I've noticed there's a certain class of person, whose beliefs are optimized for social and professional convenience, who looks with pity and judgment on me and my family for holding in their view suboptimal ones.

They have meticulously configured their world views to fit in rather than to look for what’s true. They see as true what’s socially and professionally convenient and have no regard for whether it checks out in reality or for first principles. Or put differently, “reality” to them IS the social and professional reality. Beliefs are simply tools to navigate that optimally, and my tools are (and they are actually right about this) woefully, *tragically* suboptimal for that purpose.

They wonder — “what happened to him?” And they laugh about all the “conspiracy theories” and “right-wing tropes” for which I have fallen.

Because like them, I too am an educated laptop-class person, I know a lot of these people. And because they are in my social circles (mostly via my wife), I have largely tolerated them.

But I’m getting sick of it. I have no ill-will toward them, but I am tired of buying into the frame that what they are doing is somehow “normal”.

It’s not normal to deny reality, to believe lies, to believe the people who lied to your repeatedly, to cut yourself off from good information in order to maintain a narrative, to think emotionally rather than rationally, to use your reasoning to defend the indefensible beliefs you hold, to download talking points uncritically. It’s not just bizarre but I’m starting to think it’s actually pathological.

. . .

I watched some videos by Matthias Desmet on Mass Formation Psychosis during the “pandemic” and he points out that MFP isn’t what you might think, like people running naked through the streets during a manic episode. It’s more that they narrow the parameters of their worldviews so tightly as a mechanism for coping with the extreme anxiety, and they do not deviate from those narrow lanes.

And that’s what it really is — psychosis. All these “normal” people feeling sorry for you because you are not optimizing for fiat social and professional advancement are actually in a state of psychosis. You can humor them, assume they’re just pretending for a bit out of convenience, but after a while, you realize they’re in much deeper than that, and you’re not sure if they’re coming back.

. . .

I used to think I could persuade people via reasoning of my point of view and if they had a good counterargument I might learn something, evolve my thinking. But now I realize that really does not apply to a large swath of the population who are downloading their views from some outsourced sense-making machine to which they’ve pledged their fealty. There is no conversation to be had, no real exchange of ideas possible. And as such there is sadly no value in maintaining the relationship, either.