Author Archives: Hue White

Barstool blowhards is how I characterize most of the folks associated with the Trump Administration – but it also appears a lot of the MAGA-voters also qualify. Walter Einenkel has helpfully collected a series of tweets from a fellow who was watching the action in Michigan’s legislature recently, and they’re a sort of horrifying hoot. Like this one:

This is Dave. Dave is struggling a little but to get his story out. His proof of fraud is that they stopped counting at night and in the morning when they restarted it was too quiet in the room.

— Sandwich Breathe (@TepidButterASMR) December 1, 2020

There are even better examples at the link.

This appalling – and quite probably anti-Constitutional – announcement comes from Governor Kevin Stitt (R-OK) in response to the Covid-19 pandemic:

Governor Kevin Stitt announced today he is declaring Thursday, Dec. 3 as a statewide day of prayer and fasting for all Oklahomans affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Oklahomans have always turned to prayer to guide us through trials and seasons of uncertainty, and I am asking Oklahomans of all faiths and religious backgrounds to join together with me on Thursday,”said Gov. Stitt.“I believe we must continue to ask God to heal those who are sick, comfort those who are hurting and provide renewed strength and wisdom to all who are managing the effects of COVID-19.” 

Gov. Stitt also encourages churches and other houses of worship to continue taking precautions to slow the spread of COVID-19 and to care for vulnerable members of their congregations.

“I believe our churches and faith communities have an incredible opportunity during this season to provide hope to Oklahomans who are struggling as we close a year that has been mentally, emotionally and physically draining,”said Gov. Stitt.“It’s important that we continue to find safe ways to gather as we all do our part to protect our families, neighbors and communities from this virus.”

It would be really, really interesting to see an animated geographic time-series of Oklahoma, tracing Covid-19 infection sites – a big contact trace, as it were – just to see if the religious gatherings called for by Governor Stitt become super-spreader events.

While magical thinkers can often argue their way out of binds, a graphic animation showing disease and death emanating from churches would certainly make some people think a little harder.

But one other thought came to mind as I typed this: toxoplasmosis:

The parasite du jour. I figured this was nicer than showing a cat killing a rodent.

Infection with T. gondii has been shown to alter the behavior of mice and rats in ways thought to increase the rodents’ chances of being preyed upon by cats. Infected rodents show a reduction in their innate aversion to cat odors; while uninfected mice and rats will generally avoid areas marked with cat urine or with cat body odor, this avoidance is reduced or eliminated in infected animals. Moreover, some evidence suggests this loss of aversion may be specific to feline odors: when given a choice between two predator odors (cat or mink), infected rodents show a significantly stronger preference to cat odors than do uninfected controls. [Wikipedia, citations omitted]

The cases are rather parallel, wouldn’t you say? The worse the infection of fundamentalist religion, the more likely the infected are to become, err, infected with the virus causing Covid-19.

While it sounds self-correcting, it’s the secondary and tertiary victims of the latter infection, who may not be infected with the former, that also suffer. That’s why I can’t just shake it off. Too many innocent victims.

Souk:

: a marketplace in northern Africa or the Middle East
also : a stall in such a marketplace [Merriam-Webster]

Noted in “There sure is evidence of fraud. Just not the fraud Trump is ranting about.,” David Von Drehle, WaPo:

I could go on. The Internet is a souk of cheap-jack merchandise — banners, flags, hats, bumper stickers, T-shirts — aimed at poor saps suckered into Trump’s phony war. This cynical commerce is a fitting end to an unseemly presidency: one more grand con, another monetized lie. There’s a massive fraud going on here, for sure. But not the one Trump is ranting about.

If you like it when a partisan admonishes their fellows concerning their shared delusions, Erick Erickson delivers just such a lesson, and I finally clicked that damn button in his mail so I could deliver the link to you. His conclusion?

To admit you were played and he lost and there was no deep state conspiracy or theft of the election would actually make you look bad at this point. So it’s better to double down on the lies and blame everyone else from the Trump-appointed Attorney General to the Trump-appointed FBI Director to the Trump-appointed CIA Director to various Trump endorsed Governors to the GOP establishment to corporate America, the Carlyle Group, the Rothschilds, the Russians, and the Chinese, along with Fox News that spent four years letting the President have nearly uninterrupted air time. …

It really is remarkable how everyone always fails President Trump in the end. From Jeff Sessions to John Kelly to Mick Mulvaney to General Mattis to William Barr to John Durham to Brian Kemp to Doug Ducey and the list goes on and on, all these people just fail or betray the President, allegedly. I just suspect when the failures are so complete and so thorough and so widespread among people he chose, hired, or endorsed, that maybe they are not the ones failing.

But the entire rant is entirely predictable and could be written by anyone who’s been paying attention and is not a Trump cultist. The Lincoln Project’s anti-Trump videos, all of the Biden endorsements from current and former Republicans, even from Trump Administration officials, former and serving – they have all served to make Erickson’s rant, necessary as it is, nearly pro forma and almost boring.

But Erickson has to write this because of the right-wing epistemic bubble. They talk to themselves only, they convince each other that the mainstream media is fake, and when the bubble develops a hole – they don’t think, Maybe we were wrong. No, their leaders tell them God is on their side, it’s all cheating by the other side, their campaign officials, OUR campaign officials (welcome to the bus, Raffensperger!), and just keep on being … un-American assholes. Indeed, Erickson has been complicit in tarring mainstream media as being fake.

And that’s the real challenge facing America today. We’ve allowed greed to run rampant, and now we’re reaping what we’ve sown.

Over the last four years, Steve Benen has, from time to time, expressed puzzlement over a particular quirk of President Trump, which is the use of dogs as a form of deprecation, such as this rant from yesterday:

But putting that aside, why in the world does the outgoing president keep referring to dogs like this?

In June, Trump was interviewed by Sean Spicer, his former White House press secretary, and argued that the impeachment charges against him were “thrown out like dogs.” A year earlier, the president boasted to the world that ISIS founder Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi “died like a dog” — a phrase Trump liked so much, he used it twice.

The phrasing seemed familiar for good reason. As regular readers may recall, shortly before his State of the Union address in 2019, Trump told a group of television anchors that Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D) “choked like a dog” at a press conference a few days prior.

A few weeks before that, we learned of an anecdote from Cliff Sims’ book in which Trump told then-House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), in reference to the closing days of the 2016 election cycle, “You were out there dying like a dog, Paul. Like a dog!”

It’s clearly one of this president’s favorite metaphors. Retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal, for example, was “fired like a dog.” According to Trump, so were conservative media figures Erick Erickson and Glenn Beck.

And it finally came to me:

Dogs are the epitome, at least in American society, of the concept of loyalty. You think loyalty, you think dog.

Our cats here at UMB are failing to take umbrage. They know how the dominoes lie.

And, for President Trump, innate loyalty is for suckers. If you aren’t looking out for #1, you’re a mark, a sucker. Trump deploys loyalty strategically, to keep the loyalty of voting groups he considers important, or people who have shit on him, such as the recently pardoned General Flynn (I still can’t believe that was allowed to go through, as he had not finished contesting his earlier guilty pleas!).

But he’s not loyal on general grounds. Given the chance to sell out the United States, he wouldn’t shoot the foreign agent between the eyes; he’d consider the offer, and maybe take it. As I suspect with the sale of arms to certain Arab powers.

Mystery solved.

Just a quick note that the potential terrors expressed here will probably not come to pass, as the case was essentially moot by the time SCOTUS‘ judgment came down.

But it’s still disconcerting to see such magical thinking on the part of the conservative Justices of the Court, excepting Roberts.

My goodness, The Lincoln Project is getting downright mean:

This might provide for months of future entertainment:

The Justice Department is investigating a potential crime related to funneling money to the White House or related political committee in exchange for a presidential pardon, according to court records unsealed Tuesday in federal court.

The case is the latest legal twist in the waning days of President Donald Trump’s administration after several of his top advisers have been convicted of federal criminal charges and as the possibility rises of Trump giving pardons to those who’ve been loyal to him. [CNN/Politics]

This is a bit puzzling as the pardon power is one of the least regulated powers of the President. He can basically use it how he wants, when he wants. So perhaps Trump will suffer no repercussions for accepting bribes to use the pardon power.

But does this hypothetical immunity, about which I could be completely wrong, also apply to the bribers? That I’m not so sure about. Maybe Trump’ll have to hand out two pardons per bribe, for the crime to be pardoned of, and for doing the bribe.

Is this just Trump making sure he remains in the spotlight after he’s out of office? I’m drooling just thinking about it – it has crime family written all over it.

The Daily Beast reports on an unique approach to Covid-19 infection prevention:

Scientists have started sounding the alarm over a strange new theory circulating online about the novel coronavirus. Basically, it argues that the coronavirus may not really be all that novel. Instead, the thinking goes, it could be an ancient virus hidden in our DNA that does not directly make people sick—until shifts in Earth’s geomagnetic field create a cascade of effects that ultimately activate that latent genetic code and cause COVID-19.

The wildest part: Thanks to its own unique geomagnetic properties, the theory maintains, “nephrite-jade amulets, a calcium ferromagnesium silicate, may prevent COVID-19.” In other words, you may be able to wear a physical piece of armor to ward off the deadly illness.

Unlike the bogus far-right conspiracy theories about COVID-19 and other diseases that have percolated over the years, this idea did not emerge from some secretive digital fringe. Instead, it originated in a peer-reviewed article in Science of the Total Environment (SOTE), a reputable academic journal, thanks in part, its authors claim, to funding“through grants from the United States National Institutes of Health.” (The National Institutes of Health did not respond to a request for comment for this story.)

How embarrassing, not only for the journal (that’s Science of the Total Environment, folks, in case you weren’t paying attention – and, now that I think about it, that sort of title raises a red flag or two for me), but for the peer-reviewers as well.

Either that, or it’s not such a reputable journal. The problem with the phrase peer reviewed is that if you’re self-deluding, and your peers are self-deluding, well, what’s the point? I should like to see some other phrase come into vogue, although I’ll retract my first inclination: expert-reviewed. That could go so wrong, couldn’t it? I mean, a self-proclaimed expert on homeopathy might give a big thumbs up to a study on homeopathy that “proves” it can cure cancer! Whereas those who’ve studied homeopathy extensively would just shake their heads and reject the submission.

But speaking of retractions, following the provided link doesn’t take you to the article, but to a page that seems to suggest the paper’s been retracted, and long time readers know where to go next: Retraction Watch:

The co-authors of a paper that claimed jade amulets might prevent COVID-19 have tried to distance themselves from the work, in a letter to the co-editor of the journal that published it.

In fact, the first author, Moses Bility of the University of Pittsburgh, says of his co-authors:

the conceptual understanding and far-reaching implications of such an unconventional approach and complex idea that employed concepts/frameworks from geology, geophysics, and Condensed Matter Physics may have not been fully clear to them all.

Well, there you go. And heavens forfend that Bility have to review the paper before submission himself! But wait, it gets better:

Elsewhere in the letter, the authors try to distance themselves from their conclusion that jade amulets might protect against COVID-19:

One of the major concerns of the scientific community expressed via the online press or social media platforms includes statements that appear to endorse the use of jade amulets in preventing COVID-19 infection. We did not intend for this to be our message, but we must contend with the fact that it did elicit such interpretation.

For reference, the statement about jade amulets, which appeared in the “highlights” section of the post, does not seem ambiguous:

Nephrite-Jade amulets, a calcium-ferromagnesian silicate, may prevent COVID-19.

But this may be the most telling bit:

In an earlier exchange, Bility accused Retraction Watch of racism for asking questions about the paper.

Sounds like someone was caught peddling bullshit and tried to bluster their way out of their hole.

And that’s your amusing bit for today.

Ever wonder where the unbelievers are clumping? Ryan Burge thinks he does:

Where are there high concentrations of atheists?

I think most people would correctly guess New England and the Pacific Northwest.

But, Colorado, South Dakota, and Wyoming have a lot of atheists, too. That's interesting because Nebraska and Kansas have very low percentages. pic.twitter.com/HPB0wSIKTJ

— Ryan Burge 📊 (@ryanburge) November 30, 2020

South Dakota makes me wonder about the validity of the data, but, hey, maybe it’s really so.

If Governor Kemp (R-GA) has any thoughts about a promotion in 2024, he may want to consider being a little more forward than this:

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) “pushed back on exhortations by President Trump, suggesting that the president was asking him to interfere in the Nov. 3 election in a way prohibited by state law,” the Washington Post reports.

Said a Kemp spokesman: “Georgia law prohibits the Governor from interfering in elections. The Secretary of State, who is an elected Constitutional officer, has oversight over elections that cannot be overridden by executive order.” [Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire]

My suggestion is that Governor Kemp issue the following statement:

President Trump is no longer welcome in the State of Georgia, and, if he should attempt to land and stir up more trouble, Georgia State Troopers are instructed to arrest him for conspiracy, name conspiracy to interfere in an official election.

Maybe not legal, but certainly would announce that Governor Kemp is not someone with whom to trifle.

Lt. Governor Geoff Duncan (R-GA) has stepped up and decided to cling to honesty rather than President Trump’s knees:

Lt. Governor Geoff Duncan (R-GA)

Georgia’s Republican lieutenant governor on Tuesday joined a growing list of GOP officials in the state who are publicly rejecting President Donald Trump’s baseless claims of voter fraud, saying the misinformation spread by the President and his allies is “alarming” and could jeopardize the party in upcoming Senate runoff elections.

Asked by CNN’s Alisyn Camerota on “New Day” about a falsehood spread by Trump that election officials in Georgia were “making deals,” Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan flatly replied, “certainly not.”

“What is alarming is the amount of misinformation that continues to flow. It’s alarming to me,” Duncan continued. “It’s certainly disheartening to watch folks willing to kind of put their character and their morals out there just so they can spread a half truth or a lie in the efforts to maybe to flip an election. … That’s not what democracy is all about.” [CNN/Politics]

Good for him, although I put him in the same category as election officials: just doing his job, it doesn’t warrant a parade.

The question is whether he has the stature to remind Trump cultists that honesty and honor are more important than winning-at-all-costs, as Trump advocates. That said, I fear Duncan has sunk his own career:

“I think short term we run the risk of alienating voters for our Senate race that is coming upon us for Sen. Loeffler and Sen. Perdue. And we need them,” he said. “And long term, I think we hurt the brand of our Republican Party, which is certainly bigger than one person long term … As Americans we need to see leaders that inspire us and not talk down.”

In Trump’s mind, and those of his cultists, it’s all about the Trump brand and himself; the implication that the Party is more important than Trump is anathema. He’s a pathological narcissist, after all.

The coming Senate runoffs in January will provide a convenient measuring stick. If the cultists are substantially enraged by Duncan’s remarks, they may well stay home. If they remain loyal to the Republican Party, then the incumbent Republican Senators will win, although it’ll be close.

I expect the Republicans will win. It’s possible that Perdue will win and Loeffler will lose, as it appears Loeffler hasn’t built up a reserve of good will among the independents, but I would be surprised.

Erick Erickson sends another e-mail:

In Atlanta, they’re filming the new Spiderman movie in a local public school. But the school itself, like so many others, is closed to students because of the virus. Even Dr. Fauci is saying schools should be opened. But local governments and teacher unions are adamant that kids should suffer. Poor kids are falling behind.

This is the civil rights issue of our time and conservatives are on the winning side — give parents a choice of where to send their kids.

A legit issue, sure. This is the civil rights issue of our time?

No.

If, in fact, it’s true that Fauci thinks schools can be open, then, sure, this may be an easily correctable mistake. But it’s the schools in one city, not the entire Black community suffering segregation and worse for generations, which also burdened kids.

I’m so unimpressed. But – skipping the point that school choice will improve schooling has been an illusion chased by conservatives ever since I can remember – conservatives are desperate to distract from the Georgia Senate races, where both Perdue and Loeffler have been hit with unethical stock trade charges.

Otherwise, it’s really just standard boilerplate – the messages Democrat-led governments are incompetent or evil and teacher unions are evil and out to hurt the kids are standard conservative and / or libertarian messages from way, way back.

Erickson doesn’t want to acknowledge the difficulty of the issue of the pandemic, or, for that matter, how vaccines are best managed for reopening schools. No, that’s not his goal. Gotta get the faithful riled up and believing in the conservative cause, make them civil rights warriors, because it appears Georgia is turning blue.

And we just can’t have that.

A lovely coloring in the Gray Season.

Democratic candidate and former Representative John Delaney has an interesting proposal for overcoming anti-vaccination sentiments:

Pay people to take a covid vaccine. The vaccines are likely to arrive at the same moment Washington is, belatedly, taking up much-needed stimulus legislation. The timing couldn’t be better: Money would go into Americans’ pockets just when the U.S. economy can begin fully reopening with a vaccinated population that can go about their daily lives without fear of catching the disease or infecting others. [WaPo]

Injecting stimulus into the economy by getting an injection. He has an example of this working, too:

I did what? The funny things you learn at your own murder trial!

Dishonored Lady (1947) follows the travails of the editor of a fashion magazine, Miss Damien, who has always done exactly what she wants, and has never found any of it fulfilling.

Until, under an assumed name and identity, she meets and assists a budding medical researcher, Dr. Cousins. They fall in love, but her previous life catches up with her, and one of her magnificently rich lovers is killed while seducing her. She is accused in the murder, and her fiancee only now discovers that she’s been living a lie with him, angrily withdrawing, until her psychiatrist intervenes. When her trial reveals information not known to the prosecution nor the defense, new opportunities arise – as do dangers.

While it’s an interesting story, it’s not fascinating. There’s not a terrible amount of cleverness present, and Miss Damien’s affability towards anyone with a penis is a little disturbing, although perhaps part of the psychological dimension of the plot. Still, to the modern sensibility, she seems to be prone to swaying with the wind to a high degree.

Still, it kept the attention of both of us, and it’s well acted and photographed. It’s a middle of the road achievement, maybe not worth searching for, but if stumbled across, the proper audience will find it agreeable.

From The Hill:

President Trump on Sunday said he regretted endorsing Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R), taking a swipe at the top Republicans in the state ahead of two critical Senate runoff elections.

The president decried the use of Dominion Voting Systems machines in Georgia, which are the subject of unproven conspiracies among some conservatives. He placed blame at the feet of Kemp and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) for approving the rules of the election.

Poor guy, he endorsed someone who refused to baldly break the law. My heart goes out to this unintelligent dupe of Putin’s.

Speaking of Georgia, this article reminds the reader about the shameful statement issued by incumbent Senators Perdue (R-GA) and Loeffler (R-GA) with regard to the results which leave them both involved in runoff elections:

Sens. David Perdue (R-Ga.) and Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.) are facing Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, respectively. Both Perdue and Loeffler have called for [Republican Georgia Secretary of State] Raffensperger to step down.

Once again, calling for the resignation of those who refused to break the law.

And I was thinking that we can consider the Republican election workers and related bureaucrats of 2020, such as Raffensperger, in one of three lights:

1. Traitors! To their Party, that is.
2. Heroes! After all, they withstood dreadful Party loyalties and pressures to be criminals for their brothers-in-arms!
3. Folks just doing their jobs.

I go with #3 myself. I thank them for not falling into the Pit of Immorality into which they’ve been invited to jump by Trump and various conservative pundits, grifters, and others who’d benefit from another Trump term, or just from the chaos that it’d cause, but quite honestly, they have done their jobs with honor and, presumably, skill.

That is not a tremendous, awe-inspiring accomplishment. It’s an everyday thing to do. And it’s best that we all think of it that way; to expect that election workers of one persuasion or another will bend and twist the results toward that persuasion is an embarrassment to those who believe it – especially if they can’t think of any immorality to associate with it.

A good election worker is one whose first loyalty is to truth, not to either fuckin’ Party.

Can I have the next drag? The men get all the good parts in the movies these days.

A Study In Scarlet (1933), a Sherlock Holmes tale, follows the predictable consequences of a secret society in which the members pool their wealth, and divide it up among the survivors as they die off. It may seem silly, but in the end it actually makes some sense, as everyone involved has visited –

But that would be telling.

It’s not a bad little tale, but the movie suffers from usual awful audio one expects from the era, the first generation of the talkies, as it were. This lends the movie a certain one-dimensional quality. Adding to it is the failure to develop sympathetic bonds with virtually any character, not because they’re all evil, but the effort simply isn’t made.

So it’s sort of fun, but not to any great extent.

On Lawfare, Valentin Weber discusses the security balloon that is the Chinese Web:

Ironically, while the U.S. government pushed to get HTTPS in place after a high-profile cyberattack by China, HTTPS is rarely used within China itself. HTTPS traffic that uses both TLS1.3—the newest version of Transport Layer Security, which provides secure communication between web browsers and servers and the specific content visited on a website—and ESNI—Encrypted Server Name Indication, which prevents third parties from seeing what websites a user visits—is blocked entirely in the country. The Chinese government imposed the ban because TLS1.3, when run via ESNI, makes it difficult for Chinese censors to see what sites a user is visiting and thereby reduces the government’s information control capabilities. Even foreign platforms such as the BBC or Wikipedia were banned as soon as they migrated to HTTPS.

Yet the Chinese government’s efforts to disincentivize encryption—to allow for censorship and surveillance—have created an online environment where even websites that carry sensitive government, health and commercial data remain unencrypted. This leaves them open to exploitation by intelligence agencies and cybercriminals.

Does this suggest that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is more worried about their own citizens than about leaking information, as well as potential weaknesses in critical systems?

Or does the CCP differently value such leaks compared to Westerners? For example, it sometimes seems to me that the concerns placed on leaks of health information of individuals is approaching paranoiac levels. If Chinese culture designates such information as being in the public domain, then it would make sense that the Chinese wouldn’t care if such information was intercepted, even by foreign intruders.

In the end, the part of the balloon they’re trying to squeeze is the part most likely to boot them out of control of the country, and if it bulges somewhere else, so be it.

Ten minutes of …

Professor Steven Mazie remarks on the beginning of the Barrett era:

Though her name appears nowhere in the 33 pages of opinions issued on Thanksgiving eve, Amy Coney Barrett looms large in her first consequential vote as a Supreme Court justice. Barrett played the decisive role in the court’s decision Wednesday to grant requests from Catholics and Orthodox Jews in New York City to block church and synagogue attendance limits in covid-19 hot spots.

During the pandemic’s first wave in the spring, the Supreme Court voted twice not to interfere when states such as California and Nevada restricted indoor gatherings, including church services. Those votes were 5 to 4, with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. joining his four liberal colleagues.

But with the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in September — and Barrett’s ascension to the bench — the tide has turned. Roberts is now unable to stop a majority from overruling local officials as they try to combat the coronavirus’s spread. Limiting attendance to 10 or 25 worshipers in the most dangerous zones, the majority said in its unsigned opinion, is “far more severe than has been shown to be required to prevent the spread of the virus at the applicants’ services.” [WaPo]

Which leaves me hoping some institute of higher learning is going to sign on to the task of evaluating the cost, in human lives and suffering, of this decision. Not only directly, but in secondary and tertiary infections.

I hope they’re small or non-existent.

But if the hospitals begin overflowing with infections traceable to unrestrained religious services, then more deaths unrelated to Covid-19 can then be also blamed on this decision.

And if this is properly publicized, can the survivors sue the religious institutions in question?

And can the conservative justices bearing the blame be expected to retire in shame?

This has been going around today:

Biden can only enter the White House as President if he can prove that his ridiculous “80,000,000 votes” were not fraudulently or illegally obtained. When you see what happened in Detroit, Atlanta, Philadelphia & Milwaukee, massive voter fraud, he’s got a big unsolvable problem!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 27, 2020

To which I can only say:

You first.

Of course, he’s just stirring the pot. Keep the base from thinking for itself, that’s the most dangerous thing that can happen to Trump. So say something that has a cracked facade of reasonability and hope most of them don’t start flying the coop.

Before, if you don’t mind the mixed metaphor, you have time to shear the flock.

Since when did This is different from that become This is different to that? I find it annoying.

Long time readers may – or may not – remember that I’ve mentioned, briefly, the possibility that humanity and the Universe is actually a computer simulation. Well, Discover published an article on this subject back in August, in which a couple of scientists tried to put together a Drake Equation^[1] equivalent to estimate the probability that we are, in fact, a simulation:

Bibeau-Delisle and Brassard [of the University of Montreal in Canada] begin with a fundamental estimate of the computing power available to create a simulation. They say, for example, that a kilogram of matter, fully exploited for computation, could perform 10^50 operations per second. …

So an interesting question is this: of all the sentient beings in existence, what fraction are likely to be simulations? To derive the answer, Bibeau-Delisle and Brassard start with the total number of real sentient beings NRe, multiply that by the fraction with access to the necessary computing power fCiv; multiply this by the fraction of that power that is devoted to simulating consciousness fDed (because these beings are likely to be using their computer for other purposes, too); and then multiply this by the number of brains they could simulate Rcal.

The problem I have is the initial estimate. If we are a simulation, why should the estimate of the power of a human brain have any relation to the fundamental physics of the base reality? Or are they being extremely precise with the word simulation, using it to mean an attempt to actually simulate their reality, rather than a singular creation of sentient beings (us), possibly unrelated to those running the computer program?

Even if this is true, there remains little reason to think there’s a reasonably close relation, as that would certainly be a “tuneable parameter,” permitting exploration of how its variations effects the simulation at large.

So I have some trouble taking this exploration seriously. Apparently, neither do they:

However, the overlords have a way to foil this. All they need to do is to rewire their simulation to make it look as if we are able to hide information, even though they are aware of it all the time. “If the simulators are particularly angry at our attempted escape, they could also send us to a simulated hell, in which case we would at least have the confirmation we were truly living inside a simulation and our paranoia was not unjustified…,” conclude Bibeau-Delisle and Brassard, with their tongues firmly in their cheeks.

In that sense, we are the ultimate laboratory guinea pigs: forever trapped and forever fooled by the evil genius of our omnipotent masters.

Time for another game of Civilization VI.

¹ The Drake Equation attempts to estimate the probability that there is sentient life, besides ourselves, in the Milky Way galaxy.