Conspiracy theorists don’t realize they’re on the fringe

Overconfidence is one of the most important core underlying components, because if you’re overconfident, it stops you from really questioning whether the thing that you’re seeing is right or wrong, and whether you might be wrong about it. You have an almost moral purity of complete confidence that the thing you believe is true. You cannot even imagine what it’s like from somebody else’s perspective. You couldn’t imagine a world in which the things that you think are true could be false. Having overconfidence is that buffer that stops you from learning from other people. You end up not just going down the rabbit hole, you’re doing laps down there.

Underlying article:

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/01461672251338358

[Hat-tip: Slashdot]

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That’s one of the best metaphors (albeit mixed) I’ve ever encountered.

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. . . and applying for a building permit.

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