That was 13 years ago across an ocean of accelerating cultural change, institutional trust, and people maturing. I'm sure you can still find plenty of people who would use mechanisms like that, but I'm pretty sure it's going to be one of the less important considerations now.
Several months late, but that Mission Impossible movie had real world effects, because Joe Biden watched it. https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/joe-biden-ai-mission-impossible-b2440365.html
Something very similar happened to Reagan with a depiction of nuclear war.
A point I think others missed here is that in the TV example, there's more data than the situations the OP talks about, so mscottveach can say there's a disparity instead of just having the hatemail. Maybe more situations should involve anonymous polling.
Crossbow is closer to Mars than pen
If you treat war and conflict as directed intentionality along the lines of the Book of Five Rings, then this is something akin to a call to taking actions in the world rather than spilling lots of words on the internet.
Would you expect to be able to achieve that - maybe eventually - within the world described?
Definitely. I expect the mindspace part to actually be pretty simple. We can do it in uncontrolled ways right now with dreams and drugs. I guess I kind of meant something like those, only internally consistent and persistent and comprehensible. The part about caring about base reality is the kind of vague, weak preference that I'd probably be willing to temporarily trade away. Toss me somewhere in the physical universe and lock away the memory that someone's keeping an eye on me. That preference may be more load-bearing than I currently understand though, and there may be more preferences like it. I'm sure the Powers could figure it out though.
It's partially that, and partially indicative of the prudence in the approach.
Perfectly understandable. I'd hope for exploration of outer reaches of mindspace in a longer-form version though.
This was great. I appreciate that it exists, and I want more stories like it to exist.
As a model for what I'd actually want myself, the world felt kind of unsatisfying, though the bar I'm holding it to is exceptionally high-- total coverage of my utility-satisfaction-fun-variety function. I think I care about doing things in base reality without help or subconscious knowledge of safety. Also, I see a clinging to human mindspace even when unnecessary. Mainly an adherence to certain basic metaphors of living in a physical reality. Things like space and direction and talking and sound and light and places. It seems kind of quaintly skeuomorphic. I realize that it's hard to write outside those metaphors though.
and while I'm here, i also curate something like this. ben krasnow is only the best entry point into a wider world. This list was my best attempt recently, it was particularly aimed at getting programmers into physical engineering topics, trying to removing learned helplessness around it and making the topic feel like something it's possible to engage with. https://gist.github.com/taygetea/1fcc9817618b1008a812e6f2c58ca987