Preference for delusion
High intelligence offers no protection from modern propaganda.
Why is that?
It’s because propaganda operates through our emotions — it makes us care less about truth, in favor of something else.
It makes us prefer to be deluded emperors than accurate losers.
Deluded emperors get to share opinions without fear of rejection by friends and family, to feel superior to “conspiracy theorists,” to feel supported by authoritative sources, and to feel completely justified in all of these luxuries.
Accurate losers possess blueprints for technology that could end the energy crisis, predicted the Great Reset in 1995, and cured cancer with a series of spicy vegetables. But modern society is designed to make them look like crazy, deranged losers to everyone else.
And no amount of intellectual horsepower can overcome a preference for delusion.