A recent Gallup poll, via Daily Kos:
If your party nominated a well-qualified Candidate For WH ’08 who was _, would you vote for that person?
Yes No
Catholic 95% 4%
Black 94 5
Jewish 92 7A woman 88 11
Hispanic 87 12Mormon 72 24
Married for third time 67 3072 years old 57 42
A homosexual 55 43An atheist 45 53
Nothing new, of course.
But what if the race were between an atheist and a black Mormon lesbian, huh? What then?
There’s at least as good a chance of a black Mormon lesbian becoming president of the United States as there is of a black Mormon lesbian existing.
Though surely, if we’re going to calculate the prevalence over the age of the universe of Boltzmann brains, why have we not also determined the effect on the fate of the universe of quantum fluctuations giving rise to Boltzmann black Mormon lesbians? and defeating Boltzmann atheists at the Boltzmann polls?
Then again Boltzmann brains are probably biased against atheism – after all, they did just pop into existence with no evidence for development by evolutionary processes, since none in fact took place. Any Boltzmann brain with half a brain is going to reflect that simply having popped into existence out of a quantum fluctuation is an unsatisfactory and highly unlikely model.