> My working conjecture is that it is some people that cannot tolerate the ambiguity of many events being essentially random, chaotic, or stochastic. A lot of

> My working conjecture is that it is some people that cannot tolerate the ambiguity of many events being essentially random, chaotic, or stochastic. A lot of people aren't willing to seriously entertain complexity and so rely paranoid thought processes. There's a good chunk of scientific evidence to think that this is driven by basic brain structures. You sometimes see this reported in the US as the difference between "liberal and conservative brains" [1] but this really distracts from the underlying issue. What's interesting is the growing evidence that this sort of paranoid thinking is encouraged by social media and the internet [2]. What you get are models where the intense paranoia of a few can be technologically amplified and virally overtake whole populations. Paranoia and fear is highly contagious and it seems the internet, rather than reducing such thinking by providing plentiful information, helps it spread. [1] eg https://www.businessinsider.com/psychological-differences-between-conservatives-and-liberals-2018-2 https://www.businessinsider.com/psychological-differences-be..., https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/study-predicts-political-beliefs-with-83-percent-accuracy-17536124/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/study-predicts... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/21/world/europe/facebook-refugee-attacks-germany.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/21/world/europe/facebook-ref...