This JFK Jr. thing that happened in Dallas is spooking me.

[Hortensis]

110. Various personality traits especially dispose some to conspiracism

and self delusion. That's why intelligence and rational cognition don't necessarily dominate -- personality gets in ahead and trumps. It's sounding like personality may come to trump all the time, or at least in some areas of life. I'm thinking of someone who's politically determinedly dishonest and deluded politically, determinedly ignorant as two bags of rocks, who turned out to be startlingly intelligent and fact-oriented in business matters related to her work, like two different people.

Something that must apply to this subect is that one of the big personality types tends to send input for emotional processing before cognitive analysis. It's likely the latter might be skipped altogether on subjects where emotional reaction jibes with what is "known" to be "known." Obviously, a strong disposition that way would be a huge built-in vulnerability.

And equally obviously, people have widely varying degrees of susceptibility.

A few minutes ago our daughter told us a childhood friend we've known since she was a toddler is a deep Q-nut; she was always too conservative for them to be close as they grew up, but her on-line activities show she's now become estranged from all her old friends and has all new ones on line where our daughter has seen what's happened to her.