[kethinov]

The TL;DR answer to this question is there is a lot of intellectual junk food out there and our monkey brains are pretty vulnerable to succumbing it just as we crave literal junk food and resisting those cravings is very difficult.

If only we had GLP-1 agonists for our minds too and not just our bodies.

In lieu of that, all we've got is the same as always: nurture your mind by cultivating a good media diet, a healthy skepticism that doesn't drift into reactionary contrarianism, and an openness to new information; especially new evidence that contradicts things you believe.

...Which is basically like trying to solve the obesity crisis by telling people to diet and exercise. It would be nice if we had a more effective tool or technique to help a larger percentage of people achieve it.

[nathan_compton]

I think higher education could help with this if it was de-commercialized, which I guess is just another way of saying what you are saying.

I constantly think about The Republic and Glaucon demanding pastries, fine food, etc and Socrates telling him that he can invent such a society, but it will be a society with a fever. I think capitalism, which is distinct, I think, from free markets, produces a society with a fever and in the grip of that fever everything which can be exploited will be.