#1 is purely impossible and irrelevant.

#2 and #3 depend heavily on what "trivially" and "easily" mean, and #3 for the reasons that most people have this clearly false belief.  #2 and #3 are the same states of the world, just with a slightly different mix of fools.

My main point is that the deepfakepocalypse is not itself the main or only cause of the lack of trust in video evidence.  This has been going on for a long time, and there are plenty of people who deny the veracity of some pretty-well-documented true photos from decades ago.  

It's worth separating the different concerns about "fake".  Like text, there's been plenty of staged/incorrect/fictional audios and images since the invention of each medium.  Lies are as old as speech.

The big concern recently is that the availability of this kind of media has become decentralized over the last few decades - it's no longer a small amount of publishers that earn trust by being the primary way to channel such things, clearly labeled as to whether it's fiction or not.  This is combining with ease of fakery that removes other clues as to the provenance of such things to make almost nothing trustworthy.

The root of the problem is that I don't have access to any other phenomenological experiences.  I have no direct evidence of how a bird or a tree or a rock experiences their corner of spacetime.  It can be described as how to map physical/measurable activity to experiences, but that doesn't actually help if we can't detect/measure the experiences in order to have any clue whether our mapping is correct.

If it's just what someone claims, we have a pretty good mapping - neurons fire, vocal chords vibrate.  If it's what it feels like to be them, we don't even know what we're mapping to.

the fact that we have access to our own minds first

I have fairly limited access to my own mind.  I give most humans the benefit of the doubt that they do as well, but I can't really be sure.  

That strategy (assume everything is fake) removes the ability to learn about the world beyond what you personally can experience and verify.  Fairly limiting.

Can we define consciousness as memory, intelligence and metacognition tightly, reflectively integrated behind a perceptual boundary?

You can define consciousness however you like.  Whether others will agree is hard to guess - it'll depend on which bailey you're trying to defend from that motte.

There are a LOT of rules which are codification of things that should not apply in all circumstances, but which it's too complicated to define the rule to the fine-grained level that would make it universal.  Lax enforcement is one way to allow flex in rules that are best if they're directional guidance rather than clear specifications.

Speed limits on public roads, for instance - they're insanely low for good conditions (clear, dry, good visibility, competent driver in a well-functioning car).  They're somewhat low for decent conditions, they're probably too high in the worst possible case.  

There's a lot of the world that works this way - there's enough variance across participants and conditions that there is literally no legible coherent rule which maximizes any goal - it's all a compromise among averages.  

 Humans have minds, which are the things one has when one is conscious. So do animals, though exactly which ones have them is a matter of serious debate.

Do they?  I know I have a mind, but I can only guess at anyone else.  

I’m serious - until you propose an operational and testable definition which gives a specific answer in all cases, you can’t debate whether various classes of things have that property.

Glad people are thinking about things like this, but it has some of the same problems as previous discussion about Georgian land taxation - separating the house from the land is not actually possible.

The final recourse for a mortgage lender is repossession.  That's the only reason the rates are lower than unsecured credit in the first place.  If the house is separated in ownership from the land, it makes one or both portions unusable (depending on what liens/easements one has over the other).  If they're NOT separable, and are always transferred (purchased or taken for nonpayment) together, then requiring cash for the land is just a very large downpayment requirement on the house+land.

Aside: I agree that 50 year mortgages probably don't solve any problems, and should probably be privately arranged (not gov't backed) in the cases that they do.  Actually, almost zero mortgages should involve the feds, so it's irksome that this is even being discussed.

This applies to many celebrities and wealthy people worth much less than a billion.  Other common strategies:

• Only date independently wealthy or near-equally-famous people
• Get some of the value of marriage in less-committed ways than marriage.  Don't marry, just date and have some kids.
• Accept the risk of financial motivation for your partner.  It's quite possible that they love you deeply, AND want the lifestyle you can give them and your shared kids.
• Have trusted friends and family who are good judges of character (note: this is a similar problem to create, but many have it via luck).  Incorporate their feedback about a potential partner into your judgement.

Really, EVERYONE faces this problem if they choose a monogamous long-term partner.  What are they really after?  Will they remain loving and supportive aside from the support they expect from me?  Wealthy and celebrities face it more legibly and directly, but not uniquely.

Height is not zero-sum.  It's correlated with health in nonlinear ways, and also it's valuable or harmful in different quantities for different things.   The vast majority of value (positive and negative dimensions) is NOT relative to others, so "zero-sum" is not a relevant framing.

Beauty is not purely zero-sum either, but arguably more of its desirability is zero-sum than height.  Out-competing others in selection contests (mating, politics, some career choices) is influenced by beauty more than height (note: height and IQ are often listed as the two best predictors of income, but that's because Beauty is rarely included in demographic studies).