Why we think that way.

MAYBE QUARTERLY - Vol 3 / Issue 1 - Always Assuming:

"Have you ever felt conned by teachers, priests, politicians, acquaintances or family?

To achieve this outcome the scam-artist has to control the channels of communication.

Usually we 'potential victims' have multiple channels of input that we can use to verify our perceptions.

Cults, the military, the major religions, state education, practical jokers, hoaxers and confidence tricksters attempt to isolate us from a complete range of checks and balances, and ideally they control the few channels left available to us, through which they feed us data and models of their choosing.

If they can’t completely control our use of other channels they can create false trails, strange loops, confusion, social pressure, a hint of illegal activity, paranoia, manufactured evidence or misinformation to encourage us to distrust these alternative viewpoints, or reality checks."