I will be honest about my experience that seems somewhat relevant. I think that all it really takes to become extremely paranoid is listening to enough paranoi

I will be honest about my experience that seems somewhat relevant. I think that all it really takes to become extremely paranoid is listening to enough paranoid talk over a period of time. Some years ago I went through a period where I was on YouTube or something watching InfoWars-type content on a daily basis (and other conspiracy theorists). After a fair amount of this, I was quite afraid of the government. I know there were days when I was afraid someone was out to get me for literally no rational reason. But that type of content is designed to make you feel that way. It's part of their weirdly effective hook. But at the core it's really just repeating a stream of extreme or paranoid perspectives in different ways. Point being, I believe if someone decided they needed to convince a group of people about how corrupt the world is, or whatever, they could do so. One aspect of this might be a little bit of social isolation, just based on the fact that if you are in contact with fewer people then you are likely exposed to fewer information streams. So when they mention people who have very different ideologies, very high IQ, or anything else that might make it slightly harder to socialize, that seems to add up also. The toughest part to me is that deep down I personally believe some core motivator of this paranoia IS rational in a way. Because my speculation is that we will see these general purpose AI technologies in our lifetime and there actually are groups who seem predisposed to misuse them or build the wrong type of system and that could be truly disasterous. I think that obsessing over these types of speculative existential risks though obviously is not a sustainable way to live for most people.