[marcuschong]

Something I've been wondering about is whether fake news and these alternative realities people live in will eventually have a material impact on their lives.

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.

[rossdavidh]

In various places and times in the past, otherwise rational and successful people had all sorts of odd religious (or other ideological) beliefs, that caused them to do odd things. Sometimes, those odd behaviors even had a modest negative impact on them. However, they signaled (perhaps more powerfully because somewhat costly) to those around them that they were on the "correct" side of things, that they had internalized the religion of their peers. This may have paid off for them, on balance, by making them more trusted or liked by other believers.

Not that it always turns out to be a net positive, but it can often enough to keep happening. Some niche religions have too costly demands on their members (e.g. chastity for all believers, giving away all possessions, etc.), and thus fail to survive. But others, and other belief systems that function psychologically in a similar way, can survive despite (or even because of) the modestly costly irrational behaviors. Costly signaling is a more honest testament to your commitment to the ideology.