If you think carefully, you may realize that what you said is actually entirely unrelated to what I said.

Perhaps you are not one of the people running on the unexamined assumption. I still say it's clearly operative in many people.

I call it "unexamined" precisely because once pulled up the conscious level, it is obviously false. Nevertheless, pulling such things up to the conscious level is not easy and usually takes effort. Or, to put it another why, while I cringe every time I adopt this terminology, Kahneman's System 1 is pretty sloppy about such things. System 2, when presented with a problem directly, can often see quickly that System 1 is being irrational... but it first must be presented with the problem directly.

Yes you are right. I like to think im better than that, but in this instance i clearly wasn't.

If i can quibble though, i think "all" can be a bit of a loaded word in this context, because people often use it to mean, all well known ones or something along those lines and not all potential ones including random stuff people make in their backyards.

I personally know very intelligent and highly educated people who went to top universities who are convinced vaccines caused mental retardation in their children. They may be wrong, but I would not call them nutjobs.

> "very intelligent and highly educated people who went to top universities"

Imagine trusting a "rocket scientist" to even weigh in on medical topics because they are "very intelligent" in their totally unrelated field. This is an unfortunate misconception that plagues conspiracy theory extremists who reference PhD graduates in their arguments against things like 5G brain control.... pointing to people with doctoral degrees in Music or something.

Look I am not saying they are right. My point is these are not your average stupid uneducated person. The two families in question, the one parent has multiple PhDs from Columbia and Princeton, the other took their undergrad at Caltech. You don't get those degrees by believing any random crazy thing that crosses your path. Plus they have a first hand experience with their child that for some reason makes them believe the vaccine was responsible. If it were any other topic their background and experience would lend their viewpoint more credence than dismissal as "nutjobs". What makes this topic different? Why would they have any incentive to blame the vaccine besides some sort of convincing first hand experience? Why should we in this one instance distrust their rational capacities that have allowed them to acquire intellectual credentials the vast majority of the earth's population don't have the capacity to acquire?

Being smart and being crazy are not mutually exclusive

I think it’s more accurate to say that intelligence is not adequate defense against trusting the wrong sources of information, and people are extremely resistant to changing their minds once they’ve placed a stake in the ground.

I'd go with both. There are plenty of smart people who i would consider delusional. Which is separate from people stuck in their views.

However, as the saying goes, science advances one funeral at a time.