this post was submitted on 20 Feb 2024
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It's almost impossible to reason someone out of a position that they didn't reason themselves into. Conspiracy theories hold allure for some people because it gives them some sense that the world actually does make sense, but only people who know what to see can truly understand. The scary part is that these are usually otherwise intelligent people.
I personally see this whole "sovereign citizen" garbage as the next "logical" step in their delusions. They're asserting "control" over their situations, or so they've convinced themselves.
One of the smartest, nicest guys I thought I knew was a former NASA avionics systems engineer, his office walls held a bunch of patents from things this guy had designed over the years, I was okay with the conspiracy side of him, we could relate and bs about that stuff, but when he voted for Trump and began with the MAGA bs I couldn't deal with him anymore. So yeah, I agree completely, there are some really smart intelligent people getting sucked into this stuff and how do you tell someone that not only thinks they're smarter than you, but also you think they're smarter than you, that they're wrong, seems like an impossible task.
In my experience, especially engineers are very likely to be sucked into this. More especiallier, retired engineers.
Engineers are basically taught, that a) the entire world is a clock waiting to be understood and b) they are the smartest persons in most rooms, which makes them the only ones who are capable of understanding the clock.
Their entire life is solving problems which are clear cause/effect relationships, and most importantly: solvable by them. So they start to think exactly like that. And if you look into the internal logic of conspiracies, it's always clear cause and effect. Things don't "just happen", they always have someone responsible.