It matters to me because the sheer number of these morons who are being exploited by the rich are actively making my life and the lives the people I care about worse. To do nothing about it is to admit defeat and accept this as the way of the world. I don’t want to do that, I’d rather at least try something, even knowing the likelyhood is low.

And I don’t think pure doomerism is helpful either. By encouraging against any kind of deprogramming, you tacitly make it easier for the morons to spread without resistance.

We’re still doing it too. Pretty much all of our modern telescopes, like JWST, are built by defense contractors who then use the expertise and technologies they develop for military applications.

In the current age of the Internet that doesn’t work. It used to be people were afraid of being shunned by their community as then they would have nothing. Now with social media there are echo chambers that amplify views deserving of shunning and give refuge to those who would otherwise be shunned.

But deprogramming people like this is hard, and won’t always work. So I won’t blame anyone for shunning people like this, but just know it’s not really solving anything.