A great question to ask when creating a scenario is what could prevent it from happening? Maybe there is not a single force that can undo this sustained uncertainty, but perhaps it is a mixture of several. If AGI arrived without a doubt in 3 years and China took over Taiwan despite the US’s actions, and if companies found a way to embed reliability and trust in media, then maybe this extended uncertainty could cease.
A second question to ask, is if we find ourselves in this scenario, what should we do about it? The most effective response to this multi-layered persistent uncertainty is not to seek impossible stability, but to cultivate radical adaptability and radical optionality. Give up on having a reliable prediction of what happens next. Instead cultivate multiple scenarios of what could happen, and endeavor with each of them to maximize your options. Goals should be considered as disposable hypotheses, constantly ready to be discarded and replaced by better-fitting concepts later on. You will be dead wrong on 19 out of your 20 expectations, but at least one of them will allow you to proceed. Make your decisions not on whether they are “right” but on whether they tend to give you more options later.
In our era of uncertain uncertainty, certainty will be the killer. In this era more downfalls will happen because of overconfidence than questioning. The key is to not get stuck on just one option. You have to become at ease holding multiple contradictory possibilities at once. (To prevent yourself from being swept away by the latest current and fashionable whim, this radical adaptability must be anchored on a steadfast set of unchangeable virtues, as corny as honesty, or as slick as generosity.) The strategy for prospering in prolonged uncertainty must be one of constant, agile recalibration.