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>that there is a very large segment of the US who really ought to know better My take is not so optimistic. Intelligence is roughly normally distributed, and t

>that there is a very large segment of the US who really ought to know better My take is not so optimistic. Intelligence is roughly normally distributed, and the fat middle, 100±1 stddev or so, simply does not know better, and does not have the requisite brainpower to think past social conditioning, whether from friends or propaganda. Particularly when the average person has a life to live and won't spend much or any of that time verifying anything. At the very least the capable among us are better able to prioritize which facts to take time to verify, while the average person probably doesn't verify anything rigorously at all.

aalleavitch 7y ago
Again, this isn't just some necessary aspect of human nature. This is something that very powerful people actively want to be the case, because when people behave in this manner it's easier to manipulate their behavior on a broad scale. This is the explicit purpose of modern marketing. I don't honestly think it has anything to do with being "capable", I think it has to do with having the time and resources to learn how or even why they should want to in the first place. Most people don't. Most people have to work to eat and if they're not too exhausted to do anything than passively absorb entertainment when they get home that just means their boss isn't getting their full value out of them.