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Yes, that is true to a very large extent. And have them built for us by eager spin doctors. The rate of spread of hysterias like the latest anti-vaxxing movements are fairly effective proofs-of-concept here.

Replying to

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Pretty amazing to see in the case of one of my in-laws: He left Poland as a clueless neoliberal type for a summer job. Came back several months later as a born-again fundamentalist. Completely bizarre. Completely normal, too.

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Yeah. These things evolve like religions. I guess that's just humans.

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Now he also believes vaccines cause autism (no small irony, given he's like 90% likely to have undiagnosed Asperger), and that you need to supplement vitamin C in quantities that would make Hitler's ol' "inject methamphetamine directly into the spinal cord" doctor blush.

Replying to

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Sounds like a good test-case to see if there's a way of talking people down from this stuff. For some anti-vax types it's a whole lifestyle - Steiner fans, homeopaths - but these recent converts must surely be curable - there's less of a reason for them to believe.

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If anything, I think he's the exact evidence of how this usually functions: it's a fad. An extremely dangerous fad. But a fad. People are just very poor at judging which fads are worth investing in.

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It's interesting to me because it doesn't seem to push that many of the usual buttons for beliefs like this; if we look at the range of human emotional needs a fully-evolved religion (or even some less well-defined lifestyles) provides, this stuff is pretty weak.

Replying to

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It's too narrow a topic for people who don't have a religious/pseudo-religious background, so it has limited community benefits. It doesn't provide comfort, but also doesn't provide a regular dose of fear. The risk is that other conspiracy theory type stuff is the next step.

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Yes, which mostly tells you how weak our institutions and social fabric have become - most people are barely even duct taped together. This is what people inside establishment bubbles can't understand. It's a jungle out here. Nobody actually believes in anything anymore.