> But to these I’d add that a sufficiently smart engineer has never been burned by arguments above his skill level before, has never had any reason to develop e

> But to these I’d add that a sufficiently smart engineer has never been burned by arguments above his skill level before, has never had any reason to develop epistemic learned helplessness. If Osama comes up to him with a really good argument for terrorism, he thinks “Oh, there’s a good argument for terrorism. I guess I should become a terrorist,” as opposed to “Arguments? You can prove anything with arguments. I’ll just stay right here and not blow myself up.” Wow! This explains why so many antivaxxers and the likes are highly educated people, often with engineering-like background. I never realized that until reading this. They're smart enough to never have developed a thick enough skin against convincing-but-wrong arguments, which means that once someone does convince them of something (despite their smartness), they're (we're?) all-in. Makes me wonder how vulnerable I am to all this. I'm sure in the target demographic here. Maybe Osama would turn me into a suicide bomber too? Or into an antivaxxer :-)