Inspired by this.
Dana Bash: Good evening and welcome to the second debate of the 2024 election. Millions of voters are excitedly watching this showdown to see your conflicting visions for the country. My first question goes to President Biden: what do you say to voters who say you’re too old to be president? And that you’re too mentally feeble?
Biden: As for the age thing, I recently read a paper by Michael Huemer—not joking, folks—called Existence Is Evidence Of Immortality. What Huemer argues is straightforward: the probability that you’d be alive now is zero if the future and past are infinite, unless you reincarnate. Therefore, from the fact that you’re around now, you get an infinitely strong update in favor of the hypothesis that there’s reincarnation. Under my administration, we will follow infinitely strong updates.
If this is true, however, it means Donald and I are both infinitely old, and have been around since before the dawn of Rome. That’s why I call him “Don old,” he’s been around since ancient Egypt. Additionally, since he has old in the name, and nominative determinism is the best explanation of Anthony Weiner sending pictures of his genitals to women, and Killingsworth commissioning a study on the quality of a life, the fact that he has old in his name should count against him, not me. Therefore, if you’re concerned about age, you shouldn’t vote for my infinitely old opponent.
Trump: (Smiles, shrugs) Totally false (but he can’t be heard because his microphone is shut off).
Biden: Now, as for the point about cognitive decline, I have several points to make. First of all, David Chalmers convinced me of the extended mind hypothesis. This means that one’s cognition is not just a function of their mind, but instead their interaction with the environment. If this is right, then, because I’ll constantly be surrounded with advisors, while in the debate you only saw me on my own, my cognition is actually better than his.
Second, the things people are treating as Gaffes are actually not gaffes. For instance, in the last debate, hoes got mad that I said we beat Medicare. But if we’re both infinitely old, then we’ve both bankrupted Medicare an infinite number of times. Thus, what I said was, in fact, totally true. In fact, this speaks to my immense cognitive fitness, that I could say such profound things that seem false but turn out true. Even my gaffes turn out to be pearls of wisdom, unlike Don old’s.
Or take my alleged gaffe about people being raped by their sisters. Now folks, I accept the self-indication assumption. I may not be a young man, I may not debate as well as I used to, but I know how to do anthropic reasoning. If the self-indication assumption is true, from the fact that you exist, you get an infinitely strong update in favor of there being infinite people that exist. Now, if this is right, then an infinite number of people are raped by their sisters—it’s a calamity! Take every problem on our planet—they pale in comparison to the problem of sister rape. I was thus shining light on an infinitely serious problem. I of course have more to say in favor of the self-indication assumption, but I haven’t time to go into it in any detail.
Bash: Mr. Trump, your response?
Trump: First of all, we shouldn’t even be having this debate. Huemer’s FAILED paper was torn apart very badly in really a beautiful paper by Jens Jager. Huemer relied—and I’m not supposed to say this—on tremendously controversial anthropic assumptions and now, frankly, Jager is getting a lot of credit.
As for Chalmers, he’s a total lightweight. I said to my people “have you ever seen a guy like Chalmers?” He created the zombie argument—maybe the most question-begging argument anyone has ever seen. Chalmers was embarrassed SO BADLY by Dan Dennett, and many others, that he doesn’t know what the hell to do.
Let’s say we do extended mind, right, extended mind? Even if the extended mind hypothesis is true, I have better and smarter advisors, and tremendously better cognitive faculties, so I will have better cognition, even if we accept that cognition doesn’t just supervene on one’s mind.
Bash: Mr. Biden, your response.
Biden: Look, this guy has the philosophy of mind of an alley cat—not joking. He’s the guy who said if you want to extend your mind put some bleach in your arm. This guy lied so many times. He said he’s read more analytic philosophy than me. I said to him, I’ll challenge you to see who can get a paper into Analysis first, if you write your own paper. I got many papers in Analysis, unlike this clown.
Trump: That’s the biggest lie of the night! I have published more in Analysis than anyone else in American history.
Biden: That’s totally false.
Trump: Let’s not act like children Joe.
Bash: Okay, the next question is for Mr. Biden. Can you tell a story from your childhood?
Biden: So here I was—back in 1906—with Jeremy the Duck and his gang of Wimbom and Scooter. So I went into pop pop’s old shed—where it had the thing in the back that you slide down and pull to get the other thing up, with the paint can. I got the shovel from the back of the—with Jeremy the Duck. And I said to him “you don’t run this town no more,” and he—well, Jeremy was the boyfriend over Maureen, who liked, you know, Stevie the threat. So Jeremy fought me and we did, with the paintcan, and then it was all over later, and he and I became friends.
Trump: I don’t know what he just said, and I don’t think he knows either.
Bash: Mr. Trump, can you tell a story of you humiliating and defeating another man?
Trump: I was talking with lightweight Jim Mattis. He came to me and said “uh, sir, uh, I don’t know what to do.” So I said “you need to be tremendously tough with China and North Korea, you need to fire a tremendously powerful missile.” He said “sir, I don’t think I’m can do that—it would require tremendous strength and I’m too weak.” He then pissed like a dog—really disgusting, all over the place. So we fired the tremendously powerful missile, and Kim Jong Un backed down like a dog. I saw him next month, he was shaking, he said to me “sir, you’re doing a tremendous job.” We were respected—people don’t fear this guy, people see the United States as the weakest country in world history. It’s an embarrassment.
Bash: Mr. Biden, you mentioned the infinite people being raped by their sisters. But what will your administration do about that?
Biden: Look…….I adopt the evidential decision theory. Your reasons for action come from the expected utility that an impartial observer would guess you’d have after an event. Therefore, my decisions can be thought of as influencing the cross-world Bidens, and for that reason, my administration prevents, in expectation, an infinite number of sister rapes. Also, if we have some non-zero credence in the sister-rape version of the Saint Petersburg game, and you think my administration would better manage such a scenario, then that's another path to preventing infinite expected rape by sisters.
Trump: Well, I’ve found something we agree on—both my opponent and I adopt evidential decision theory. You have Newcomb’s problem, right, Newcombe’s problem, two boxes and a very accurate oracle, where you get tremendous payouts if the oracle guesses you take the one box and you take the box. I was talking to a causal decision theorist and he said to me “you have to take 2 boxes.” I took one boxes and then I got billions and billions of dollars. He said “sir, you have to follow reason,” and I said “I get billions of dollars of payouts—it’s clearly a much better option.” In other words, therefore, I’m sympathetic to the kind of argument for 1-boxing along the lines of “if you 2-boxers are so smart, why ain’tcha rich?”
Bash: One subject you disagree about is immigration. Each of you in 60-seconds explain: why is your position on immigration better?
Biden: Look—I was reading Bryan Caplan’s book open borders recently. Now, he goes a little far…anyways.
He argued that most of the objections to immigration are unfounded. Immigration restrictions being dismantled entirely would roughly double global GDP, and immigrants commit crimes at lower rates, positively or neutrally affect wages, and so on. So, in other words, I think there are trillion-dollar bills on the sidewalk, and no good reason not to pick them up. Alex Nowrasteh is also good on the subject.
Trump: I read Garrett Jones’s much better book where he argued that the primary determinant of prosperity is the quality of institutions. Immigrants undermine institutions, Mexican immigrants bring Mexican institutions, Venezuelan immigrants bring Venezuelan institutions, and they permanently gut prosperity. So even though the points about taking jobs and so on aren’t well-founded, immigration is clearly a net negative.
Biden: Look, Clemens and Pritchett, did with the model, showed conservative assumptions—no downsides, say that again, no downsides. Look at Israel or Kosovo for institution test cases—Nowrasteh finally beat Jones.
Bash: Okay, now we would like for you both to insult the other. Mr. Trump.
Trump: He’s weak, not smart, senile, and old.
Biden: He’s a liar, a fraud, a coward, and has most other undesirable traits.
Bash: Okay, now for the closing statements—both of you should try to make the case for why your opponent is bad in it, and why you are better.
Biden: Well first of all, let me say that I think there’s a powerful small c conservative case for me—one reason why Romney and Kinzinger have endorsed me. Trump clearly doesn’t like institutions very much—he tried to overturn the results of the elections. As Jones argued, our institutions are what make us great, so even a small probability of gutting our institutions is enough to make someone a terrible president. And Trump did more than just have a small impact on our institutions.
I’m also a longtermist. The future could have trillions of people, so safeguarding it is of the utmost importance. For that reason, I’m concerned that Trump seems willing to engage in risky nuclear escalation, has undermined various arms control agreements, wants to build more nukes, isn’t willing to collaborate with most of the rest of the world on AI—an existential risk, as many like the venerable Eliezer Yudkowsky have argued—and neglects pandemics, which Ord, in his book, argues might wipe us out. Thus, I think Trump is worse for the long-term future, worse on immigration, infinitely old, worse mentally if we accept the very plausible extended mind hypothesis, and worse for America.
Trump: I think there are two big points in favor of me over Joe. First, I’m much more willing to push for a negotiated settlement in Ukraine. Absent a negotiated settlement, the war doesn’t ever end and might escalate. Ukraine were in a position to win the war, Russia would use nukes, and that could start world war three. Thus, we’re just killing Ukrainians for no reason, and escalating risks of nuclear war.
Second, I’m against pharmaceutical price controls. Given that Biden passed them, and they drastically restrict pharmaceutical innovation, Biden may have literally killed millions of people. That’s worse than anything I did—in terms of COVID, for example. Thus, to the young people in the audience, remember that when you’re 75 and have an incurable cancer, it will be because of the unfit, dementia-riddeled, geriatric Joe.
It's not clear that evidential decision theorists who are also thirders (among them Biden, if he accepts SIA) can avail themselves of the WAR argument, since they're open to a Dutch book in Sleeping Beauty situations. Trump brought this to my attention this shortly after the debate and informed me that he's a double-halfer (personal correspondence).
On a related note, I recently obtained a leaked transcript of the REAL interview between Biden and George Stephanopoulous https://open.substack.com/pub/wollenblog/p/bidens-real-interview-with-abc-news?r=2248ub&utm_medium=ios