In my country, where the political divide is huge, I know people who are very successful professionally and financially, yet believe all sorts of things that seem completely detached from reality. For example, I have a cousin who was convinced that if a certain presidential candidate won, the government would confiscate people's savings. Her solution was to convert a large part of her savings into jewelry.
She's highly educated. She also gets a lot of her information about climate change from a fortune teller on Instagram. I know that sounds made up, but it's not.
What's interesting to me is that, despite all this, their lives seem to go on just fine. Maybe they're a bit more anxious than they need to be, but they don't seem materially worse off because of these beliefs.
It makes me wonder whether we're just in an unusual transition period. As it becomes harder to trust what we see online, and as misinformation gets more convincing, will there eventually be a real advantage to consistently relying on reputable sources.