> Even worse I am having a tough time putting my finger on what the shortcoming of these people is. I've been fairly obsessed with this general area for severa

> Even worse I am having a tough time putting my finger on what the shortcoming of these people is. I've been fairly obsessed with this general area for several years now, and I have come to a fairly strong conclusion that the(!) root cause is the nature of human consciousness (and in turn, how individuals perceive & conceptualize reality...or, how the human mind ~renders reality to our consciousness). > It’s not IQ as I’ve seen and met quite a few gullible sheep of this sort who would undoubtedly score high. I don’t see a strong correlation either way with intelligence. It doesn’t even seem to be one’s metaphysics or epistemology. I know devoutly religious people as well as mystics and occultist types who are nonetheless not gullible in the way that this crowd is gullible, and I have seen atheists and people with scientific backgrounds who are. Race, nationality, even educational attainment doesn’t seem to map. While there is surely some variance by various dimensions like these, I have come to the same conclusion as you, this phenomenon does not seem to have a very strong causal relationship with any of these things, as counter-intuitive as that may seem. That said, I think it is possible to start to make some sense out of it if you (even speculatively, as a thought experiment) consider it from the perspective of consciousness (our "reality rendering/generation engine") being the fundamental or primary root cause.