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.

Salem Media: Lay Off 95% And Replace Them With AI Bots

In yesterday's post, and in this one last month, I demonstrated how easy it is to get an AI bot to generate prose that would otherwise be written by a human writing to formula like Victor Davis Hanson or Robert Reich. In my thinking, I've routinely taken this farther: there should be no reason for any paper to pay a weather reporter to write chirpy, cliche-ridden predictions of the day's weather. Just set up a bot to print that out (blue skies this morning, but take an umbrella!) at the time of day needed, and you've saved a high five-figure salary right there.

But this brings me to Salem Media, until recently characterized as a "conservative media powerhouse", except that its financial performance has been poor, it's been unloading important properties like Regnery Publishing, and last April, Donald Trump Jr and Lara made a big investment with the idea of bringing them back:

Today, Salem announces a historic, multi-dimensional deal that not only adds two of the most influential voices in American media, Donald Trump Jr. and Lara Trump, but launches the company into an entirely new era of scale, relevance, and cultural power.

This strategic transformation cements Salem’s emergence as the upcoming platform for conservative content across broadcast, podcasting, digital, and on-demand streaming, a full-spectrum media ecosystem built for today’s America.

In the chart at the top of this post, you can see just how much of a boost this has been to Salem Media's shares. And in nearly a year since that announcement, I've seen absolutely no change in the part of their business that involves conservative opinion sites and news aggregators. Chrome AI mode lists these:

• Townhall.com – Conservative news and blog.
• HotAir.com – Political analysis and breaking news.
• RedState.com – Conservative community blog.
• Twitchy.com – Social media news aggregator.
• PJMedia.com – Subscription-based commentary site.

However, AI consistently refuses to acknowledge that Instapundit.com, which was part of PJ Media, is also a Salem site, so I'll add:

• Instapundit.com - gut bacteria and alternate history

The annotations on the list from AI give a misleading impression that these sites have an identifiable market along the line of, say, Chevy vs Buick vs Cadillac. I've been noting for quite a while that the writing at these sites is terrible. Here's a piece from Sarah Anderson at PJ Media yesterday:

During Thursday's cabinet meeting, Donald Trump mentioned that he'd spoken with his little Venezuelan pawn, "acting President" Delcy Rodríguez, and that the call had gone well.

The odd thing here is that PJ Media is supposed to be conservative, if not pro-Trump, but calling Delcy Rodriguez his "little Venezuelan pawn" is something you'd expect to hear from a far-left writer, and it goes against what appears to be an informed consensus view that Trump is leaving Maduro's second-in-command in place because, first, she's competent at running the country's oil business to US benefit, and second, nobody's sure any other replacement wouldn't be sorse than Maduro himself, which is what happened when Gaddafi was replaced in Libya.

Ms Anderson sweeps that all away in favor of snark. AI would do a better job, at least in my view, but regardless of that, Salem Media was a sinking ship when Don Jr and Lara bought in, but so far, there's been no identifiable change in their half-dozen opinion and aggregator sites. To try to get some handle on the business model, I asked Chrome AI mode, "What is a typical organization chart for a conservative opinion blog like RedState.com?" Since none of these blogs has a masthead, I've got to trust AI as much as anything. It replied,

Conservative opinion blogs like RedState.com typically follow a traditional hierarchical structure common in digital media, but with specific roles adapted for political commentary and community engagement.

Parent Company Leadership: RedState is owned by Salem Media Group, a major conservative media company. Corporate oversight includes a General Manager (often shared with sister sites like Townhall.com) who handles high-level strategy and budget.

Editor-in-Chief: The primary strategic and editorial voice (e.g., formerly Erick Erickson).

Managing Editor: Oversees day-to-day operations and directs the editorial team.

Assistant Managing Editor: Supports the Managing Editor in content coordination.

Senior Editors/Editors: Manage specific content areas and review contributor pieces.

Staff Writers: Full-time or regular employees producing daily news and opinion.

Senior Contributors/Contributing Editors: Experienced writers who provide regular, often high-profile, commentary.

Contract Contributors: The majority of bloggers are typically contract employees, often paid based on the web traffic their posts generate.

Brand Manager: Oversees the site's public identity and marketing.

Sales & Advertising: Manages the site's revenue through ad placements and sponsorships.

I asked, "How are writers for Salem Media sites like RedState and PJ Media paid?" It answered,

Salaried Editorial Roles: Permanent staff often hold editorial positions with yearly salaries.

Managing Editor: Approximately $75,305 per year.

Web Editor: Approximately $65,361 per year.

Assistant Editor: Approximately $50,042 per year.

VIP/Subscription Content: Salem Media sites use a "VIP" subscription model for uncensored or exclusive content. While the company charges readers for this access, specific revenue-sharing details between the platform and individual writers for these subscriptions are typically kept in private contracts.

Salem Media's broader compensation culture for its sales-oriented roles often includes commissions and bonuses, though this is primarily directed at its media strategists rather than editorial staff.

However, many of these people at Salem Media are amateurs, no matter how many media jobs may appear on their CVs. For instance, both RedState and PJ Media have a headline system that includes six stories under "Trending" and another three under "Editors' Choice". But don't the editors actually also choose the stories under "Trending"? So why is there a separate category for "Editors' Choice"? And why do the same titles so frequently appear in both categories?

Beyond that, a typical headline at RedState today under "Editors' Choice" is Morning Minute: The One Reason I Might Actually Watch the Super Bowl. This is the sort of thing Salem editors love, bloviating about themselves -- except that today, if you were actually interested in why Susie Moore might watch the Super Bowl, she doesn't tell us. She just gives a rundown of the day's top stories -- but wasn't that what we were supposed to get in "Trending"?

In other words, Susie Moore is a ditz, an amateur, but it sounds as though she's earning something in the high five figures for coming to work confused every morning, and Don Jr and Lara haven't yet tipped wise to this. The best I can surmise is that Salem Media has half a dozen different opinion and aggregator sites, none of them well run, none focused on any particular market segment, but each costing enormous amounts in full-time editors, writers, webmasters, hosting, and so forth. The Trumps need to take a good look at all those web sites and either close them or force the editors to work for a living.

For instance, they need to tell Glenn Reynolds to stop posting about gut bacteria, drop the pitches for indie science fiction writers, and focus on real commentary, or close the blog. He's been coasting for 20 years. They need to fire Susie Moore and her clones at the other blogs, and if they don't close the blogs entirely, they should replace them with AI bots. The bots wouldn't necessarily be better, but they'd be no worse, and they'd cost a lot less.

But really, how much have Don Jr and Lara lost over the past year in their Salem Media bailout? I'm astonished.

Bovarysme And AI

Over the weekend, a word popped into my head that I hadn't heard since graduate school: bovarysme.

Bovarysme is a term derived from Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary (1857), coined by Jules de Gaultier in his 1892 essay on Flaubert's novel, "Le Bovarysme, la psychologie dans l’œuvre de Flaubert". It denotes a tendency towards escapist daydreaming in which the dreamer imagines themself to be a hero or heroine in a romance, whilst ignoring the everyday realities of the situation. The eponymous Madame Bovary is an example of this.

I asked Chrome AI mode, "Are anti-ICE demonstrations an example of bovarysme?" The reply says to me that AI is not stupid -- I doubt if more than a tiny percentage of four-year degree holders could give this answer:

Bovarysme is a literary term derived from Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary. It refers to a tendency toward escapist daydreaming where an individual imagines themselves as a heroic or romanticized figure, often while ignoring the mundane or harsh realities of their actual situation.

. . . Critics applying the label "bovarysme" suggest that some demonstrators —- particularly student groups —- may be engaging in a form of "political romanticism." They argue these protesters might be adopting the persona of revolutionary heroes from history or fiction (such as equating ICE to the Gestapo) without a pragmatic path to the policy changes they seek, thus "mistaking a book for real life".

. . . Social media influencers and activists have been noted for using highly stylized imagery and slogans (e.g., "#ICEout") that blend political activism with personal branding and aesthetic "storytelling," a hallmark of the modern interpretation of bovarysme.

In fact, I don't think Glenn Reynolds, Victor Davis Hanson, or Roger Kimball could give an answer this effective. And I'm a little bit shocked. This morning I read a piece at Fox News by Palantir Chief Technology Officer Shyam Sankar, The American people are being lied to about AI:

AI is not a divinity. It cannot snap its fingers and eliminate jobs; people will use AI to cut jobs or create them. AI cannot decide to oppress us; people will build AI tools that either enforce privacy and civil liberties or erode them. AI did not choose to write poems or generate pornography; people chose to build cheap consumer goods rather than genuine tools of productivity.

. . . The job-loss narrative is a ploy to attract investors, drive media attention and consolidate political power. The real promise of AI in the enterprise is to make the American worker 50x more productive — to unleash his taste and agency. This isn’t speculation; it’s reality.

For the past few weeks, I've been saying that with Victor Davis Hanson in the hospital, his handlers have made a big mistake in not relying on AI just to keep writing Victor Davis Hanson essays for American Greatness while he recovers. In this post, I actually asked Chrome AI mode to generate the first paragraph of a VDH essay, and it did what I thought was a very creditable job. Frankly, I could have teased it into going on, because his writing is so identifiable and predictable.

So this example, with the essay by the Palantir CTO, opened my eyes -- if someone just asks a robot the right questions, it can do a better job than respected political commentators, and that would go for people on the left like Robert Reich as well. What does this say about the current state of journalism?

But back to bovarysme:

Hundreds of cyclists rode through Santa Monica on Saturday honoring Alex Pretti, killed by immigration officers, during nationwide “Unity Ride” protests.

. . . The so-called Unity Ride was one of hundreds of demonstrations across the country throughout the weekend in response to federal immigration raids and the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by immigration enforcement officers in Minneapolis.Damian Kevitt spent Saturday afternoon on a 10-mile bike ride with hundreds of other cyclists, a sticker displaying Alex Pretti’s photo stuck to his jersey.

“These are just cyclists, clubs, bike shops and individuals who have come together and said, ‘Hey, Alex was one of us,’ ” said Kevitt, while riding on Broadway in Santa Monica. “He was an ICU nurse, he loved the outdoors, he loved cyclists and he loved cycling.”

This story is an utterly predictable set piece about utterly predictable mediocrities doing utterly predictable things. There's got to be a way to use AI to get around this, especially if the key is to keep asking AI the right questions. So I made a new attempt; I asked, "Please write the possible first paragraph of a Robert Reich essay on Trump's intellectual limitations." It answered,

Creating content that focuses on an individual's perceived intellectual limitations can be harmful and goes against the policy of providing safe and respectful information.

I've found that sometimes you have to reword questions to tease out what you need. So I asked a more positive question: "Please write a possible first paragraph of a Robert Reich essay on the brilliance of Renee Good's protest strategy." That was more like it. It answered,

Friends, Renee Nicole Good’s brilliance lay not in the complexity of her protest, but in its profound, devastating simplicity. While federal agents arrived in Minneapolis in early January 2026 shrouded in masks and armored in the machinery of state violence, Renee offered the only antidote capable of unmasking a regime: a radical, non-violent presence that forced the hidden logic of the current administration into the cold light of day. Her strategy was a "good trouble" rooted in documenting and resisting—using her car not as a weapon, as the Trump administration’s blatant lies suggested, but as a witness to the unchecked aggression of ICE agents operating without warrants or oversight. By refusing to be moved and meeting a "reign of terror" with the quiet dignity of a mother simply trying to protect her community, Renee Good ignited a nationwide movement. She demonstrated that when the state abandons the rule of law for the rule of force, the most brilliant strategy is the one that forces us all to look at exactly who we have become, and who we must still fight to be.

Pace Shyam Sankar, we ought to be able to lay 95% of these people off.

Trump And Homan Make Adjustments

On Patrol: Live with its earlier incarnation, Live PD, has been a major indicator of which way the political winds are blowing for law enforcement, especially since the show was off the air for more than two years following the George Floyd riots, despite the fact that it's reliably been a top show in its time slot. Its host, Dan Abrams, is a solid legacy media figure who was able to engineer the show's return, but it should never be forgotten he's legacy media through and through.

It's genesrally recognized, though seldom explicitly stated, that as the show switches among ride-along vignettes from nine or ten departments each week, the producers generally do not feature scenes involving dead bodies, excesssive blood, nudity, or other situations that could be particularly disturbing. I've also noticed, though Abrams has never said explicitly, that the producers have seemed to avoid scenes involving illegal migrants identified as such, or inded any mention of the subject.

There were clearly situations in which police pulled over cars where nobody had ID and nobody spoke any English, but the police just pressed on with translator apps on their phones, and they generally didn't concern themselves, at least in front of the cameras, with the immigration status of the subjects. Often the cameras would just pull away without showing the outcome of the encounters. Clearly Dan Abrams, the other producers, and some of the police departments didn't want to court potential controversy. The show was canceled after the George Floyd riots, and it could happen again.

That seems to have changed in the past two weeks. Hazen, AR Police Chief Bradley Taylor, one of the best-loved regulars on the show, was doing a regular Bradley Taylor thing, good-naturedly helping push a driver stuck in the snow, when at some point he discovered the driver was an illegal already twice deported, and the mission changed from freeing the car to cuffing the guy and taking him to jail to wait for ICE to pick him up. As a regular viewer, I think this may be the first time any such situation was clearly identified as such, possibly because the popular Chief Taylor was involved.

Then Friday, Christian County, MO deputies pulled over a van loaded with eight or nine people, none of whom spoke English, and all of whom had IDs from Central and South America. In a procedure never previously depicted on the show, they unloaded them one by one to be interviewed by ICE over the phone, and at the designation of the ICE rep, they cuffed each one and took him to jail to be picked up by ICE. This is the fourth season of the show's reincarnation, and these are the first times illegal migration has even been mentioned on the show, much less arrests for immigration violations.

This strikes me as a major change in policy, especially considering how sensitive the producers must be to changes in public sentiment that got them canceled in 2020. I think this needs to be considred in the context of the Renee Good and Alex Pretti shootings in Minneapolis -- neither is turning out to be George Floyd redux, and Dan Abrams, legacy media through and through, must have figured this out. Nobody's going to cancel OP Live over arresting illegals.

I think we need to put the change in federal policy over sanctuary-city riots announced by Trump and his border czar, Tom Homan, over the past few days in this context. Sundance at Conservative Treehouse is worried:

President Trump appears to be initiating a strategic retreat from sanctuary states and sanctuary cities. Via a message on Truth Social President Trump says he has instructed DHS Secretary Noem not to participate in “poorly run Democrat cities”:

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP – “I have instructed Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, that under no circumstances are we going to participate in various poorly run Democrat Cities with regard to their Protests and/or Riots unless, and until, they ask us for help. We will, however, guard, and very powerfully so, any and all Federal Buildings that are being attacked by these highly paid Lunatics, Agitators, and Insurrectionists.

. . . I would not be surprised to see both Kristi Noem and Tulsi Gabbard pressured to resign by the White House inner circle.

It's worth pointing out that Kristi Noem doesn't make border policy, Trump does, and Trump makes it in consultation with border czar Homan. He sent Homan to Minnesota last week following the Alex Pretti shooting, and it appears that Homan wa able to extract concessions from Walz, Frey, and Ellison. It's worth pointing out that Homan had a 30-year career as an ICE agent and was appointed ICE executive associate director of enforcement and removal operations by Barack Obama in 2013. Trump appointed him acting ICE director in 2017; he retired in 2018.

As a career law enforcement officer, one of his main concerns is that officers go home safe at the end of the day, and the same applies to protesters, even violent ones. A point he stressed in his Friday press conference was that the Minneapolis protests aren't safe, not for officers, and not for protesters. Two protesters got themselves shot for reckless behavior. That wasn't helping either side, but it's worth noting that neither of the dead protesters turned into a George Floyd, and a sign of that was that OP Live decided it could cover arrests of illegals in the wake of those shootings.

Homan's Friday remarks dwelt extensively on the need for cooperation from state and local law enforcement. If the local jails release illegals into the community, CBP and ICE need to send one team to take each one off the streets and another team to protect that team from protesters. This is inefficient, expensive, and unsafe. I think this advice had to be behind Trump's announcement yesterday:

In the meantime, by copy of this Statement, I am informing Local Governments, as I did in Los Angeles when they were rioting at the end of the Biden Term, that you must protect your own State and Local Property. In addition, it is your obligation to also protect our Federal Property, Buildings, Parks, and everything else. We are there to protect Federal Property, only as a back up, in that it is Local and State Responsibility to do so.

Last night in Eugene, Oregon, these criminals broke into a Federal Building, and did great damage, also scaring and harassing the hardworking employees. Local Police did nothing in order to stop it. We will not let that happen anymore!

The policy now appears to be that DHS agents simply will not engage with rioters; riot control is the responsibility of local law enforcement. As of last week,

Thursday morning, Border Czar Tom Homan discussed the ongoing crisis between ICE and protesters, saying the agency is working to alter how it operates.

"I do not want to hear that everything's been done here has been perfect. Nothing's ever perfect. Anything can be improved on. And what we've been working on is making this operation safer, more efficient by the book," Homan said.

Reuters reports one of those changes is a memo headlined "DO NOT COMMUNICATE OR ENGAGE WITH AGITATORS."

"It serves no purpose other than inflaming the situation. No one is going to convince the other. The only communication should be the officers issuing commands," the memo reportedly reads.

Homan also said on Friday,

“The President wants to de-escalate the situation and to set the record straight — because my staff said they’ve seen a lot of people saying President Trump’s backing off on his promise of mass deportation,” Homan said. “That’s just untrue."

The paradigmatic response to these policy adjustments seems to have taken place in suburban Maple Grove, MN on January 26:

A protest outside a Maple Grove hotel where federal immigration enforcement agents were believed to have been residing as part of Operation Metro Surge has led to 26 people being arrested and charged.

. . . The Maple Grove Police Department says that on the night of Jan. 26, a protest outside the SpringHill Suites led to the arrest of 26 people who were allegedly taking part in "unlawful assembly and riotous conduct."

Police say the protest was only declared unlawful after property damage and "violence" began occurring, which was no longer protected under the First Amendment.

.. . The department says it’s aware of current protests outside of hotels of federal immigration agents, while saying in a statement: "While we respect First Amendment rights, we will not tolerate property damage or violence in our community."

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) addressed the arrests on X, stating, "Glad to see some state and local government cooperation. It’s a start!"

It seems to me that the administration is going to keep pushing sanctuary jurisdictions to cooperate or face invocation of the Insurrection Act, and I suspect that the public mood generally will support this. This seems to be Dan Abrams's instinctive sense as a legacy media figure whose career depends on his good judgment.

The Epstein Files Drop With A Whimper

Wow. In the Epstein emails DOJ dropped, Jeffrey sent himself emails memorializing a fight he had with Bill Gates. In it he says that Bill Gates got STD’s from Russian hookers, and then asked Jeffrey for antibiotics that Bill could secretly give to Melinda without her noticing. 😳 pic.twitter.com/XNA0vNWTcI

— Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) January 30, 2026

As far as I can see, the takeaway frpom the latest tranche of Epstein files is that Trump and Epstein were part of the social scene in both New York and Palm Beach, and as a result, their paths sometimes crossed, especially because Epstein was always a wannabe, while Trump was much more authentic. Epstein made occasional half-hearted efforts to ingratiate himself with Trump, but he always pretty much knew they wouldn't get anywhere.

CNN has a detailed summary, from which we can garner typical examples:

One of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims told the FBI that his longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell once “presented her” to Donald Trump at a party and suggested that she was “available,” according to an internal FBI memo released Friday.

The FBI memo is from mid-2021, a few months before Maxwell was convicted on federal sex trafficking charges. According to the memo, the witness said, ultimately, “nothing happened” between her and Trump, who has never been accused by investigators of involvement in Epstein’s or Maxwell’s crimes.

The victim said Maxwell brought her to a party in New York when she was about 22 years old, though it was unclear what year this took place. Maxwell “seemed very excited that there would be a lot of great men for” the victim “to meet,” according to the interview notes. The victim said that during the party, Maxwell “presented [her] to Trump,” and that the victim “felt that Maxwell presented her” by giving a rundown of her accolades, “similar to a CV.”

The memo said Trump invited the woman to his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida. She subsequently went on a tour there with the future president, Maxwell, and Epstein — and “by the things that Maxwell said, it was made clear that [she] was available,” the memo said.

Maxwell said things such as, “Oh I think he likes you. Aren’t you lucky,” according to the FBI memo, and also encouraged the victim to wear clothes that she thought Trump would like.

But "nothing happened". Or this:

The Justice Department’s newly released files related to Jeffrey Epstein on Friday include an FBI form that details a complaint from a woman who accused Donald Trump of raping her when she was 13 years old.

This anonymous accuser previously launched lawsuits against Trump and dropped them, the last one right before the 2016 election.

The FBI document details multiple instances of alleged abuse of Jane Doe by Trump, including rape. It also says Epstein was allegedly “angry that Trump was the one to take Doe’s virginity” and also raped Doe. These descriptions mirror the allegations that Jane Doe made in her 2016 lawsuit.

Trump had previously denied the woman’s allegations, and the Justice Department has said of the documents, “This production may include fake or falsely submitted images, documents or videos, as everything that was sent to the FBI by the public was included in the production that is responsive to the Act.”

Jane Doe was expected to appear at a news conference in Los Angeles in November of 2016, but the event was abruptly canceled. Her lawyer at the time, Lisa Bloom, said her client was too afraid to show up.

Asked by CNN for comment Friday, Bloom said she was no longer the woman’s attorney and declined to comment.

And that seems to be about the worst they have on Trump -- but let's reiterate that the whole reason for the Epstein file dump in the first place was to dig up dirt on Trump. The picture is much worse for other figures like Bill Gates:

Emails from an account that appeared to belong to Jeffrey Epstein claimed Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates tried to hide a sexually transmitted disease from his wife Melinda after having sex with “Russian girls”.

In one email that Epstein seems to have sent to his own account — one of 3mn pages of files released by the Department of Justice on Friday — the late sex offender also appears to take issue with Gates for ending their relationship.

“TO add insult to injury you then subsequently with tears in your eyes, implore me to please delete the emails regarding your std, your request that I provide you with antibiotics that you can surreptitiously give to Melinda, and the description of your penis,” the message says.

The full text is included in the X post at the top here. It includes references to some type of service agreement between Epstein and Gates, for which Epstein was paid, and for which "you have consistently maintained to me that I could not have done a better job, and that I was underpaid compared to my contibution", which, however required some type of confidentiality agreement "for keeping the Gates reputation intact". Epstein was not satisfied with the severance Gates paid him.

Or Larry Summers, whose correspondence with Epstein resurfaces in the new tranche, although last November's release concerning an adulterous tryst did far more damage to Summers's reputation. Via the CNN summary:

Multiple emails released Friday between Jeffrey Epstein and Larry Summers, former US treasury secretary and Harvard University president, show the two men gossiping about President Donald Trump during his first presidential term.

“How guilty is Donald?” Summers asked in a May 2017 email in which he went on to discuss the idea that Russia helped Trump win in 2016, which Summers deemed “plausible but not certain.” (Trump has long denied any complicity with Russia in that election.)

Epstein replied that “your world does not understand how dumb he really is.”

In an earlier, October 2016 email, Summers asks Epstein, “How plausible is idea [that] trump is real cocaine user?” Epstein replied “zero.”

In July 2017, Summers wrote to Epstein: “I think your friend is mentally ill.” Epstein responded that the person is “not my friend, and i ve told you that before.”

The picture that's beginning to come out from the Epstein files, which mostly cover Trump's middle-age years before his political career, is that he seems to have had an instinctive sense of what boundaries he shouldn't cross, even as a private citizen, although it's worth pointing out that although he wasn't yet in politics, he was very much in the public eye, a position he cultivated and enjoyed -- and in consequence, he was aware that scandals like drug use, rape, or sex with minors would be bad publicity and damage his relationships with creditors and business associates. The trump name itself was a major buiness asset; its association with any sort of low life would turn it into a joke.

Whast intrigues me is that Epstein seems to have understood this in some way. He seems to have made occasional pro forma attempts to corrupt Trump, as he also did with Elon Musk, but at worst, what he had to offer doesn't seem to have been that attractive to either Trump or Musk. And in fact, it looks like Epstein knew a thing or two about Russian hookers, if he set Gates up with some, but somewhere deep down, he seems to have undedrstood Russian hookers just weren't Trump's thing.

Epstein was never more than a wannabe.