I think that's great, but the example is interesting, because it sort of begs the question. The law says that the law must be respected, but that only matters if it's respected in the first place.

The cultural norms around these things are probably what matters more for resilience.

Harder, but it's dangerous to assume we are immune to it. The Weimar Republic didn't have a first-past-the-post system either.

And not tolerating things can involve putting yourself in harm's way as an individual, risking your career, income or safety. So there's a huge collective action problem where individuals have an incentive to just keep their heads down and carry on.

I think the way it often goes is that rules are broken and institutions sabotaged, and not enough resistance is put up before things have de facto changed. Trump violates the US constitution repeatedly.

Granted, safeguards slow things down, but ultimately it's down to what the public tolerates.

It's much simpler than that. AI can only replace workers if it performs meaningful work. If it doesn't, whoever uses human labour will outcompete those who try to use AI, and the jobs will remain. If it does, it is useful and produces value.

The real issue is who benefits from that value.

I'm guessing that you're asserting that based on your own experience and knowledge.

Current AI systems are not yet *general* artificial intelligence, but they absolutely do things people want done, and the technology improves at an incredible rate, whether we like it or not.

This has been confusing me since I joined Bluesky.

The rational behavior would at the very least be to have some sort of game plan in case beliefs a and c prove to be false, and assign a minimum of credence to what domain experts are predicting.

Perhaps fatalism is a better term in that respect?

There's a transformation that's potentially very bad coming, but it's inevitable no matter what we do, so all we can hope to do is to make the best of it.

Or constructive defeatism.

Community is part of it, but it goes much deeper. The thought that what we use to define our identity and worth - experience, skills, talents, intelligence, personality - could be replicated artificially and cheaply is deeply existential and threatening to most people.

The disconnect here is thinking that "Your reporting isn't accurate" was ever really a statement about facts.

As long as that's not a laparoscopy robot you're building you'll be fine.

Or just snap a photo of the inside of your pantry and type "recipe".