Sunday Smiles

David Strom 2:00 PM | July 19, 2026
meme

If you ever wondered whether we lived in a simulation—I admit that I haven't myself, but apparently some of the smartest people in the world insist that we must—another bit of evidence has been revealed that backs up the theory. 

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First, an explanation of the concept: Nick Bostrom and others posit that it is almost a mathematical certainty that both we and the universe are actually simulations inside a highly sophisticated computer model, sort of like the Matrix, although without all that backstory. 

His argument is simple enough: once a civilization becomes sophisticated enough to build sophisticated computer models that can create model environments, the number of conscious beings in the simulation will vastly outweigh the number that actually exist outside of it. 

Pick any random conscious being, and the likelihood that it is "real" is much smaller than the likelihood it is not. 

Since the number of conscious beings in the "real" universe is vastly outnumbered by those who are simulated in a fashion to believe they are real, chances are we are among the simulated. 

Many works of science fiction as well as some forecasts by serious technologists and futurologists predict that enormous amounts of computing power will be available in the future. Let us suppose for a moment that these predictions are correct. One thing that later generations might do with their super-powerful computers is run detailed simulations of their forebears or of people like their forebears. Because their computers would be so powerful, they could run a great many such simulations. Suppose that these simulated people are conscious (as they would be if the simulations were sufficiently fine-grained and if a certain quite widely accepted position in the philosophy of mind is correct). Then it could be the case that the vast majority of minds like ours do not belong to the original race but rather to people simulated by the advanced descendants of an original race. It is then possible to argue that, if this were the case, we would be rational to think that we are likely among the simulated minds rather than among the original biological ones. Therefore, if we don’t think that we are currently living in a computer simulation, we are not entitled to believe that we will have descendants who will run lots of such simulations of their forebears. That is the basic idea. 

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Elon Musk regularly refers to "the simulation," seriously or not, as did Scott Adams. 

One of Elon's maxims is that the most predictable outcome in any situation is the most interesting and, in many cases, amusing.

Well, here is evidence that Elon has a point. It turns out that access to Olive Garden's Never Ending Pasta is more secure than voting is. 

This came up as Olive Garden announced a sale on the pass. As lots of questions popped up, the issue of who could use it at any time did. 

Hilarity ensued. As you would expect, tons of people latched onto this and threw out all the comments you would expect about the comparison to voting, whether this was a version of Jim Crow, and all the other bogus arguments leveled against Voter ID. 

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Would the Democrats demand federal investigations into Olive Garden's anti-minority discrimination practices? Would BLM start protesting Olive Garden? Would AOC call for a boycott? Would Chuck Schumer get up on the floor of the Senate to denounce Never Ending Pasta policies?

Uh, probably not. Nobody believes that demanding that the people using the pass have paid for it is racist or discriminatory. 

It's common sense, just as voter ID is, of course. 

The controversy, though, is ironically entertaining. 













































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