The Lawyers Are Smart, And They're Hunkered Down

Here's one question that's been bugging me for several days: someone at Savannah Guthrie's level must be surrounded by an army of agents, lawyers, publicists, image consultants, and so forth, retained by both her and NBC. Some of these people must also be able to double as crisis managers, since someone in that position is likely to have some type of public "crisis" at any time, whether it be family dispute, serious illness, infidelity, divorce, DUI, shoplifting arrest, whatever, these are people who are skilled at keeping you out of the news or getting you into it as needed.

The biggest dog that isn't barking here is that there's no evidence of a professional publicist-cum-crisis-manager invovled in this whole hinky kidnapping story. But let's leave aside Savannah's status as a national media figure. Even a prosperous middle-class family is typically advised to have a trusted family spokesperson, maybe a good friend who's also a lawyer, to handle the press in the event, say, of a kidnapping or maybe a plane crash. Those most directly affected are normaly advised to stay out of public view and let the spokesperson take over, if only to avoid emotional overstress.

Why isn't this happening here? Instead, we've had either a blizzard of photos of Savannah posed with mum, Savannah all phony-baloney smiles, or Savannah herself in weepy videos pleading with either the kidnappers or the public. If Savannah herself or her family were unable to stop her from doing this, why couldn't NBC? I actually wonder if there might be something in her contract giving NBC control of her public appearances that should have been invoked. But I just used to be involved in crisis management in my day job, who am I to know?

But let's leave that question aside and go to Sean Hannity's interview with Dan Bongino, lately FBI Deputy Director, at 0:43 below:

So the FBI was brought in a couple days after, you have to have a request for assets to be brought in, or you have to have federal jurisdiction. This was done by request. That's why you saw the crime scene was reopened again. That was the FBI evidence response team going in to take over, that's all they do, and they do it best, and process the evidence at the scene. . . . I see three possibilities, Sean, I'm not going to weight them, . . . if you use Occam's Razor, that you could apply.

First would be, obviously, it's a kidnapping that was an intended kidnapping for a ransom payment.

. . . The second poosibility would be this was just a crime that went awry, someone was at the house, maybe it was a burglary, something went bad, and you've got some bad actors committing another crime unrelated, in other wosrds, requesting a ransom for something you didn't do just to take advantage of a situation like that.

The third possibility, again, this is where you kinda have to think outside the box, is, especially given some of the messaging we've seen lately, the possibility that there may have been some kind of medical emergency or something, and maybe, this was not a kidnapping. And . . . again, I'm not weighting these possibilities, when you can't find someone, at a crime scene like this, within the first couple of days, you either have really good, surgical-type operators, or the story you've been told, or you may have believed, may not be the story. I mean, think about it. There's no license plate reader trips. Social media exploitation turned up nothing. Cast analysis [?]. Cell phone analysis. There's other tools I don't really want to talk about, but I promise they're there, we've used them in cases, that none of this stuff was tripped after the Bureau came in and applied all their assets? It seems really, ah, strange.

I think we can safely assume that Savannah has her own lawyers, NBC has lawyers, and Fox News has lawyers that are perfectly aware that both Savannah and NBC have lawyers. The substance, and probably the specific wording, of this interview were fully vetted by Fox lawyers to avoid any possible implication that the Guthrie family was involved in any way with Nancy's disappearance -- but something's, ah, strange. What Bongino is saying is that no strange vehicles appeared near the house that night. No strange cell phones pinged off nearby towers. No other FBI tools that Bongino won't identify turned up any other outsiders.

Except Nancy Guthrie disappeared. He's saying as clearly as Fox's lawyers will let him that the family was involved (I suspect the interview was reviewed again before it was aired). Let's put this in context, though the Bongino interview said nothing about it:

Megyn Kelly has confessed she believes authorities are "taking a very serious look" at Savannah Guthrie's brother-in-law in the disappearance of the TODAY co-host's missing 84-year-old mother, RadarOnline.com can reveal.

The statement comes after journalist Ashleigh Banfield reported on February 4 that Tommaso Cioni "may be the prime suspect," according to an "impeccable" law enforcement source of hers. Banfield repeated the claims on Kelly's Sirius XM show later that day.

Kelly, 55, noted the way in which TODAY has been reporting on the search of the Tucson, Arizona, home Cioni shares with Savannah's sister, Annie.

"It's interesting to watch NBC in the mornings on the Today show to see what they're reporting on this case, because there's no question in my mind, it will have been blessed by Savannah. There's zero doubt that they are asking her, 'Are you comfortable with this?' They would not want to upset her or get out ahead of their skis or go someplace where she didn't want it," the former Fox News host pointed out on her Monday, February 9, SiriusXM show.

Kelly observed how TODAY reported on the search of Annie's home after Banfield, 58, claimed that herand Cioni's car had been "towed, impounded, and taken into evidence."

"And they were the ones who broke the news that the search of Annie's home was consensual, as opposed to, via a search warrant. So, to me, I'm deducing, though I can't confirm it, as an independent fact, that she doesn't want it looking like her sister or anybody living in that home, like the brother-in-law, are in any way in trouble," Kelly surmised about how Savannah wouldn't want her brother-in-law named as a suspect.

Megyn Kelly in the course of her media career would certainly have been familiar with how corporate media attorneys would be on the case like white on rice. She also speculates, correctly in my opinion, that Savannah is controlling media coverage of the case to avoid any implication that her family, espeically her sister Annie and her bother-in-law Tommaso Contini, are involved.

But what has me wondering is why nobody is quite sure if the"ransom" e-mails, said to be transmitted to the family via local TV stations, are authentic. If they aren't, then who sent them and why? One thing that might be inferred from the Bongino interview is that the Pima County Sheriff's Office made the request for the FBI to come in, possibly due to its concern that the family was trying to control the investigtion. The "ransom" e-mails would of course be key evidence in the investigation.

Any attempt to mislead investigators, for instance by concocting "ransom" e-mails, or claiming they had received "ransom" e-mails that turned out to be bogus, would be obstruction of justice. The same would apply to any attempt to cover up a fanily member's involvement in the crime. The problem, however, would be that if the e-mails are bogus, Savannah's personal involvement as the key family spokesperson in the investigation, responding personally to the bogus e-mails, would put her at considerable legal risk.

At mimimum, she would need to leave NBC, whether on "leave" or resign outright, at a time when NBC needed her to keep the Today show on an even keel. This would also damage NBC's credibility in general. I'll bet NBC's lawyers are thinking about this right now, but they're in reactive mode -- I'm sure they're thinking about what they'd need to do, but so far, no announcements have come from anywhere, not the police and not the FBI, and certainly not from the attorneys or the crisis managers, who are oddly invisible in any case.. My bet is the lawyers are smart, and they're hunkered down, but i'll also bet crisis managers for NBC are already on call. My Spidey sense tells me Savannah is a short timer except in terms of her possible sentence.

Someone Finally Asks Good Questions

Todsy's post was delaywd due to network issues.

As investigators continue to find nothing new in the Nancy Guthrie kidnapping, amid non-stop breathless coverage that might have been custom designed by Savannah's and NBC's publicists, Fox News interviews Former NYPD officer Tom Smith at 2:50 in the video above and actually asks some real questions:

Q: Can you say now with certainty that these ransom notes are authentic, or could they still be fraudulent?

A: Oh, they could definitely still be fraudulent. I'm not sold on them 100% at all. . . . When you have a kidnapping, kidnappings are quick. Get them, negotiate, give me the money, get the person back. That's how kidnappings happen, because even the perpetrators don't want to hold onto the victims too long, because that enables police to track them down quicker. So the length of time is concerning. And how much deadline after deadline after deadline is going on, so it's sort of desperation as well.

. . . Q: Former FBI Assistant Director Chris Swecker questioned whether this is even a kidnapping in the first place. Tom, if not, what is this?

A: Exactly, and I've said this from day one, what's the end game in this? What's the advantage of taking an 84 year old woman out of her home? Yes, the connection with Savannah, I get that, why do it? Going on Chris's thought, the kidnapping was a secondary thought, something happened in those 40 minutes in that house that prompted them to go to the extra step and take her from that house.

Or the whole thing was an inside job done for publicity. Why else did the sheriff search Savannah's sister Annie's house on Saturday? Why is the whole negotiation being played out via letters sent to TV news? -But now it seems like everything they've been getting is a hoax.

"Hour of Desperation"

Savannah Guthrie in new Instagram video: "We believe our mom is still out there. We need your help." Thanks public for prayers, urges reporting anything strange to law enforcement even if far from Tucson. pic.twitter.com/qDNcRt3pUK

— Rantingly (@rantinglydotcom) February 9, 2026

And where is the FBI? Here's a clue:

Savannah Guthrie eerily uttered the exact same words used in the hostage-negotiation scene from the iconic horror film “Silence of the Lambs” in the gut-wrenching video she posted earlier this week pleading for her mother’s safe return.

The “Today” show star, her sister Annie, and her brother Camron, issued a tearful video plea to their mother Nancy’s captors on Feb. 4, with Savannah sharing a pointed message.

“[Nancy] is full of kindness and knowledge. Talk to her and you’ll see,” Savannah said in a quivering voice.

A nearly verbatim message was used in Jonathan Demme’s Oscar-winning 1991 film, in a scene where a a senator is coached by the FBI to speak to the captor of her daughter in a live televised address. The goal was to get the monstrous kidnapper to see his victim as a human being.

The best explanation I've heard, piecing things together from various sources, is that this was a suggeszted line in the FBI's kidnapping manual that would date from before The Silence of the Lambs was released in 1991, and it was used in the film for authenticity. So this is the FBI procedure from at least 35 years ago, and they've never updated it, because there have been so few kidnappings.

In addition to the Lindbergh Baby and JonBenét Ramsey, others that come to mind are John Paul Getty III in 1973, whose grandfather thought it was a hoax until the kinappers sent him John Paul III's ear; and Patricia Hearst in 1974, in which the victim became the center of a massive media circus -- of course, she was a Hearst.

One lesson seems to be that these things seem to go the worst when the family tries to control the investigation. In a 1963 case, Frank Sinatra Jr,

19 years old, was kidnapped from Harrah's Lake Tahoe (Room 417) and held for ransom.[7] He was released two days later after his father paid the $240,000 ransom demanded by the kidnappers (equivalent to $2,460,000 in 2024). . . . [Kidnappers Barry] Keenan, Johnny Irwin, and Joe Amsler were soon captured, prosecuted for kidnapping, convicted, and sentenced to long prison terms, of which they served only small portions. Mastermind Keenan was later adjudged to have been legally insane at the time of the crime and hence not legally responsible for his actions

But whether or not tne mastermind was insane, this seems to have gone the most smoothly of any, including the capture of the perps. But that was under J Edgar Hoover's FBI. I still sense in this case that at minimum, Savannah Guthrie's publicists will earn a bonus.

Insurgency Or White Saviors?

Andy Ngo writes in The New York Post, The anti-ICE activists are an insurgency, not a protest movement:

On Saturday, the Democratic Socialists of America celebrated hitting 100,000 members. Almost on cue, their footprint in organizing anti-ICE so-called “protests” continues to grow.

But these are not protests. They are coordinated obstruction campaigns modeled on the playbook of revolutionary insurgency inspired by violent revolutions.

That much is clear from the latest reporting in The California Post, documenting how militant far-left activists from the Golden State are advising radicals in New York on the latest tactics for sabotaging federal immigration operations.

But also yesterday,

Immigrant groups have a message for their mostly White allies: Quit blowing the whistle on ICE.

Fox News Digital has reviewed days of messages inside Signal chat rooms that reveal that a new internal feud has erupted inside the anti-ICE protest industry, pitting immigrant-led organizations against predominately White "rapid response" networks that have made whistle-blowing a dramatic part of anti-ICE protests.

. . . Groups from Seattle to Montgomery County, Md., are telling mostly White "rapid responders" to back off a dynamic described by activists as "White Savior," reminding them they are not cameo actors in an "action movie" against ICE.

Montgomery County, MD, includes Bethesda, Chevy Chase, and Potomac. The illegals there are likely to be nannies, gardeners, and domestic servants in upscale households; none of their employers is an insurgent, whether or not they go to anti-ICE protests. Possibly their enititled children at least do.

But I think we need to look at this question through the lens of an earlier generation, Edmund Wilson in To the Finland Station (1940) and Whittaker Chambers in Witness (1952). Both discuss what may be history's most successful insurgency, the Soviet Union, from different but equally illuminating perspectives. To the Finland Station is an idealized intellectual history of European socialism that culminates in Lenin's arrival at Moscow's Finland Station to begin the final stage of founding the Soviet government.

Wilson appears to have had a comfortable bourgeois life. He attended a private secondary school and then went to Princeton. After service in World War I, he returned amost immediately to pursue a privileged literary career. According to Wikipedia,

Wilson was the managing editor of Vanity Fair in 1920 and 1921, and later served as associate editor of The New Republic and as a book reviewer for The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books.

. . . In 1932, Wilson pledged his support to the Communist Party USA's candidate for president, William Z. Foster, signing a manifesto in support of CPUSA policies; however, Wilson did not identify personally as a communist.

Wilson strikes me as a member of the "white savior" faction of the American left, especially insofar as Princeton did not admit Negroes until the eve of World War II; Wilson may not even have been aware of this. His loyalties are literary and performative. He admires Lenin as a man of action, a theorist who finally has the determination to wield absolute power on behalf of the revolutionary working class, of which Edmund Wilson was never a member.

Whittaker Chambers is a very different figure. In the 1920s, he followed a literary career not much different than Wilson's; he was an editor and writer for The Daily Worker and New Masses. But in 1932, when Wilson publicly endorsed William Z Foster, Chambers went underground and became a Soviet spy. In fact, Chambers also went to an Ivy, Columbia, where like Wilson, he was a member of the influential literary set. But unlike Wilson, he dropped out and seems to have felt that other experiences, like traveling to Germany during the postwar devastation, were much more formative.

But Chambers's involvement in socialism was more like a pig's involvement in breakfast: a chicken is involved by laying eggs, which would be Edmund Wilson's position, while a pig is involved by becoming bacon. Wilson was a public intellectual, while Chambers became a clandestine spy. Among other things, he recruited Alger Hiss. But as Andre Maulreux wrote to Chambers after reading Witness, "You are one of those who did not return from hell with empty hands." I don't think anyone could say the same of Wilson, who spent his later years collecting the usual medals, prizes, and awards.

So let's return to the problem of the white saviors. Ngo writes,

One familiar tactic is the strategic placement of women at the front of confrontations. When these activists block agents on foot or with vehicles, cameras start recording. Clips of screaming women being arrested are quickly circulated with false narratives claiming innocent women are being “snatched” off the streets arbitrarily.

I witnessed this tactic in 2020 in Portland, when the “Wall of Moms” stood at the front of the mob seeking to burn down a federal courthouse in downtown during the George Floyd riots. Behind the “moms”? Masked Antifa militants in black bloc outfits, hurling rocks, frozen water bottles and explosive devices.

. . . The plan was explicit: confront federal agents and ensure cameras are ready.

For these extremists, the potential cost in human life is worth it, because of the potential political payoff.

These tactics have already fueled online threats and real-world violence against federal officials. They helped spark deadly unrest in Minneapolis and drove an international media frenzy built on lies.

But the basic problem, as I think Whittaker Chambers would recognize, and possibly Wilson as well, is that the moms are all bourgeois romantics. They aren't the sort of insurgents who will work undercover, as Chambers did, at the real tasks of the working-class revolution. Renee Good, uniformly characterized as a mom, tried to run down a CBP agent in a $50,000 SUV. Alex Pretti was less successfully characterized as a nurse, a bicyclist, and an outdoorsman, but the media had to retouch the sketchiness out of his hippie persona to do this.

I've been saying all along that the current leftist alliance is between the upper bourgeoisie and Marx's Lumpenproletariat. It's a creature of the faculty lounge; the true working class isn't involved. Even the Montgmery County, MD Immigrant Rights Collective seems to understand the issues here. At the second link,

"START WITH REALITY (NOT HEROICS)," they wrote, with the soundtrack of a popular protest song, "Que me devuelvan la tierra," which means "Give me back my land."

They wrote, "This is not an action movie. You are not in a one-on-one fight with ICE."

Adding bold emphasis, they noted, "And you are not the center of this situation."

On one hand, Renee Good and Alex Pretti were bourgeois useful idiots. On the other, the people who might actually be clandestine actors like Whittaker Chambers, who might actually further an insurgency, seem to be AWOL. Ngo says,

Earlier this week, a Minneapolis Antifa activist named Kyle Wagner was charged by federal authorities after posting multiple social media videos urging his comrades to acquire firearms to kill federal agents.

But Fox News adds context:

In a video obtained by Fox News Digital, Kyle Wagner, 37, of Minneapolis was arrested in the early morning hours wearing a sweatshirt that said, "I'M ANTIFA," a reference to the far-left organization that the Trump administration has deemed a domestic terrorist group.

Wagner’s bald head and numerous tattoos, including "RESISTANCE" across his chest and a "three arrows" anti-fascist symbol on his neck, have made him a recognizable figure on anti-ICE social media feeds.

Wagner operated an Instagram account under the handle @kaos.follows, where he had amassed tens of thousands of followers before the account was deleted. In his bio, he reportedly used the hashtag #IronFront and described himself as an "entrepreneur."

This is a bourgeois romantic, not an insurgent, no matter how loudly he may claim that's what he is. "This is not an action movie. You are not in a one-on-one fight with ICE." These people will not make a revolution, even Edmund Wilson understood this.

Does Anyone Else Think The Nancy Guthrie Kidnapping Case Is Hinky?

Kidnapping for ransom went out of style with the Lindbergh Baby, but even that case was hinky.

[T]he famous father took personal charge of many aspects of the investigation. He isolated household staff who may have had knowledge of his son’s medical condition from questioning by authorities including J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI. Also, following a cursory autopsy, he ordered the body cremated and the ashes scattered.

And of course, it was a media sensation. Fast forward to the JonBenét Ramsey case, which involved a hinky ransom note, even though the child was later found strangled in the family home. It was also a media sensation, especially due to JonBenét's participation in child beauty pageants. But there are very few parallels in the real world. YouTuber crminal lawyer Bruce Rivers says on his channel, "I've been practicing law for almost thirty years. I've never once seen a kidnapping-ransom case." In other words, all the cases we see seem to be made up by media figures chasing another 15 mionutes of fame, not criminal masterminds.

Add to that trash media TMZ taking an active role in the story, transmitting one of the putative ransom notes:

Harvey Levin on Hannity: "The letter begins by saying she is safe but scared, and they go on to say she knows exactly what the demand is. They are, through us, telling the family exactly what they are demanding, and they are saying that Nancy is aware of it. They are also saying… pic.twitter.com/2GhmZ2zGiJ

— Rantingly (@rantinglydotcom) February 6, 2026

Beyond that, the story involves a media figure, Savannah Guthrie, Nancy's daughter, and it's being pursued most avidly by Megyn "Me Again" Kelly and Ashleigh Banfield, all three middle-aged TV ladies approaching career twilight despite the most determined efforts of medical science:

But even though the case has been in the headlines for a week, I'm not seeing anyone asking straight out if this is all a hoax. So I put the question to Chrome AI mode, "Is the Nancy Guthrie kidnapping a hinky story?" It replied,

The abduction of Nancy Guthrie, the 84-year-old mother of Today show host Savannah Guthrie, has been described by both the public and experts as "hinky" or "unusual" due to several bizarre and conflicting details.

While authorities officially maintain it is a kidnapping, several elements have fueled public skepticism and intense investigation:

Precise Timing & Tech Disruption: Surveillance data shows her Ring doorbell was disconnected and physically removed at 1:47 a.m. on Sunday, February 1, 2026. Minutes later, at 2:28 a.m., her pacemaker stopped syncing with her phone, suggesting a medical event or physical intervention.

The "Blood Trail": Investigators found blood splatters on the porch and along the pathway to the driveway, which DNA testing confirmed belonged to Nancy, indicating a violent struggle.

Ransom Confusion: A ransom note sent to news outlets contained "sensitive information" about the crime scene known only to the abductor, yet it lacked a way for the family to contact the author. Additionally, the FBI arrested one "ransom impostor" attempting to profit from the case.

Motive Mystery: Law enforcement stated they do not believe the motive was a standard robbery or home invasion, deepening the mystery of why an elderly woman with limited mobility was targeted.

Family Plead: Savannah Guthrie and her siblings released an emotional video on Instagram stating they are "ready to talk" but demand proof of life due to the ease of AI manipulation.

But not even AI caught that last point: one one hand, the Guthrie family pleads with the kidnapper to talk, but law enforcement thinks the family may be involved:

Police are not ruling out any suspects as they investigate Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance — with Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos refusing to categorically say the son-in-law who last saw her was off their radar.

“We’re actively looking at everybody we come across in this case, we would be irresponsible if we didn’t talk to everybody,” Nanos said when asked by reporters if Nancy’s son-in-law Tommaso Cioni was a suspect.

In fact, nobody's even sure if the various messages from the kidnappers are authentic:

"The FBI and Pima County Sheriff's Department are aware of a new message regarding Nancy Guthrie. Investigators are actively inspecting the information provided in the message for its authenticity," officials wrote on social media.

A hoaxer has already been arrested for another note:

Derrick Callella, 42, is accused of sending the Guthrie family a hoax ransom letter. Authorities initially said Callella was from Torrance, but later clarified that he's from Hawthorne.

Callella was arrested by the FBI in Hawthorne on Thursday and appeared in a Santa Ana federal courtroom on Friday afternoon.

Well, let me see. According to one of these notes, we're not sure exactly which and whether it's real, someone is demanding a gazillion bucks in bitcoin as ransom. Now, who would you think of to kidnap for a gazillion backs in ransom? A relative of Elon Musk? Donald Trump? Bill Gates? Jeff Bezos? Yeah, they all have good security, but someone must have fallen through a crack. Heck, Howard Hughes's aunt was my parents' neighbor, you could have snatched her just like that.

Just a little research would have shown several good candidates among relatives of really rich people. Instead, looking for a gazillion bucks in bitcoin as ransom, they focus on Savannah Guthrie's mother. Nothing fits here.

And why would Savannah Guthrie want to be the focus of national hysteria? After all, the conventional wisdom is that she's safe at NBC:

Guthrie, 50 [no, she's 54 now], has her contract coming up for renewal next year [2025], and honchos are worried she may also decide it’s time to seek new horizons.

The veteran broadcaster, who is purportedly paid more than $8 million a year, has co-anchored “Today” since 2012 and steered the show through the Matt Lauer sex scandal that rocked the network seven years ago.

“Savannah’s contract is coming up next year and they want to keep her and will be doing anything they can to continue their relationship with Savannah as a means of not overhauling everything,” an NBC insider spilled to Daily Mail.

Nevertheless, I smell the same desperation that seems to have been behind the Lindbergh Baby and JonBenét Ramsey cases -- and outside of those, there are almost no similar high-profile kidnapping cases that aren't hoaxes. And just looking at the publicity shots of her and her mom over the past week, I have a deep and troublng sense that we're looking at an attention whore.

Cryonics And The Zombie Problem

Thinking about Glenn Reynolds, Ray Kurzweil, and cryonics, I began to go back to the only undergraduate courses that I've been able to use throughout my adult life (though they've consistently also gotten me into trouble, too), my minor in Philosophy. The video embedded above is by Jeffrey Kaplan, a Philosophy prof at UNC Greensboro, whose online courses I've found useful in keeping my thinking active in the field. In this one, he discusses the philosophical concept of a "zombie", a being that is physically identical to a human in every way. It behaves, talks, and reacts exactly like a person, but there is "nobody home" inside.

This is a thought experiment that is used against the argument of physicalism, which is roughly equivalent to materialism. It seems to me that this is the philosophy underlying cryonics: notwithstanding you have been legally dead for hundreds of years, if you were vitrified, properly frozen quickly enough after your death, "science" will eventually find a way to bring you back to life. This is notwithstanding the traditional Christian view that at death, the soul leaves the body and goes on to particular judgment and a choice between heaven and hell, whence the soul does not return to this world.

Cryonics isn't consistent with this view. While I've never seen a philosophically coherent explanation, the impression I have is that it believes "science" makes continual progress in medicine, and if as of now, a patient can flatline in an ambulance, he can be variously shocked, injected, or chest-pounded and "brought back to life", "science" will continually extend the period and means by which this can be done. In other words, someone may flatline now and go without medical attention for a matter or minutes or hours, such that rigor mortis sets in, the body goes cold, and EMTs say it's not possible to bring him back.

As far as I can determine, cryonics says that "science" will progressively extend this period of eligibility for resuscitation, so that in the fairly near term, it may be possible to shock, inject, pound the chest of, or otherwise manipulate dead people after a much longer period in order to bring them back, rigor mortis, decomposition, or no. In addition, "science" will continually find ways to cure diseases that are now thought to be fatal, so that at some point in the future, a person can be cured of, say, stage four cancer, and it isn't a big step to conceive of someone who has previously died of it being "brought back to life" and then successfully treated.

All this requires is that we ignore the metaphysical system that posits a soul that leaves the body at the time of death. The teachng of the Catholic Church is that only three humans have ever bypassed death and gone straight to heaven -- the patriarch Enoch, the prophet Elijah, and the Virgin Mary, but they took their bodies with them, so they aren't eligible for cryonics. Everyone else, including Christ Himself, died. In all these other cases, their souls left their bodies at the time of death.

In 1 Kings 17, the prophet Elijah brought back to life the son of the widow of Zarephath. In John 11:38–44, after calling "Lazarus, come out!" to a man dead for four days, Jesus commanded the onlookers to unbind him. However, these are miraculous resuscitations, and they reverse the process by which the soul had already left the body. In addition, we must assume that both the widow's son and Lazarus eventually died a second time.

As far as I can see, although so far, there's no cryonic creed, cryonics envisions a potentially infinite series of deaths, resuscitations, and cures, if repetitions of the process are necessary at all. The possibilities are that the formerly dead subject is brought back to life and cured of the previously "fatal" condition via "science". Should the subject then "die" again of some new disease, he can be vitrified again and the process repeated with the understanding that "science" will solve the problem later.

However, as I understand Ray Kurzweil, whom Glenn Reynolds apparently deems authoritative, the whole question of physical death and resuscitation is only part of an intermediate state, and eventually we will evolve into purely digital entities existing in a really, really big eternal computer, at which time "science" will have completed its task. How this relates to The Matrix is a question as yet unanswered.

The problem as I see this is that the humans envisioned by cryonics are philosophical zombies. They have chemical, neurological, and biological processes exzactly like humans, with the critical exception that there can't be a soul that leaves the body at the time of death. This seems to be illustrated in the legal case of Alcor Life Extension Foundation v. Richardson (2010). According to Alcor's Wikipedia entry:

When Alcor member Orville Richardson died in 2009, his two siblings, who served as co-conservators after he developed dementia, buried his remains even though they knew about his agreement with Alcor. Alcor sued them when they found out about Richardson's death to have the body exhumed so his head could be preserved. Initially, a district court ruled against Alcor, but upon appeal, the Iowa Court of Appeals ordered Richardson's remains be disinterred and transferred to the custody of Alcor a year after they had been buried in May 2010.

So even after someone has been dead and buried for a year, his head can still be exhumed and frozen with the idea that they can bring him back later, effectively no different from an EMT pounding his chest. And the assumption is that this will be the same Orville who died in 1990. But how do we assume this? I think the only conclusion we can have is that cryonics is physicalist: Orville is simply the sum total of his DNA and all the associated molecules, cells, neurons, and synapses. If we can get them running again, we have Orville, no need for anyone else to be home.

Bringing him back from a skull with bits of decomposing flesh clinging to it may seem like a challenge, but "science" is up to the task. This is kind of like someone who wants to restore a 1960s Mustang he's found in a junkyard. Repace the tires, belts, and hoses, rebuild the engine and transmission, patch up the body and upholstery, turn the ignition, and voila, a Mustang! It's the turn the ignition part that has me puzzled.

How do you turn the ignition on a dead body, no matter how thoroughly rebuilt? Is it enough just to shock it or have an EMT pound its chest? And what's the guarantee it's Orville when it wakes up? What if it's just a zombie, breathing, pumping blood, but nobody home? Or what if it isn't Orville, it turns out to be Suleiman the Magnificent?

I'd love to be in a position to put these questons to either Glenn Reynolds, Ray Kurzweil, or both, but I can tell you right now what they'll say: we don't know, we've never brought anyone back to life from having his head frozen, so we don't know how to solve those or even other unforeseen problems that will emerge. But "science" will be able to figure these things out as they arise! Not to worry!

By the way, "science" as the term is used by cryonicists is a logical fallacy, hypostatization, treating an abstraction as a concrete entity. But the whole basis of cryonics is also a question-begging argument, that while nobody can answer questions like how we can guarantee the Orville we resuscitate isn't a zombie, "science" can solve these and all other problems down the road.

What does it say about our educational system that Glenn Reynolds holds a law degree from Yale, has a prestigious endowed chair at the University of Tennessee, and can use this prestige to pitch the purest moonshine? As a law professor, he ought to have a special sensitivity to fraud, but he simply doesn't seem to.

Glenn Reynolds Jumps The Shark At Warp Speed

I was all ready to talk about The Washington Post this morning, when I ran into this at Instapundit: Glenn Reynolds shills a Substack essay proposing that "the Singularity" is already here. He begins by citing Ray Kurzweil. At best, Kurzweil is an idiot savant, posssibly a brilliant inventor, but also, according to Wikipedia, a believer in freezing his body aftrer death in hopes of having it resuscitated at some future point:

Kurzweil has joined the Alcor Life Extension Foundation, a cryonics company. After his death, he has a plan to be perfused with cryoprotectants, vitrified in liquid nitrogen, and stored at an Alcor facility in the hope that future medical technology will be able to revive him.

As of 2005, Reynolds was a big fan of this quackery, enthusiastically promoting the work of both Kurzweil and Aubrey de Gray, a promoter of human lifespan extension. According to the Wikipedia link,

De Grey is a cryonicist, having signed up with Alcor. When asked in an interview about his views on cryonics, he answered that "[...] it's an absolute tragedy that cryonics is still such a backwater publicly and that a large majority of people still believe that it has no chance of ever working", arguing "If people understood it better, there would be more research done to develop better cryopreservation technologies, and more people would have a chance at life."

It turns out that Glenn Reynolds himself is also a cryonicist. I hadn't been able to track down independently whether he plans to have his head frozen, but on a whim, I asked Chrome AI mode, "Is Glenn Reynolds a cryonicist?" It replied,

Glenn Reynolds, the University of Tennessee law professor and founder of Instapundit.com, is indeed a cryonicist and a long-time advocate for the practice.

Alcor Member: Reynolds is a signed-up member of the Alcor Life Extension Foundation, one of the world's leading cryonics organizations.

Public Advocacy: He has frequently written about and defended cryonics in various publications, including USA Today, where he has argued that it is a rational "Plan B" for those who want a chance at future life extension.

But what is the "Plan A" for those who want a chance at future life extension? Good Catholics might suggest regular mass attendance and availing oneself of the other sacraments, and even Scott Adams refers us to something like Pascal's Wager. However, it appears that for transhumanists like Glenn Reynolds, "Plan A" is to expect dramatic human lifespan extension in our lifetimes, such that we probably won't even die and need to have our heads frozen before some powerfully transformative technological event, the Singularity, makes us immortal. The Cambridge Dictionary gives a definition: "The point in time when advances in AI can create machines that are smarter than humans is known as the Singularity."

But this omits Kurzweil. I asked Chrome AI mode, "Has Ray Kurzweil theorized that humans will upload their consciousness into a giant computer?" It answered,

Ray Kurzweil, a prominent futurist and Google engineer, has long predicted that humans will be able to upload their consciousness to a "suitably powerful computational substrate" to achieve digital immortality.

. . . Kurzweil believes this process will likely be gradual rather than a sudden "scan and dump". As we replace or augment biological neurons with more efficient electronic ones, our consciousness will slowly shift from a biological to a digital medium until we can exist entirely within a machine.

Chrome AI mode reports, though, that Kurzweil thinks this gradual process should be done by about 2045. Now, I spent some part of my tech career tasked with planning for the contingency of big computers breaking down, or losing power, or being attacked by an angry mob. Kurzweil, ever the visionary, foresees a time when humans will have left their messy bodies behind and will live eternally in a computer memory -- but how will the computer continue to find fuel? What if it's wiped out by an asteroid? Won't it need continued software updates? Seems like beings with agency will still be needed after the Singularity after all.

Actually, this is the same problem that occurs with the Alcor model: what if the cryonic facility that freezes all the heads loses power for long enough to let the heads thaw? And how long does Alcor estimate their facility will need to keep heads well frozen? Ten years? A hundred years? Ten thousand years? How do you anticipate just the investment requirements to keep something going that long, leaving aside the vicissitudes of history? But let's not worry about that. Reynolds asks,"Is the Singularity here?", and he answers that manifestly it isn't -- but oh, ye of little faith!

Computers are not yet made of “computronium,” but AI has advanced farther than anyone, except possibly Kurzweil, expected. And arguably we have already found ourselves “battling genetically enhanced super pathogens,” prepared in Chinese biolabs with, ironically enough, U.S. government funding. Extended lifespans, meanwhile, aren’t in evidence, though Kurzweil thinks we’re actually approaching “actuarial escape velocity,” where average lifespans increase more than one year per elapsed year.

The problem with COVID as a "genetically enhanced super pathogen” is that it was nowhere near as "super" as Dr Fauci pretended; that was the whole point of the lockdowns and so forth, they overrated the threat. But Reynolds clearly thinks space-based AI data centers as proposed by Elon Musk are pointing us in the direction of Kurzweil's "suitably powerful computational substrate" that will give us digital immortality. I'm sure Reynolds would test somewhere above average for IQ, but just how far above is an open question. Although he's been to Yale Law, there are whole fields of knowledge of which he appears to be ignorant, such as philosophy and the Chinese Room Thought Experiment:

Suppose that artificial intelligence research has succeeded in programming a computer to behave as if it understands Chinese. The machine accepts Chinese characters as input, carries out each instruction of the program step by step, and then produces Chinese characters as output. The machine does this so perfectly that no one can tell that they are communicating with a machine and not a hidden Chinese speaker.

The questions at issue are these: does the machine actually understand the conversation, or is it just simulating the ability to understand the conversation? Does the machine have a mind in exactly the same sense that people do, or is it just acting as if it had a mind?

Now suppose that [philosopher John] Searle is in a room with an English version of the program, along with sufficient pencils, paper, erasers and filing cabinets. Chinese characters are slipped in under the door, and he follows the program step-by-step, which eventually instructs him to slide other Chinese characters back out under the door. If the computer had passed the Turing test this way, it follows that Searle would do so as well, simply by running the program by hand.

Searle can see no essential difference between the roles of the computer and himself in the experiment. Each simply follows a program, step-by-step, producing behavior that makes them appear to understand. However, Searle would not be able to understand the conversation. Therefore, he argues, it follows that the computer would not be able to understand the conversation either.

Reynolds concludes,

In my forthcoming book, Seductive AI, I warn that bots don’t have to be brilliant to fool and manipulate humans because, as all of history shows, people aren’t all that hard to fool.

That's true, Reynolds himself has a comic book mind, and he's been fooling people for at least a generation.

I Have Real Questions About The Polls

Let's start with just one data item, the Real Clear Politics Trump approval average from yesterday. Trump's approval is 42.8%, his disapproval is 54.6%. The polls that make up the average range from the high 30s to 50% approval in one case, so RCP loads them all together, no matter the differences in methodology and bias, and gets an arithmetic mean, which I'm increasingly convinced is garbage in-garbage out.

Below the numeric totals are several graphs showing Trump's overall approval trends, but I'm intrigued by the one that shows his first-term approvals. By the end of 2020, his approval was roughly 40%, while his disapproval was roughly 57%, which might explain why he "lost" that election -- except now we're beginning to learn that over 300,000 votes in Fulton County, Georgia are in question. He lost Georgia overall by only 11,779 votes. If equivalent questionable results in other states like Michigan and Arizona make the overall outcome of the 2020 election iffy, what does this say about the predictive value of the 2020 polls?

Other polls from recent days add to the question of what presidential "job approval" polls actually measure.

A new poll released by the firm Cygnal has shown that Trump’s deportation agenda continues to grow more popular with the American people in spite of the best efforts of Democrats and the media to malign the administration.

Swing voters and independents overwhelmingly agree that those who have illegally entered the country have broken the law at 82 percent and 70 percent, respectively. Overall, 73 percent of American voters agree with the sentiment, while a surprisingly high 48 percent of Democrats would say that illegal border crossings constitute a crime.

64 percent of the total electorate feels that illegal immigration is a “very” or “somewhat serious problem,” while 61 percent of Democrats feel that it isn’t a problem at all. Swing voters and independents once again side with Republicans, with 71 percent of swing voters and 60 percent of independents being aligned on the issue.

On the issue of deportations, Democrats once again are in opposition to the feelings of the general electorate, with 61 percent of voters saying that they support the deportations of illegals and 67 percent of Democrats standing opposed to deportations.

In other words, the Trump administration's priorities on immigration are overwhelmingly in tune with the electorate at large, and it appears that voters aren't deflected by media attempts to create martyrs of activists like Renee Good or Alex Pretti. If Trump is so clearly executing on policies that the voters support on such a major issue, why is his approval so low? But beyond that, how is it possible to interpret the poll numbers themselves so differently? At Rasmussen's own site,

A new I&I/TIPP poll conducted at the end of January shows that Trump’s overall favorability and job approval remain mostly unchanged from the previous month. Forty-one percent of voters view him favorably, while 40% approve of his job performance. Unfavorable and disapproval ratings are about 50% and 51%, respectively. These are not landslide numbers, but the key point is what they are not: they are not declining.

In other words, looking at fairly dismal results for Trump in recent months, at least the glass is half full. But the piece raises other unintentional questions:

This consistency is especially notable considering the intense opposition Trump has faced since returning to the White House. His first year has been characterized by ongoing controversy over immigration enforcement, public safety, and foreign policy, along with constant media scrutiny. Yet despite these challenges, his support has remained largely steady rather than declining.

But if pollsters focus on one such major issue, immigration enforcement, voters are in fact heavily aligned with Trump. On public safety, crime is down, with the unspoken explanation that criminals are leaving the country. Foreign policy appears to be going well, with Maduro out in Venezuela while the country is stable, and reallocation of Venezuelan oil is threatening Cuba and Iran. So the real question is why Trump's support is just "largely steady" instead of increasing. The piece more or less concludes,

Trump’s leadership style – straightforward, results-driven, and centered on national priorities – can garner support across different demographic groups when voters see concrete results on issues they care about most.

But again, why isn't this reflected in ongoing polling, and why have polls continued to be wildly inaccurate? Last November, I pointed out,

• The Real Clear Politics average for the New Jersey governor's race had Sherrill ahead by 2.7%, and many commentators had this within the margin of error. She won by 56.3% to Ciattarelli's 43.2%, a 13.1% margin.
• The RCP average for the Virginia governor's race had Spanberger ahead by 8.5%. She won by 57.2% to Earle Sears's 43.6%, a 13.5% margin.

I think, ruminating on the continuing revelations from Fulton County, that the answers suggest that either (a) the polls are rigged, or (b) the elections are rigged, or (c) both of the above. The piece at Rasmussen is in line with what Rasmussen wants us to believe, the polls can't tell us much, but they're all we have, so we should be optimistic about them. Really? More people need to start with the question of why, at minimum, the polls are rigged and come up with an answer of how.