Scott Alexander famously warned us to Beware Trivial Inconveniences.

When you make a thing easy to do, people often do vastly more of it.

When you put up barriers, even highly solvable ones, people often do vastly less.

Let us take this seriously, and carefully choose what inconveniences to put where.

Let us also take seriously that when AI or other things reduce frictions, or change the relative severity of frictions, various things might break or require adjustment.

This applies to all system design, and especially to legal and regulatory questions.

Table of Contents

Levels of Friction (and Legality)

There is a vast difference along the continuum, both in legal status and in terms of other practical barriers, as you move between:

0. Automatic, a default, facilitated, required or heavily subsidized.

Legal, ubiquitous and advertised, with minimal frictions.
Available, mostly safe to get, but we make it annoying.
Actively illegal or tricky, perhaps risking actual legal trouble or big loss of status.
Actively illegal and we will try to stop you or ruin your life (e.g. rape, murder).
We will move the world to stop you (e.g. terrorism, nuclear weapons).
Physically impossible (e.g. perpetual motion, time travel, reading all my blog posts)

The most direct way to introduce or remove frictions is to change the law. This can take the form of prohibitions, regulations and requirements, or of taxes.

One can also alter social norms, deploy new technologies or business models or procedures, or change opportunity costs that facilitate or inhibit such activities.

Or one can directly change things like the defaults on popular software.

Often these interact in non-obvious ways.

It is ultimately a practical question. How easy is it to do? What happens if you try?

If the conditions move beyo...

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koenrane

A Guide to AI 2027

koenrane

koenrane

koenrane

A Guide to AI 2027