In my experience you can find plentiful examples of similar behaviour among people in general. Take any culture-war-themed thread here on HN and marvel at the

In my experience you can find plentiful examples of similar behaviour among people in general. Take any culture-war-themed thread here on HN and marvel at the extensive collection of knowledge and facts people have on the subject, often extending well into unknowable regions that require omniscience, mind reading, future gazing, etc. Human beings seem to be highly intuitive thinkers, but you may not notice it much in environments with low variance in core values and beliefs. But just so I'm not misunderstood, I don't disagree that conspiracy oriented communities seem to have an unusually high percentage of people who are highly open to new and speculative ideas, and are mostly extremely tolerant of diversity of thought. I don't think it's necessarily as bad as it's made out to be, I think they provide some legitimate value to society, although whether it is net beneficial I'm not entirely sure.