And from a paranoid physical security point of view it's definitely a bad idea to assume I would survive my car trip to the grocery store every week.... I do it anyways, as it's still much better than the alternatives.
I believe this a logical fallacy. I didn't argue that due to said paranoia one should not engage in cryptography, any more than I would argue that one should not drive their car to the grocery store every week.
I'm talking about complacency, and how it's a better idea for us to assume that sooner or later (if not currently) our best-known cryptography will be broken. If I recall correctly, in 2008, Simple Nomad[1] told us to consider PGP broken by the government. He wasn't saying it is... just we should consider it as such and find something better, before it's too late.
And if I just told you to assume AES is broken by the government and find something better, would that be all the incitement you need? Or would you want actual evidence that at least hints it's probably instead of just assumptions?
You're missing the point. I already am thinking of it as broken, even without evidence, because I want to look ahead. This doesn't mean I don't use cryptography "because it's broken", it means I don't trust it as if it wasn't broken.
Also, to be a bit unfair, I have no idea who you are, but I know who Simple Nomad[1] is. If Simple Nomad told me the government had definitely owned PGP, AES, or anything else of that nature I'd be very concerned, no evidence necessary. The implication is that he already has the evidence, but maybe can't share it with me. Or he's really drunk and messing with me.... either way, good times ahead!
That's also the problem with switching to a new and untested solution. You only get to be wrong once. Is there any symmetric cypher with more cryptanalytic effort put into than AES? Is there even one?
You switch to something else out of paranoia and you could easily switch to something with a theoretical backdoor that NSA has already identified and exploited (after all, they're "10-20 years ahead of us", right?).
