> otherwise intelligent friends
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Ukraine bombing its own cities to make Russia “look bad” is such a claim. As is most conspiratorial claims regarding Covid, and so on ad nauseam.
I think that if you see “intelligent” people that have a hard time navigating a scientific and methodological way of finding out the truth, such as when you discard these extraordinary claims due to the lack of extraordinary evidence, maybe you need to re-evaluate what “intelligent” actually means, or how you qualify it.
The most intelligent people I’ve ever met are filled with doubt, because they have the skill I just mentioned. Faced with extraordinary claims they respond “that’s strange, I wonder if it can be substantiated” — they do not respond by fervently trying to convince anyone they meet that something REALLY crazy is going on and we all need to figure out the “real” state of things IMMEDIATELY without regard for method and process.
What I might agree with you in, is that conspiratorial thinking much like alcoholism or gambling addiction, obviously CAN “infect” very intelligent people, because they are at the end of the day just people.
But an intelligent person with a mental illness does not make them less intelligent, nor does it make that mental illness more “real”.
The real and fundamental problem underneath all of this is the so-called “post truth society” we’re increasingly moving into, where what’s actually true doesn’t seem to matter anymore, and people just feel like they’re combatants in a war of ideas, and the more they push their ideas regardless of their truthfulness, the more true that idea becomes.
That might be true for ideology, or cultural movements, but it’s not true for investigative journalism and scientific exploration.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Ukraine bombing its own cities to make Russia “look bad” is such a claim. As is most conspiratorial claims regarding Covid, and so on ad nauseam.
I think that if you see “intelligent” people that have a hard time navigating a scientific and methodological way of finding out the truth, such as when you discard these extraordinary claims due to the lack of extraordinary evidence, maybe you need to re-evaluate what “intelligent” actually means, or how you qualify it.
The most intelligent people I’ve ever met are filled with doubt, because they have the skill I just mentioned. Faced with extraordinary claims they respond “that’s strange, I wonder if it can be substantiated” — they do not respond by fervently trying to convince anyone they meet that something REALLY crazy is going on and we all need to figure out the “real” state of things IMMEDIATELY without regard for method and process.
What I might agree with you in, is that conspiratorial thinking much like alcoholism or gambling addiction, obviously CAN “infect” very intelligent people, because they are at the end of the day just people.
But an intelligent person with a mental illness does not make them less intelligent, nor does it make that mental illness more “real”.
The real and fundamental problem underneath all of this is the so-called “post truth society” we’re increasingly moving into, where what’s actually true doesn’t seem to matter anymore, and people just feel like they’re combatants in a war of ideas, and the more they push their ideas regardless of their truthfulness, the more true that idea becomes.
That might be true for ideology, or cultural movements, but it’s not true for investigative journalism and scientific exploration.