Humans are perfectly capable of holding two conflicting beliefs at once. He can genuinely believe this trajectory is dangerous while also believing that if Anthropic stops, someone less cautious takes its place. There’s also such a thing as hope: you can participate in something while still trying to change where it ends up.

He’s at the head of a stampede. Being near the front gives him influence over its direction; it doesn’t give him the ability to stop it. If Anthropic sits down, the stampede doesn’t stop. Anthropic just gets trampled.

That contradiction is basically the entire problem I was describing.