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Well-Ordered's avatar

> Connor Leahy: This is a morbidly perfect demonstration about how there are indeed very serious issues that free market absolutism just doesn't solve in practice.

This is about illegal drugs, which are very much not legal. I'm not sure how "free market absolutism" has anything to do with perhaps the most restricted market there is.

Free market absolutism would involve being able to buy cocaine at the grocery store one aisle over from the bananas—and with as little of a risk of being contaminated with fentanyl as those bananas.

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avalancheGenesis's avatar

It's been interesting seeing the reactions to AI of my highly-ordinary acquaintances and coworkers - that is, average people of average intelligence with no particular expertise, who mostly stick to MSM information diets, and mostly lack nerdy/scifi backgrounds. The more The Public is exposed to AI, the more they hate it. Even if the exact reasoning is often wrong (stochastic parrot model), it's hard to fault the intuitions, that this is a Big If True technology with high disruptive potential and a big blast radius. And the average person on the street is decidedly small-c conservative with respect to such technologies, even in SF. I don't know if the end result will be popular support for locking down mundane utility, or popular support for dontkilleveryoneism, but there's at least popular support available for courting. Often feel sad that I'm in no position to do that sort of outreach; part of what makes AI a difficult thing is that anyone in a position to understand it well probably can't explain it to normies effectively. Many Such Cases.

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