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Notes -
Remember year 2019?
Would you at the time think it plausible that historically unprecedented quarantine measures would be suddenly imposed all over the world, and the the great masses of people would be scared enough and obedient enough to go with it?
Compared to this, AI crusade of Yud and Roko's dreams would be nothing.
What would be demanded from average Norm N. Normie citizen, except to wave the flag, support the troops and do his duty to say something and do something when he suspects someone is hiding high capacity assault computer?
But there was a real new and unknown virus on the loose, you could say, and AI danger is purely theoretical.
So far. It could take only modest catastrophe caused by AI - or something that could be blamed on AI - to let the whole thing rolling.
COVID restrictions seemed plenty plausible.
The weird thing isn’t that governments rolled out widespread, minor impositions on liberty. That’s business as usual. Next thing you’ll be telling me they take people’s money.
What’s unusual is that the opposition bothered arguing that lockdowns were irrational. The traditional response is to punt in favor of morality assertions, as in Prohibition, abolition, or the draft. I give credit to unprecedented access to information, allowing anyone to source compelling support for whatever they already believed.
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I think that yes, at the time I would have thought it was plausible. When those measures were imposed, it did not surprise me in the least bit. Those measures were slight compared to the wartime conscription and war economy mobilization of the World War One, World War Two, and even Vietnam periods, for example. Young men did not get conscripted to go do dangerous work for the sake of beating the pandemic. I also remembered how easily millions of people accepted the WMD rationale of invading Iraq in 2003, and I remembered how few people protested NSA domestic surveillance after Snowden's revelations.
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