https://bcantrill.dtrace.org/2026/09/13/the-contagion-of-fear/
What 27-year-old Coxon is an expert on — if accidentally — is the contagion of fear. We cannot expect the public to understand the inner workings of all technology (that was the fallacy of my 18-year-old self!): technology is too broad, too deep, and too core to all of our lives to expect everyone to understand everything; we must — at some level — trust domain experts. When those domain experts sow fear, it is the fear that takes root, propagating much more readily than any evidence that may follow it. (As Jonathan Swift famously quipped over three centuries ago, "Falsehood flies, and the truth comes limping after it".) In this regard, Coxon is more vector than index case: it is indisputable that the fears of extinction risk are widespread and Coxon himself likely has these fears because he has heard them from someone else. Unfortunately, as the fear takes hold, the sheer number of frightened experts becomes its own kind of evidence, with contrary voices drowned out by the din of an apparent consensus.