"It sometimes feels as if our culture has become addicted to doom - needing time to be marked by fearful anticipation rather than something more proactive or controlled. We've learned to expect that change must be chaotic, that innovation must be destructive, that the future must collide with the now whether we want it to or not. But there's nothing about progress that inherently requires disruption except our inability to cooperate for the sake of stability."
"Scenario A: AI replaces nearly all functions provided by people so quickly that society can't respond as it has to previous industrial revolutions. Mass unemployment destabilizes social structures supported by wage taxation. Even in a soft landing - universal basic income, increased corporate taxation - this is seen as catastrophic because it is contrary to the current capitalist paradigm and leaves humans with the existential problem of separating meaning and purpose from work."
Contemporary culture often assumes change must be chaotic, innovation destructive, and the future an unavoidable collision with the present. Progress itself does not inherently require disruption; the primary cause of destructive change is collective inability to cooperate for stability. The conversation about AI and work commonly posits three scenarios: rapid replacement causing mass unemployment and existential crises, slower replacement enabling human differentiation and a manageable transition, or deliberate slowdown and selective rejection of technologies based on communal benefit. Scenario C resembles an Amish approach of community-based acceptance and is widely considered unlikely despite preserving social fabric.
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