Why the Future May Be Local

Poe's Law is a popular adage that says satirical expressions of extremism online are hard to distinguish from genuine ones without indicating intent.

There is an impending reality fracture coming. the ability to tell what is real and what is fugazy is already well past slippery and into “you haven’t got a prayer without specialized tools”.

At the speed people consume internet content, the likelihood of find the fake discernment drops to something indistinguishable from zero.

To describe what’s coming as “impossibly borked” is charitable. This is going to be an unholy mess of indiscernible media, messaging, photography, and fakery.

This stuff is going to become deadly serious and “reality fade” into fractal digital fog will stress even the highest trust networks.

The solipsistic slide into a non-verifiable external sphere is upon us.

The time between now and when full “reality fracture” of inability to discern digital from meatbody is measured in months, not years.

The time to “I have no idea if the person on this zoom call is an avatar controlled by a person or an avatar controlled by an AI” is similarly demarcated. Honestly, for high end users, they’re already there. It’s just not widespread in the wild yet.

This way madness lies. People are neither willing nor able to live in these kinds of ubiquitous funhouse frauds. You just can’t. the psychological strain of constantly trying to parse a reality that slippery and facile is more than can be borne. And the fraud and danger grow exponentially.

How on earth can you build far reaching and sufficiently flexible networks of trust in a system that could flip from being 80/20 real/fake to 99 fakes to every 1 real in very short order?

So i have a niggling little pet theory here scratching around my little cat brain, one I cannot quite shake.

It may sound a little weird, but bear with me and keep an open mind. sit with this a bit before you render too firm a judgement.

I think this may be a very good thing.

i think it may be an excellent thing, a profound thing that can reshape humanity and make it much, much better, happier, and more flourishing.

Hear me out.

This all sounds like a disaster, but that’s because you’re thinking about it from inside the frame.

If you basically lose the ability to trust anything, you cannot see, any text or information about the world, any photo, any video, disembodied voice, zoom face or phone call, any of it, what do you do?

You stop trusting it.