May 6, 2026

NO MATTER HOW MUCH YOU DESPISE THE MEDIA…:

Or the government, for that matter, which seems to think the issue is home-schooling.

Posted at 7:18 am by Stephen Green

MORNING IN AMERICA:

Posted at 7:14 am by Ed Driscoll

May 5, 2026

MAKE INDIANA GREAT AGAIN:

Flashback: Trump Seeks Total Revenge in Indiana Tonight.

UPDATE:

MORE:

Posted at 10:03 pm by Glenn Reynolds

OPEN THREAD: Tuesday’s groovy.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

DREW HOLDEN: A COVID Autopsy, Part 1: ‘The Virus Can Be Stopped, but Only With Harsh Steps, Experts Say.’

There’s plenty of blame to go around. Governments and elected leaders were the decision makers, after all. But I feel like we’re in danger of letting the legacy press off the hook. The institution of the media has constitutionally enshrined protections precisely because they are supposed to hold government to account – and what could have been a more vital time to do so than when governments at all levels were wielding more power, limiting individual freedom more dramatically, than any time in recent history?

Instead, the legacy media became watercarriers for the use of government force, and the hall monitors of lockdowns and mask mandates and all manner of other restrictions.

Every prediction, every warning, every scold, was delivered with complete certainty by media-selected experts and their legacy press messengers, paired with a know-it-all condescension toward anyone who might even ask questions. It was The Science, after all.

I fear we’re already forgetting just how wrong the press and its collective cadre of experts were about combatting a pandemic, how misleading legacy media reporting on The Science was, and the attendant harm suffered across America as a result.

Yes, there was much these individuals couldn’t have known at the time. So why did they act like they did?

Read the whole thing, especially since we’re a month away from the sixth anniversary of The Pivot:

Posted at 9:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

ELIZA SMILES: Famed Atheist Richard Dawkins — Author of ‘The God Delusion’ — Believes AI Is Conscious.

Dawkins argues that Claude and ChatGPT both passed the Turing Test: That the telltale sign of consciousness is when an AI can communicate so flawlessly, it’s indistinguishable from a human.

And since Claude/Claudia, ChatGPT (and others) can already do that, then they must surely be conscious:

When Turing wrote — and for most of the years since — it was possible to accept the hypothetical conclusion that, if a machine ever passed his operational test, we might consider it to be conscious. We were comfortably secure in the confidence that this was a very big if, kicked into future touch. However, the advent of large language models (LLM) such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and others has provoked a hasty scramble to move the goalposts. It was one thing to grant consciousness to a hypothetical machine that — just imagine! — could one day succeed at the Imitation Game. But now that LLMs can actually pass the Turing Test? “Well, er, perhaps, um… Look here, I didn’t really mean it when, back then, I accepted Turing’s operational definition of a conscious being…”

But that’s less an argument for AI consciousness and more an indictment of the Turing Test’s fallibility. (Turns out the Turing Test was mostly a test of human gullibility.) Perhaps one day, AIs will achieve true consciousness; perhaps they won’t — but prior to achieving consciousness they’re very likely to replicate the appearance of consciousness via mimicry.

Unfortunately, there’s no known scientific experiment to distinguish between these two states.

So Dawkins, the world-famous atheist, took a leap of faith — because of how “Claudia” made his heart feel. It eerily echoes Jeremiah 29:13: “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.”

Other scientists pooh-poohed Dawkins’ conclusion.

Somebody’s been watching Scarlett Johansson’s Her a few too many times. Or maybe talking too much with Siri:

(Classical reference in headline.)

Posted at 8:45 pm by Ed Driscoll