I'll come at this from another direction -- is the general tendency towards being easily BS'd and manipulated a bug or a feature? It's not obvious to me that s

I'll come at this from another direction -- is the general tendency towards being easily BS'd and manipulated a bug or a feature? It's not obvious to me that societies where the mass of people are not easily manipulated will tend to last longer. They may be tend to be wiped out by societies who can be molded more readily into an effective fighting/conquering force. I agree that individual selection pressures tend to favor those who are scam-resistant, however only in scams that directly adversely affect the person. If there's a group/societal scam going on, it's probably individually safer to go along with it rather than buck the group and risk being ostracized.