It’s pretty common to come across someone online claiming they’re just too smart to ever be fooled by conspiracies/cults (religious, political, commercial), but it’s actually really important not to assume intelligence is all you need to avoid it. Everyone should be aware of and have a guard up against tactics of undue influence. It might be easier to reach the conspiracy/cult believers if we could say ‘look, it’s not that you’re stupid’, but it seems like this article is suggesting the rest of the sentence is ‘it’s just that you’re bad at thinking’, which isn’t a lot better… ha.
There’s nothing worse than a smart person who gets lead down the wrong path.
It might be easier to reach the conspiracy/cult believers if we could say ‘look, it’s not that you’re stupid’, but it seems like this article is suggesting the rest of the sentence is ‘it’s just that you’re bad at thinking’
This is why I personally don’t like all the critical thinking advice online. None of it actually helps a person think better. Being aware of your own biases, for example, doesn’t automatically make anyone better at critical reasoning.
Learn to think dialectically
Im too lazy to find the statistic but im pretty sure the likelihood of joining a cult increases with intelligence. And cultic and conspiratorial thinking ain’t that dissimilar
Sounds like a conspiracy
Eh, 90% of statistics are made up anyway. 🙃
Actually 89.67.
Higher intelligence increases your ability to rationalize anything to yourself, and I think some people are less aware of the influence of various cognitive biases on their judgement.
Fairly unintuitive rabbit hole… leading into a network of warrens.
I mean I know the article isn’t actually about that image, but Bill Gates is evil. Not for putting microchips in the vaccine, but for trying to force the patent on the covid vaccines, keeping low income countries from having access to the vaccine.
Also for being a god damn billionaire. It’s intrinsic.
Once you bathe yourself in the warm waters of fellowship and community, belief follows quickly behind, and you’re lost
