I think one of the other reasons why conspiratorial thinking is so prominent today is because the information pipelines that we use to get knowledge about the world have completely shifted and this is something that's different from every other human who has ever lived the history up until now has been a history of expanding the number of people who can consume information but not the people who can produce information the internet has forever shifted that calculation because For the First Time Ever we have drastically expanded the pool of people who can make information and disseminate it
instantly around the world and this means the barrier to entry for crazy ideas is significantly lower than it used to be and so this combination of the information pipelines shifting in the way that we understand the world and navigate it combined with our evolutionary predisposition to storytelling and pattern detection is a perfect storm for the rise of conspiracy theories as a major driver in our modern politics
