>It’s not. American education quite closely tracks the parents’ socioeconomic status, and we have a disproportionate level of poverty for a rich nation, however. Once you compare children of similar status things tend to be a lot more similar than you’d expect based on our political discourse.

But comparing children of similar status is not indicative of the overall state of education. If there's a lot of poor people, and poor people have worse education accessibility, then the country isn't likely going to be very well educated. If money is intrinsically tied to education in your country... that's still a factor in how educated the country is overall, and the quality of the education people receive.

We don't consider Ethiopia a very well educated country, and most of that is because of the abysmal socioeconomics, I mean what is the other explanation for the difference? That they are an innately stupid race of human? I think that kind of thinking is about three centuries past it's expiry date. If the top 5% in Ethiopia have similar education to the top 5% in New Zealand, that's all and good for the top 5%, but high quality for one small percentile bracket, does not translate to the quality of education for the overall population.

The even worse quality of that system is that it essentially maintains a dynamic where the poor remain uneducated, and therefore remain poor because education is tied to income, the poor go on to have more kids than other demographics (because that's what the demographic transition model shows) and the kids grow up poor, and soon you find the system becomes dominated by that demographic and the educated portion grows into a ever more concentrated elite. Exactly what you see in the USA, and exactly why countries where the highest quality education system is accessible to pretty much the entirety of the population tend to score higher overall nationally, than the USA, IE, Sweden.

Same here, although I begin to question their rationality / criticality / logic. One in particular is an engineer who's worked on and even managed some of the biggest projects in my country, although I've come to realize most of that is connections and charisma. It's interesting too because a lot of his "brightness" is sounding smart, but rather it's just a colorful intuition heuristic that he bases most of his thinking on, with major deficits in control of his own life and thoughts.

But yes, it's an rather strange combo to tackle. First you have the fear, the anxiety, the paranoia, a vulnerability of sorts to these ideologies, which is followed by some form of ego defense which tries to reinforce the topic from a perceived reasonable system. I think you can pinpoint the emotional basis too because they psychologically project; "Oh you are just scared of COVID, sheep" (the parallel is they are scared of the vaccine / something to do with the vaccine). The problem however is that you can't erode that foundation and expect everything else to collapse, they sort of shift their goalpost so that the further justification, the reinforcement of their view becomes the foundation of their ideology.

And then you have another complex set of events, the new harder to untangle goalpost is reinforced by fear, anxiety, paranoia as they begin to delve down the rabbit hole usually corroborated by some form of illiteracy, not knowing how to interpret studies or analytically filter information, but the real problem is the further paranoia / fear results in a rejection of the system which precedes the information the perceived opposition is creating, IE, science in general or the government. Therefore it's near impossible to install the literacy needed to begin tackling the goalpost view because they systematically reject the source or association of the literacy.

I'm going to actually maybe say something a little provocative, but I think the BASIS of this thinking is pathological. I think the BASIS is an already problematic belief system, the tinted glasses were already there. For a lot of men I know who hold these views, I think they characteristically fit the dismissive-avoidant attachment style category likely stemming back to cold and rigid parents, which has lead to a long life of striving to be very independent, a struggle to intimately relate to others well and a deep insecurity. I think in part this suspicion of authority leans massively into their pathological presuppositions, but I also think it gives them some form of unified community which they likely have a longing for.

Isn't this tautological? Personalities ARE brain responses / processes, they've essentially just said "similar personalities are similar".

A side note but there was a study they did on rats which blocked all vit D3 absorption but I believe maintained all other nutrients, at 5 months old the rats biological age was nearing end of lifespan. The fantastic thing about such short lived yet complex mammals is that we can essentially view different effects on fast forward, if you assume it only lives for 2 years then 5 months is approx 20% of the lifespan.