Asklemmy

This is why intelligent people can be so fucking stupid.

That has more to do with the fact that "smart" in a general sense doesn't really exist. Having a PhD in Chemistry doesn't give you any authority in Psychology. Similarly, someone can be widely considered genius but also someone who shouldn't make any political decisions.

It seems hard for people to overcome this. It's basically built in: reducing, minimizing, and/or generalizing others into stereotypes. Great for conserving memory for all those other incredibly system-intensive tasks the average person is putting their mind through, not so great for open communication between individuals. And yeah, I'm being snarky because most people probably aren't doing much more than scrolling a media stream, but those darn s, they just need to shakes closed fist in the air

I saw some very distressing things leading up to the 2016 election. In CANADA, I saw a bleeding heart leftist become a MAGA cultist, and I still don't understand what happened. I know other people whose families were torn apart over this. In frigging CANADA.

I know this sounds a bit out there but I actually suspect some new psyops technology was deployed against the public in the mid 2010s. Could be something as small as a nation state comprehensively assessing and very slightly moving ahead their understanding of the psychology of advertising or social media. Could be as large as a dark AI technology the public does not know about. I think the public are being intentionally psychologically destabilized by people who benefit when the public acts more randomly. But when you step back from it, it doesn't really require a conspiracy or intention. These systems have a habit of arising naturally under the exploitation of people by capital and in times of growing fear and fascism.