I can’t say that any policy comes to mind at this point. In my country the norm has always been to claim for more government intervention and higher direct taxes, not less. If anything, I find government spending cuts are the ones that tend to be irrationally implemented and make a mess of perfectly serviceable services, and I always see those as a threat. The private sector is the one in charge of frivolities, luxuries and unnecessary stuff that people still want to spend money on, as long as it isn’t public dimes. [I’ve been downvoted over expressing this kind of opinion in the past; if you have different opinions that consider these to be blatantly stupid, I’ll still humbly request that you refrain from doing that. Please.].
It’s only something people discuss because, as far as I can tell from the superficial data I’ve collected so far, some intellectual hipster decided it would be amusing to pose a disturbing and unfalsifiable hypothesis, and see how people reacted to it and argued against it. As far as I’m concerned, until there’s any evidence at all that this reality is not the original, it simply doesn’t make sense to promote the hypothesis to our attention.
That counterfactual mugging would at least give me pause. Though I think my response would be more long the lines of attempting pre-emptive use of potentially lethal force than simply paying the bribe. That sort of dangerous, genocidal madman shouldn’t be allowed access to a computer.
I didn’t imply that there are only two ways this can go, but the hypothesis space and the state of current evidence is such that I can’t see any specific hypothesis being promoted to my attention, so I’m sticking with the default “this is the original reality” until evidence shows up to make me consider otherwise.
I can’t say that any policy comes to mind at this point. In my country the norm has always been to claim for more government intervention and higher direct taxes, not less. If anything, I find government spending cuts are the ones that tend to be irrationally implemented and make a mess of perfectly serviceable services, and I always see those as a threat. The private sector is the one in charge of frivolities, luxuries and unnecessary stuff that people still want to spend money on, as long as it isn’t public dimes. [I’ve been downvoted over expressing this kind of opinion in the past; if you have different opinions that consider these to be blatantly stupid, I’ll still humbly request that you refrain from doing that. Please.].
It’s only something people discuss because, as far as I can tell from the superficial data I’ve collected so far, some intellectual hipster decided it would be amusing to pose a disturbing and unfalsifiable hypothesis, and see how people reacted to it and argued against it. As far as I’m concerned, until there’s any evidence at all that this reality is not the original, it simply doesn’t make sense to promote the hypothesis to our attention.
That counterfactual mugging would at least give me pause. Though I think my response would be more long the lines of attempting pre-emptive use of potentially lethal force than simply paying the bribe. That sort of dangerous, genocidal madman shouldn’t be allowed access to a computer.
I didn’t imply that there are only two ways this can go, but the hypothesis space and the state of current evidence is such that I can’t see any specific hypothesis being promoted to my attention, so I’m sticking with the default “this is the original reality” until evidence shows up to make me consider otherwise.