I don’t think it will evolve this way. This is open-loop extrapolation and people are already starting to adjust responses (cf: Covington high case).
Crywolf effects. When you’re conditioned to distrust a signal source you don’t just freeze in stasis. You adapt.
Conversation
The thing is, FUD created by a bad actor goes away when the bad actor leaves the scene. But FUD created by technology agency expansion is a cry wolf story with no specific untrustworthy shepherd boy for the villagers to tag. So behaviors shift.
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Older generations circle wagons around their ingroup epistemes. Younger ones adopt new mitigating behaviors that are a mix of more conservatism (default skeptics, checking up on snopes) and operating off a smaller knowledge base (Talebian strategies).
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I don’t even think there is a real epistemic crisis yet. We’re learning that we need consensus reality only in a few critical cases like vaccination where there are material consequences (loss of herd immunity) to epistemic pluralism.
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Most of the time, you don’t need a belief monopoly to act. Just enough relevant agency, and a sort of Straussian contempt for the outgroup.
“I don’t have to persuade you I’m right, I just have to make sure you can’t stop me from acting or roll back my consequences”
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I’m fascinated by the possibilities of fait accompli + irreversibility action orientation over deliberation and mutual persuasion before action. I think *this* will be biggest long-term effect. The role of mutual persuasion among adversaries in collective action will diminish.
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We’ve already seen a big example. Trump doesn’t need to persuade opponents of anything, with or without deepfakes. Just roll back Obama programs and ensure his own are harder to undo. Future politicians will run this playbook better.
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Tldr of my position: Persuading opponents is now for poor people.
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Replying to
I don’t disagree but merely point out that naked coercion follows as the inevitable defining feature of a post-persuasion, post-consensual order.
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My point is, it’s always been that way. Peter Thiel’s 1950s utopia for example seems like Organization Man idyll of consensus/harmony because main group inclined to systematically disagree that everything was fine, blacks, were systematically shut out of “debate” with coercion.
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“You decide what counts as reasoned, enlightened deliberation, I’ll decide who gets to be in the room and who’s kept out with guns”
Eternal deal between the sword and the pen.

