So we're not talking past each other, your example of conspiracy uncles was attitudes toward masks, which is pandemic policy, so it is precisely on topic as an example.

Conspiracy theories are rooted in (if not defined as) the logic of uncharitable interpretations, and I'm saying the source of that is whether the subject of the theory is viewed as a protagonist or antagonist. Conflating the dumb and the smart in that stddev/sigma view is an artifact of that uncharitable thinking as well, where the average person has been trained to think the common are stupid and the exceptional are insane.

Optimistically, we can dislodge that, and I'd emphasize this uncharitable cognitive bias as the source of the divide.