Mistrusting authority might be good. What I see happening is in fact trusting too much into "authority" without penalizing it for inconsistencies - I would call it more like blind faith. I feel this happens because it makes it easier than questioning everything you hear and deciding for yourself, and accepting you might be wrong, or that the information is unknown. People want a savior and a simple solution!

> blaming it on technology seems doomed to failure

Recognizing that technology is now so convenient, psychology manipulative, and operates in a furiously fast feedback evolutionary regime, and that it has radically increased the spread of cultural irrationality isn't about "blame" in a judgy moral way.

It is about characterizing major factors behind the problem.

The enormous amount of near instant coordinated (by intention or dynamic), interactive misinformation, made so conveniently available that large percentages of the population routinely and enthusiastically expose themselves to it, participate in reinforcing it, throughout their typical day, is very new.

> "Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced." -- James Baldwin

People have had a mistrust in authority as far back as when nomadic tribes were the norm but somebody had to decide where to hunt or gather that day or to move on. Good luck changing human nature.

That's a little like saying nuclear bombs aren't a technology, but a human problem. And you bet, they sure are, but it's a lot harder to wipe out everyone, if the nutjobs in your community just have a pointed stick.

And 'nutjobs' may be pejorative, but I'll hold on to it as apt. At the same time I assign no blame, for it is an issue of cognition. The best way I can describe it is, intelligence is not a single factor. And it's not even a few factors. It's a massive bar graph, with 1000s upon 1000s of bars, each delineating a different aspect of intelligence.

A lucky few may score high on all those bars, yet even the most intelligent of us tend to score high on only some of those bars. And my point is, I've seen people immensely intelligent on some of those bars, yet astonishingly deficient on others.

We love to make fun of politicians, so I'll use one as an example here. Politicians tend to be incredibly personable, and very difficult to dislike in person. They exude congeniality, they read you like a book, and can often orate your wallet completely out of your pocket, and you'll thank them for it too. It's how they managed to go so far politically, yet some of these same politicians have severe and massive deficiencies in cognition.

Back to the pointed sticks, and the nutjobs who would wield them pre-tech, these people are simply as they are. Yet in the past, you'd see one nutjob in a community, and they'd be surrounded by normalcy, it would temper them, mitigate their effect, sand off their edges so to speak.

Yet as our communities grew in size and scope, these individuals could finally meet more of their ilk. A large city might have dozens of them, larger still cities hundreds, and they'd meet up. And as technology grew, and access to the printing press become possible for all, and for less and less cost, these same people could then send their madness in newsletter form to even those small communities where maybe only one nutjob existed.

But those people needed to still connect in some way. Maybe through an ad in the back of a magazine, or something akin yet far less gated by 'normals'.

Yet today? Now? Algorithms match you up with all those nutjobs. Where before you might live in isolation, and the friends you had might scoff at that weird idea you have, now you've found a community of hundreds, or thousands just like you! And they all affirm your madness, they pat you on the back, they congratulate you for seeing the light! They whisper all those sweet nothings into your ear, all those secret things you knew were true, and they listen to all you say on the subject.

For the first time in your life you have a home, a community, and before TikTok, or some weird forum, it would have never all been possible. You'd have been isolated, even in the age of magazines, and print, for you'd have never found one another.

And worse, now profit enters the system. Those who would steal, or thieve, or build bridges with sub-standard concrete for profit, or anything for money regardless of cost to us all, appear on this scene. They see those nutjobs, and they seek to profit from them. They own youtube, or tiktok channels, and often do not believe in anything but profit. They'll tell you anything you want to hear, espouse any crazy idea, and like that bridge built with substandard concrete, they'll take the money and run as society collapses around them.

This profit motive was always there, see cults. Yet the reach and scope was just not what it is today, there is so much more range given to a single person now.