We are like 4 months away from a possible new world order, and I’m so unprepared. Sigh.

I think this is not really true. I think we have a phenomenon where humans have been rewarded for getting really worried about the scariest things, but they have not been rewarded by being able to be more accurate in their assessment of risks. Rather they have been rewarded by surviving.

But in a modern world we have virtual machines generating ideas whose sole purpose is to energize their political base. If there is one thing that is not going to energize the base, it is the idea that we are going to be mostly OK not matter which of our possible political outcomes comes to pass. So any suggestions like that fall into oblivion.

Rather the things that energize the base are the most extreme things we can say that are still plausibly believable. And we don't know which of those things will optimize for extremity and believability, so we have an industry on both sides of the political cess pool that are constantly creating outrageous predictions, not with the idea of predicting things accurately, but with the goal of creating buzz among the base.

What could be more serious than the collapse of democracy and the rise of racist, oligopolistic authoritarianism?

Well, for half the population, nothing could be scarier than that. For the other half of the population, a puppet government where the puppet masters wish to control us by getting us to believe crazy things and destroying all competence hierarchies as these threaten their power.

Its not so much that I am betting that both sides are getting really good at speculative fiction, as much as I am betting that I should probably proceed as if the sky is NOT falling, as this has been the winning strategy for quite a few millenia now. For the most part. On average.

R:)