The Age of Simulation

[CluedIn]

Saw this story about the Coast Guard in Miami holding an Active Shooter Response training exercise today. I see them throwing out a new term - Simunitions (false amunition). I guess the word "blanks" is now out.

[Anders]

The video of Snowden does that same fade-out as the Potok interviews. Also, there's something wrong with his eyeglasses, his right side. At some points, the eyeglass stem looks like it's digging into the side of his face, next to his eye. You can see it in the image right at the video as it's posted here.

Could Snowden be a computer simulation? In this video (the same as Ataraxia posted earlier) the person who walks through the door doesn't even look like Snowden (from about 15:50):


full link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEVlyP4_11M

And even in this poor quality YouTube video the interviewer, John Oliver is sitting in what looks like a green screen background. Edward Snowden, during the interview, seems to be inserted with an even lower quality video. Looks suspicious to me.

Would someone like Snowden sacrifice his prestigious contract job within the intelligence community to do what seems to be a limited hangout? Would he leave his career, family and friends, leave the U.S., risk getting convicted as a traitor of his country? I doubt it.

Instead of dealing with the messy problem of having a real person doing a limited hangout, the U.S. intelligence would benefit a lot if they instead could use a simulated character. There is a great strength in doing things legally, even for intelligence agencies. Otherwise they become vulnerable and sooner or later have to face criminal charges. Therefore, if Snowden is a computer simulation, my guess is that doing something like that in the name of national security is legal in the U.S.

[hoi.polloi]

Good points.

He also looks to have the classic CGI issue where blurring doesn't occur in a natural way because each frame has been painstakingly rendered, causing that goofy "sports mode" animation effect. Especially notable when Snowden makes large gestures. The interlacing looks slightly different on Snowden, and so do the qualities of reflections in the two figures' glasses.

You can also see the odd behavior of "compression" seeming to make Snowden's mole jump around, which seems to have been an issue with previous "builds" of their 3D software and/or how that software's output was brought into interviews with other CGI fakes like Dylan Avery and creator of alleged Zeitgeist Peter Joseph. Also, like them, you can sometimes see a weird face effect when you watch just the eyebrows and their connection to the stiffer brow and hair area just above.

Things have gotten better for this recent interview, but it's still unreal and appears highly edited. Looks like it would have to be a special effects shot near the end with the high five. Not very special if it were simply a body double with CGI face pasted on.

What's more, what exactly does "legal" mean anyway to those that design the laws? It's not an egalitarian model [edit: propped up by the Masonic Zionist Anglo-American admirals or whomever], so this foreign talking head that hosts a popular "American" talk show could literally work for any interest at all. And would he care where his checks come from, or expose the system of his own platform?

[Anders]

Good points. What's more, what exactly does "legal" mean anyway to those that design the laws? It's not an egalitarian model, so this foreign talking head that hosts a popular "American" talk show could literally work for any interest at all. And would he care where his checks come from, or expose the system of his own platform?

It seems that U.S. authorities have the right to lie to the public:

"There is perhaps no more controversial issue in assessing the limits of political and administrative discretion than the question of whether it is ever ethical for a public official to lie in the public interest. While citizens commonly think of politicians as by nature challenged by truth telling, very few would want to concede that officials have on occasion the right to deceive." -- https://www.mtholyoke.edu/sites/default ... fLying.pdf

And making Edward Snowden a simulated character could be something legal. And then no matter how many accusations of a conspiracy coming their way, they will have a firm legal ground to stand on. Untouchable, basically.

[hoi.polloi]

I wouldn't call it a right, given their position of power and responsibility, but they might consider it as such for sure. It seems to be a tradition in "leadership" circles to absolve themselves of all standards of truth. It's illegal when it's actually pursued as such.

Until then, people are too afraid to press charges, etc. Doesn't mean it's impossible, though. We should continue to talk about it as an option.

By the way, I have watched the neck moles on these suspicious characters for years now, and I have begun to wonder if they are a simple means of covering up or serving as placeholders for matching an actor's body to the CGI mask. In any case, they have a funny habit on these characters to fade, change color, vanish and reappear, jump around and "snap" into place, and be unduly effected by "compression" while other parts remain sharp and clear. If you watch at this time, and shortly before (roughly 20:00 - 20:30), you can see the worst of it before the rest of the interview suddenly makes that behavior go away.

Note interlacing on Snowden(TM)(C)(R) and interlacing on the real actor. I don't know enough about interlacing to understand why these look different to me, but there is something about it which makes it seem as though they are indeed different qualities of video composited together.

In addition to a quality difference, I would say their lighting seems a bit inconsistent. Snowden seems to be less lit or not lit by the same light, and it appears as though Oliver's glasses do not reflect his interviewee either. You can note this during times when there is just a sort of monitor-shaped projection or possibly studio light reflector in front of him, seen in Oliver's glasses. Snowden, in contrast, seems to be in one of those computer voids where there isn't a need for a real life light source.

[Anders]

I wouldn't call it a right, given their position of power and responsibility, but they might consider it as such for sure. It seems to be a tradition in "leadership" circles to absolve themselves of all standards of truth. It's illegal when it's actually pursued as such.

Until then, people are too afraid to press charges, etc. Doesn't mean it's impossible, though. We should continue to talk about it as an option.

Ok, making a false statement is actually illegal in the U.S.:

"Making false statements (18 U.S.C. § 1001) is the common name for the United States federal crime laid out in Section 1001 of Title 18 of the United States Code, which generally prohibits knowingly and willfully making false or fraudulent statements, or concealing information, in "any matter within the jurisdiction" of the federal government of the United States, even by mere denial[clarification needed].[1]" -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Making_false_statements

But the funny, or outrageous depending on how you look at it, thing is that talking about Snowden as a contractor for the CIA and the NSA when he in reality is a computer simulation might be the truth. The government can say: "When did we say that Snowden was a physical person? We did no such thing! Edward Snowden is a legal person, not a physical person."

[hoi.polloi]

I wouldn't call it a right, given their position of power and responsibility, but they might consider it as such for sure. It seems to be a tradition in "leadership" circles to absolve themselves of all standards of truth. It's illegal when it's actually pursued as such.

Until then, people are too afraid to press charges, etc. Doesn't mean it's impossible, though. We should continue to talk about it as an option.

Ok, making a false statement is actually illegal in the U.S.:

"Making false statements (18 U.S.C. § 1001) is the common name for the United States federal crime laid out in Section 1001 of Title 18 of the United States Code, which generally prohibits knowingly and willfully making false or fraudulent statements, or concealing information, in "any matter within the jurisdiction" of the federal government of the United States, even by mere denial[clarification needed].[1]" -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Making_false_statements

But the funny, or outrageous depending on how you look at it, thing is that talking about Snowden as a contractor for the CIA and the NSA when he in reality is a computer simulation might be the truth. The government can say: "When did we say that Snowden was a physical person? We did no such thing! Edward Snowden is a legal person, not a physical person."

Yes, Anders. You've hit the nail on the head.

The "legal person" is the fiction that "allows" us to have figurehead politicians and Presidents, corporations with human rights, vicsims and fake deaths, and CGI characters as legal persons. All of these legal decision things have been passed through legal means and fall under the category of "corporations" (from the latin corpos for body, Jesuit-sort of Latin language still being seen as an authority in legal matters). Especially, I suspect, if you accept bribery, collusion and conspiracy as "part of the legal process", as our culture seems to do.

This is why I don't mind when there are movements to end corporate personhood. I think that would be a fine step toward legally "protecting" what little democracy we have from an abusive and increasingly insecure, self-justifying State.

As average people, a step we can take towards this end is to distinctly distinguish at every opportunity the difference between real people and "legal persons", through daily conversation with others. Robots should not have human rights, they should have robot rights. Hence, one of the purposes of this site is to make it clear that people are people, and non-people are non-people. This is another reason I feel it is very important to stay away from race discussions. Everyone can get behind the idea that people are people, but racists will argue in every way that some kind of person is not "really" a person because of their genetic traits. That is a distraction from the true threat facing all "races" right now: the idea that a privately owned corporation is superior in its right to exist than the human being and human societies, let alone equal! Never mind "alien invasion". This "corporate personhood" is a kind of "alien invasion" we are inventing for ourselves. We don't have to support it. We are convinced to support it by a media owned and operated by self-perpetuating corporations, because it serves a minority group united by their wealth and privilege and sociopathy.

Businesses are forced to "incorporate" because this legal status is supposed to make them subject to laws. Not make them the arbiters. But something deeply corrupt has apparently come along for the legal ride. If we could get to the heart of this legal language, we might understand why small corporations are so heavily monitored and large ones are left as unchecked empires unto themselves.

[Anders]

When it comes to the technology required to simulate Edward Snowden, he first appeared publicly in 2013. With the computer simulation capacity then is it possible to make a CGI Snowden? Maybe not in real time, but considering the crude video resolution needed my guess is that it was definitely possible to make such simulations in non real-time.


full link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjHiC0mt4Ts

Then what about the Snowden appearances on video screens in front of live audiences? The answer is that the questions can have been planted so that Snowden's answers matched the questions and what was shown on the screens was 3D imagery rendered beforehand.

If so, is then the Russian government in on it? Most definitely I think. Just like how the Soviet Union back in the Cold War era happened to learn how to make fake atom bombs (nuclear weapons are likely a hoax).

Regarding real-time simulations, doesn't the intelligence community have computer capacity that far exceeds that which is available on the public markets? Maybe, but they can't use too fancy technology for public display or else experts in the public community might notice that.

[simonshack]

*

As I casually paused the above YT video (set on HD res) embedded by Anders, the video freezed on this peculiar 'glitch' (at 16:13) :




Now, I won't make any big deal out of this - especially since I wasn't able to 'obtain' /or 'reproduce' this glitch again when opening the same video in Youtube - and pausing it again numerous times at 16:13 (and at different resolution rates). Only some slight 'motion blur' occurs - on a regular basis. Of course, 'pixel glitches' WILL happen now and then in the digital domain (depending on a number of 'random' factors). However, I'm posting this "comb-effect-glitch" for future reference - in case we should encounter other similar occurences in connection with suspected 'digitized' media characters.

[Anders]

*

As I casually paused the above YT video (set on HD res) embedded by Anders, the video freezed on this peculiar 'glitch' (at 16:13) :

Snowden is moving his head at that moment. With lossy video compression artifacts similar to that often appear as a result of low bitrate. The stats about the video says VP9 compression which is Google's own video codec format. I don't know exactly how that format works but usually they divide the video frames in blocks, and the glitch looks like P-frame blocks being rendered with low bitrate.

[hoi.polloi]

Regarding real-time simulations, doesn't the intelligence community have computer capacity that far exceeds that which is available on the public markets? Maybe, but they can't use too fancy technology for public display or else experts in the public community might notice that.

Now this argument doesn't work, Anders. Consider the number of people that have no idea the airplanes on 9/11 could have been faked, nor acknowledge the evidence for it. Consider the number of people that cannot even process the concept of vicsims, even if it is due to an emotional block of some kind.

What kind of "fancy" technology would the average person "notice"? People are not very attentive and we are only the exception that makes the rule.

[Anders]

Regarding real-time simulations, doesn't the intelligence community have computer capacity that far exceeds that which is available on the public markets? Maybe, but they can't use too fancy technology for public display or else experts in the public community might notice that.

Now this argument doesn't work, Anders. Consider the number of people that have no idea the airplanes on 9/11 could have been faked, nor acknowledge the evidence for it. Consider the number of people that cannot even process the concept of vicsims, even if it is due to an emotional block of some kind.

What kind of "fancy" technology would the average person "notice"? People are not very attentive and we are only the exception that makes the rule.

Some experts in the public community probably can tell when there is video fakery. But it doesn't matter. Because even if they would start to talk about it to the media, they would be dismissed as conspiracy theorists in the negative sense of that term. And if an expert told people he or she knows they would think the expert had gone crazy.

However, if technology was used that is much more advanced than anything available on the public markets, those experts would notice that and that could be dangerous because the knowledge about such technology has to be kept secret or it would cause disruption in the public society. That's my guess at the moment.

[hoi.polloi]

However, if technology was used that is much more advanced than anything available on the public markets, those experts would notice that and that could be dangerous because the knowledge about such technology has to be kept secret or it would cause disruption in the public society. That's my guess at the moment.

But what experts, exactly, are you talking about? This is a very speculative position.

What expert has ever blown the whistle on their own profitable trade secrets within their industry? I don't follow your logic.

If anything the art of deception, the art of magic and other skills that show their success by the amount of people they deceive, are not things that any expert on those fields would ever reveal unless they wanted to be forbidden from working in their trade of greatest passion.

[Anders]

However, if technology was used that is much more advanced than anything available on the public markets, those experts would notice that and that could be dangerous because the knowledge about such technology has to be kept secret or it would cause disruption in the public society. That's my guess at the moment.

But what experts, exactly, are you talking about? This is a very speculative position.

What expert has ever blown the whistle on their own profitable trade secrets within their industry? I don't follow your logic.

If anything the art of deception, the art of magic and other skills that show their success by the amount of people they deceive, are not things that any expert on those fields would ever reveal unless they wanted to be forbidden from working in their trade of greatest passion.

By experts in the public I include people working in big corporations and in the military. Let's say that a man in the military is an expert on computer simulations. And as a hypothesis only very deep state departments of the intelligence community have access to the advanced technology. As an example, the expert comes across a video on YouTube where much more advanced technology than what he knows of has been used. He recognizes that there is fakery in the video on a level far beyond anything he or his fellow experts in the military are capable of.

The expert cannot tell the media about the video, because they will dismiss him as a kook, conspiracy theorists and tinfoil hatter. But during a meeting in the military he presents the video to fellow experts. And they say: "Holy crap! Who made that video?" And they report the video up in the military chain of command, because it could be a sign of the Chinese or some other competing power having access to much more advanced technology than the military experts knew existed.

This would be disruptive to the public society (which includes the government including the military except for the most classified parts). The military experts would become hysterical: "Oh my gawd! They have technology that can listen to all our conversations!"

This means that those who fake events have to use technology that is on the same level as exists on the public markets. For example in the 9/11 attacks the fakery was done with technology that was publicly known in the year 2001.

[bongostaple]

I really don't think it's about the tech at the core of things. It's about psychologically manipulating individuals and groups through information. The tech allows more ways to execute an operation today, but does not need to be way beyond what we are aware of at the moment, for the simple reason that if you show a video clip on the television news and tell people what they are seeing, they will believe it as if they saw it with their own eyes. Black Ops Wizard Tech just isn't necessary to fool the majority of people, and the remainder, who at various times are not fooled, are castigated as conspiracy nutters by the majority. That's because the majority have been told what to think about people like that. So not only do psyops use people's gullibility against them, they use it against us unbelievers too. We are in such a minority that the approach works very well, and has done for a very very long time....