invented yet.