Apparently Taylor Swift didn’t fix 2020

Things continue to get crazier and crazier.

Item: RIP Mike Adams:

According to the New Hanover County Sheriff’s Office, Mike Adams was found dead at his residence today.

Deputies responded to a wellness check at Adams’ home address and found him deceased. NHCSO is investigating the death, but has not released any additional information, and could not confirm cause of death or if foul play was suspected.

The longtime professor of criminology and sociology at the University of North Carolina Wilmington (UNCW) was set to retire next week as part of a $500,000 settlement.

The settlement came as Adams was facing growing criticism for his social media posts and UNCW, in particular Chancellor Jose V. Sartarelli, was under increasing pressure to terminate his employment. Several petitions with around 85,000 total signatures called for his termination, and letters from his colleagues and fellow criminologists denounced his actions and called for his firing.

Due to Adams’ tenured status, and his previous legal victory over UNCW (which cost the UNC system roughly $700,000), the university opted for a negotiated exit.

Mike was a good writer and a conservative who actually lived by his principles. It’s too soon to say that his death is suspicious, since no details have been provided yet, but there is absolutely no way I would buy the idea that he committed suicide one week before retiring with half a million dollars.

Item: Media figureheads are claiming there will be no election in November:

MSNBC’s John Heilemann said that the deployment of federal agents into crime-ridden, Democratic-run cities was a “trial run” for Trump to steal the 2020 election. He’s going to seize this contest by force supposedly.

What do they know, what are they hearing, that would lead them to this conclusion? And if they know better, but are pushing a false narrative anyhow, what benefit is it to them?

Item: Facebook to ban Qanon:

The New York Times reports that two Facebook employees, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that Facebook will be taking similar steps to those taken by Twitter in order to limit the reach of QAnon content and the that it will be announcing its plans next month. The employees added that Facebook has been coordinating with Twitter and other social media companies when formulating its plans to purge QAnon content.

They’re certainly going to a lot of trouble for something that is supposed to be nothing more than a LARP.

Philosophy catches up to theology

It’s interesting to see how those who deny the supernatural are nevertheless gradually reinventing it under the guise of simulation theory, which is functionally identical to my original God as Game Designer hypothesis described 12 years ago in The Irrational Atheist:

This is one possible way for the intelligent life form to discover that it is actually existing in a simulation. Given enough time, it would discover the nature of its universe and learn it is actually a simulation. The trouble here is the intelligent life form would have to accept as a possibility that it exists in a simulation. A creature that is sure its universe operates on a fixed set of rules is unlikely to accept that those rules are an arbitrary invention of some higher intelligence outside its universe.

There is also another problem. The creators of the simulation could themselves be the product of a simulation. It’s entirely possible the one fixed rule of existence is that no intelligence entity can create an intelligence superior to itself. Perhaps Thomas Aquinas was right all along and there is some prime mover. The very source of the existence is the pinnacle of intelligence, which creates imperfect copies of itself manifesting as simulations within simulations.

We have in this simulation some evidence of this limitation. Despite the hyperbole about artificial intelligence, we have not come close to creating a computer that can rival the human mind. We have made very fast computers that can do calculations and sort through stacks of data faster than humans. These are not artificial intelligence or even intelligence at all, but rather they are very fast calculators. The collapse of the self-driving car project is an example of this limit.

Putting that aside, there is one other way the intelligent life forms inside the simulation could start to notice they are in a simulation. The point of creating a simulation, aside from sadism, is to test some theory or model some conditions. This implies the creators could make a mistake. They recognize this, so before changing something about their world or making a new tool, they test the theories behind it in a simulation. This means their simulation could have errors in it.

Let’s say they create a set of economic rules for their model society, but forget to carry the one or round the wrong way and there is an anomaly in the model. For example, creating more currency of a certain type does not result in inflation. All the other types of money operate by the rules of economics, but this one type of money seems to exist outside of those rules. The intelligent creatures figure this out and start producing tons of this new money to produce great material excess.

Presumably, the creators of the simulation would distribute skills and talents unequally among the intelligent life forms in order to see how creations of differing skills interact with one another. Maybe it is just an efficient way to use the finite resources available to the simulation makers. Regardless, the rules of the universe would have to dictate that those with a skill do better at some things than those without the skill. The result would be natural hierarchies in every aspect of the simulation.

What if there was a bug in the code where those with extreme narcissism and narrow intelligence can rise up to control society? At some point, through random chance, the stupid and narrow-minded figure this out and take over the simulation. Like the mouse utopia, this would be a useful discovery for the simulation makers, but it would create havoc for their simulation. So much so they may be tempted to unplug the thing, fix the bad code and re-run the simulation again.

Assuming the simulation keeps running, some of the intelligent life forms will see the anomalies in the system. They will work to resolve the paradoxes, but at some point, given enough cycles, they will have exhausted their set of options. At that point, they will have to question the very axioms of their existence and that’s when they can begin to contemplate the possibility they are in a simulation. The number of paradoxes grows to the point where they cannot be ignored.

The more we learn about genetics and physics, the more it becomes evident that we are living, not in a simulation, but a consciously created reality. In technological terms, the “supernatural” is simply the coder’s reality as opposed to the coded reality, and evidence of the paranormal is merely elements of the former penetrating the latter.

Which is why I am prone to referring to the afterlife as “Level 2”. After all, does not “the Word became flesh” beautifully describe a transition from a conceptual to a physical reality?

Republican National Convention canceled

It isn’t necessary, after all, since everyone knows who the nominee will be:

President Donald Trump announced Thursday he was scrapping the Republican nominating convention in Florida as the number of coronavirus cases in the United States topped four million.

Trump said he was cancelling next month’s event in Jacksonville because it was not the right time to do a “big, crowded convention.”

“The timing for this event is not right, it’s just not right with what’s happened recently,” he said at a White House news conference.

A wise and sensible move. Now do the general election….

This is why Gammas are never welcome

After copious bloviating, SamuraiJeff finally managed to get himself banned from here as well as SocialGalactic for an egregious violation of the rules here. Now, this would not normally be an event worth noting, as it was almost inevitable, but for the very informative reaction of SamuraiJeff to his banning:

You know vox, I haven’t seen ur books on The Pirate Bay. Hopefully some spiteful gamma king posts your books. That would certainly cost you more than 10$ per month (my subscription). You could have just let me have my opinion.

And I will pay that cost happily and without hesitation. Gammas are full of spite and pain, and the poison of their self-delusions never leaves them. This is why there are entire subreddits devoted to hating various celebrities, and even non-celebrities, and it is why I do not permit Gammas to participate in any of our projects.

As soon as the Gamma feels things aren’t going his way for one reason or another, he will turn on you every single time. It doesn’t matter how enthusiastic he is, or that he is your biggest fan, eventually he will decide that you, like everyone else in his life, has failed him. It saves a lot of time to simply let them know they are not welcome, and encourage them to go elsewhere once they draw attention to themselves.

She certainly got something

From a book I recently scanned:

Amelia Earheart was an inspiration to women everywhere. She wanted something more than hearth and home, and she got it.

She died childless and alone, presumably of starvation, on an uninhabited island. So inspirational!

Stop, Gamma time!

SamuraiJeff illustrates the intrinsic self-delusion of the Gamma mindset:

Btw if you’re wondering why i manage to piss off all the mods, they come to each others aid and attack me. I simply defend and they get mad lol. It’s pretty great

Consider how many assumptions are fundamentally incorrect in these three simple sentences. And, of course, note the inevitable Gamma tell.

  1. No one, literally no one, was wondering how SJ managed to get himself banned. Most were probably wondering why he hadn’t been banned here yet.
  2. The first sentence is not only incorrect, it is incoherent. “I piss off all the mods because they come to each other’s aid and attack me.” That literally doesn’t make any sense.
  3. Solipsistic assumption of emotion. The Gamma is emotion-driven and assumes that everyone else is too. The moderators are seldom “pissed off” or even mildly upset, to the contrary, being given the opportunity to ban someone they had already flagged as a potential problem tends to come as a relief.
  4. Being held accountable to community standards is not an attack, much less a personal one. The primary responsibility of the moderators is to make the judgment calls concerning what actions cross, or do not cross, the line.
  5. The violation of community standards is literally defined as an offense. And it is a shameless lie to claim that one’s offense is a defense. This is pure inversion and would alone be sound justification for banning on SG or anywhere.
  6. A second false imputation of emotion.
  7. And there is the tell. Gammas love to feign that they are above the conflict, and posture in a way that is intended to suggest that the conflict merely amuses a superior being such as himself.
  8. The number of comments and repeated requests for intervention and review strongly suggest that the Gamma does not consider the situation to be “pretty great”.

Relevant verse for the day:

“Even fools are thought wise if they keep silent, and discerning if they hold their tongues.”
‭‭Proverbs‬ ‭17:28‬ ‭

Is he even eligible?

I had no idea Javier Bardem was eligible for the U.S. vice-presidency, let alone running for the office. But he was great in Skyfall, so he has that going for him.

Every single time

It’s incredible what you can often correctly ascertain about an individual’s future behavior from his self-selected appellation. From SocialGalactic:

GospelBEARer @gospelbearer
May I please be unsubscribed from unauthorized.tv. Since my muting in March for defending the Bible, I can’t support it.

There are certain names you know are going to be trouble, sooner or later. Anyone who names himself after a famous philosopher. Anyone whose name is a form of virtue-signaling. And, of course, Bruce.

Now, obviously it’s fine to unsubscribe from UATV for any reason. There is no need to provide any reason at all. But to make a public point of doing so in a way that doesn’t even provide us with the necessary information to unsubscribe you four months after the proximate cause, well, that takes a very special boy indeed.

Mailvox: the irrelevance of Google

Some readers report a blacklisting problem with Google search and this blog similar to the issue that Rod Dreher was reporting which involved a number of conservative sites, but I’m not seeing it:

I noticed today that Google has blacklisted your blog from search. It’s now impossible for voxday.blogspot.com to appear in Google search results. Not surprising from those dummies.

I tested this myself this morning, and searching for “Vox Day” reveals the following results:

  • DuckDuckGo: #1 VP, #2 Wikipedia, #3 Amazon
  • Bing: #1 VP, #2 YouTube, #3 Amazon
  • Google: #1 Wikpedia, #2 VP, #3 RationalWiki

Now, Google also shows something called Search performance for this query at the top of its searches which may or may not be informative.

Last 7 days 
Clicks: 2.41K +228{4e01b0bc4ab012654d0c5016d8cbf558644ab2e53259aa2c40b66b3b20e8967d}
Impressions: 3.38K +193{4e01b0bc4ab012654d0c5016d8cbf558644ab2e53259aa2c40b66b3b20e8967d}
Avg. Position: 4.4, -0.1

Last 90 days
Clicks: 32.4K, -15{4e01b0bc4ab012654d0c5016d8cbf558644ab2e53259aa2c40b66b3b20e8967d}
Impressions: 47.5K, -11{4e01b0bc4ab012654d0c5016d8cbf558644ab2e53259aa2c40b66b3b20e8967d}
Avg. Position: 5.1, +0.9

And a search for voxday.blogspot.com brings up VP as the #1 option. So, if Google is putting a thumb on the scale concerning search results and this blog, it must only be doing it in the USA. Regardless, the number of daily clicks and impressions reported is a tiny fragment of the daily pageviews here, which now average over 100,000, so, as in the case of the Unz Report, which has seen its traffic grow considerably in the wake of its Facebook deplatforming, it really doesn’t make much of a difference how Google manipulates the search results.

In other news, I have not been deplatformed by Podbean. To the contrary, we elected to stop financially supporting Podbean, which means that MP3s from the Darkstream will no longer be available there or the various podcast services it supports. They are available at Unauthorized.

It’s afraid

Twitter initiates a ban on Qanon content:

Twitter announced Tuesday that it has begun taking sweeping actions to limit the reach of QAnon content, banning many of the conspiracy theory’s followers because of problems with harassment and misinformation.

Twitter will stop recommending accounts and content related to QAnon, including material in email and follow recommendations, and it will take steps to limit circulation of content in features like trends and search. The action will affect about 150,000 accounts, said a spokesperson, who asked to remain unnamed because of concerns about the targeted harassment of social media employees.

The spokesperson said that as part of its new policy, the company had taken down more than 7,000 QAnon accounts in the last few weeks for breaking its rules on targeted harassment.

The sweeping enforcement action will ban QAnon-related terms from appearing in trending topics and the platform’s search feature, ban known QAnon-related URLs and prohibit “swarming” of people who are baselessly targeted by coordinated harassment campaigns pushed by QAnon followers.

It’s really remarkable how inverted the relationship between the Prometheans and observable reality is. Once you realize that their morals are every bit as inverted, you begin to understand how awful and evil they truly are.