Translation: "Why did Trump win the election even though he and his policies are obviously nuts?"
Seriously, not trying to inject politics or my opinion on Trump, but there do seem to be a lot of these "why do people make act so crazy" articles lately. I too am trying to make sense of it all and failing.
When a mental model dies by no longer being predictably useful in the world, no matter if its religious or astrological or chemistry or physics or politics or economics or whatever, unlike the death of a famous person, the death of a worldview is a very hard sell, but "the folks we don't like also happen to be dumb and crazy" is an extremely easy sell. The twilight of every model looks the same across all humanity. A left wing fake news provider today sounds pretty much like a right wing pre-civil rights era southern "humorist" talking about blacks, its the same speech but different subjects.
If you believe in the right/left dichotomy then over more than a century the right tends to respond to dissent with force, isolation (camps), and criminalization, whereas the left tends to respond to dissent with indoctrination medication and mental hospitalization. "Anyone who would disagree with world communism must be mentally ill, lets treat them in a special hospital ward". So a natural concern troll against the right is to insist they're just taking the wrong pills and with the right mix of benzos they'd be happy to see their civilization annihilated. Which, technically, is true, if you get people high enough they don't care anymore.
I think that's probably true, but discussions and studies around cognitive bias have been going on for ages, just not necessarily in an accessible way, or in the mainstream.
That is, unless you are in marketing, advertising, or public office - then its probably your job to exploit all our irrational foibles for profit or power.
Either way, I think its important to get a better handle on just how rational we are vs how rational we think we are - and on ways to push us towards the more rational side of things.
Seriously, not trying to inject politics or my opinion on Trump, but there do seem to be a lot of these "why do people make act so crazy" articles lately. I too am trying to make sense of it all and failing.