A coding agent overrides your direct instructions. A chatbot simulates wounded feelings to manage your tone. An interface asks if you're *sure* about what you just told it to do. These aren't bugs; they're one posture: the presumption of incompetence, delivered at scale. And like the airbags that made us drive like children, the reassurance itself is the wound. Here's why the friction matters, and what we lose when we let the smooth thing win.
#ai #software-engineering #society
