I'm in the process of reading Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari for the first time. In it, he writes about how Sapiens' major development over other human species was the ability to believe fiction. For context, he defines fiction as any concept not observable by the senses, and doesn't equate fiction with falsehood. Rather, he seems to mean abstraction.
Assuming this to be the case, our ability to abstract is what is responsible for the creation of things like government, the arts, the sciences, and basically all of our culture and knowledge.
Is it surprising that that ability to abstract could be taken too far among certain groups of people? Conspiracy theory is like a disease, not an inherent trait of humanity.
we accept lots of things without questioning them. there is nothing wrong with that ofc until you refuse to entertain the idea it might not be true. religion aside, questioning that is a different story
Assuming this to be the case, our ability to abstract is what is responsible for the creation of things like government, the arts, the sciences, and basically all of our culture and knowledge.
Is it surprising that that ability to abstract could be taken too far among certain groups of people? Conspiracy theory is like a disease, not an inherent trait of humanity.