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Comment by chrismcb | Hacker News Reader

Where would you go? Conspiracy theories aren't unique to the us.

I was thinking Switzerland. Other European countries are also enticing, and I'm actually completely fine with the higher taxes, but less fine with the substantially lower wages for software engineering.

I am sure there are conspiracy theories everywhere but it feels like even some of the crazier ones are becoming mainstream in the US. I worry that staying here too long is playing chicken against the possibility of a crazy+competent person taking advantage of the conspiracy theories in ways Trump couldn't fully do.

You might check out this related comment before jumping ship: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25020778

Yeah, like I said surely there are conspiracy theorists everywhere and the "hippy granola" conspiracy theorists are a group I'm familiar with in the US (usually these are the "holistic medicine", anti-vaccine, unschooling, etc. people). I remember traveling through Germany and seeing tons of alternative medicine physician offices, and was surprised to learn in a lot of European countries you can actually use the socialized/public health systems to pay these "physicians", which I would find infuriating if it were my tax dollars going to that. But that's a bit of a digression. What's important to me is the scale and impact of the delusion moreso than the fact there are at least some deluded people.

Actually, at least in Germany the physicians you saw are still proper educated and certified doctors. They also are typically grounded very much on fundamental health education (although I'm certain there are exceptions). Many of them I suspect are using the whole alternative medicine more as an advertisement or a distinguishing factor, and the main thing they do might be prescripe acupuncture instead of pain meds. At least that was the experience I had when I went to one (I didn't seek him out specifically, it was just the closest one where I could get an appointment quickly).

Stop worrying. There have been popular conspiracy theories for ages. Aliens abducted by the CIA, JFK assassination, Moon landing hoax, 9/11 truthers, Illuminati, chemtrails, 5G, and the biggest one of all that you'll never escape from - religions. It's OK that people have different beliefs from you. You probably believe in some things, even dangerous things, that are obviously wrong too without realizing it.

People worrying about Qanon might just be suffering from selection and recency biases. If you don't quantify it and compare it to other conspiracy theories that you already tolerate, it might be an illusion. So much of this culture war stuff seems to be driven by those biases and complete failure to understand the scale of anything. Using instead, the frequency of news report and social media posts to estimate how popular an idea is.

The mania that these wild fabrications create in the US is... particular.

People are credulous of falsehood and don't seem able to apply critical thinking. Maybe these collective delusions help the deluded groups in some way... or serve the needs of a power structure.

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