Its not a thought experiment. The 30 years war was fought over the printing press at its core. Newspapers are nothing compared to the bible in terms of misinfor

Its not a thought experiment. The 30 years war was fought over the printing press at its core. Newspapers are nothing compared to the bible in terms of misinformation risk, harmful cults regularly spring up to this day by astray pastors making their own version of the Bible to proclaim themselves as some prophet. So naturally, the Catholic church at the time was extremely concerned with people being able to 'translate' the bible (any translations will inevitably deviate from the official latin codex to an extent), that's how the protestant catholic conflict began, as the war to control the source of truth. And 1/3rd of Germany's population died because of this war. That being said, its absolutely worth it in the end. The Muslim world chose to not have this conflict, and banned the printing press (So the Quran can't be printed or translated). What ended up happening there is 500 years of utter stagnation with no new technological or social leaps. Generative AI will definitely cause conflicts that indirectly kill millions. But that's just the price of adaptation, I was shocked at how people didn't seem to care about the COVID deaths after a while, I guess that's a good thing in the end.