Outcast_Searcher wrote:So the modern educational system doesn't teach people to reason?
It's not all about that. It's about people's penchant to build narratives that confirm their preferred world-view the way beavers build dams. If they develop a cynical world-view then they will seek out information that confirms it and filter out anything that doesn't until they have enclosed themselves in an iron-clad mental fortress.
Take Marjorie Taylor Greene's denial of the Parkland shooting, for instance. There was a very clear reason
why she denies it. She communicates this very clearly in her rhetoric. It's because she rightly sees how a rash of mass shootings undercuts public support for unfettered gun rights. By constructing conspiracy theories where these are staged in order to sabotage gun rights advocates it allows her and all others like her to sidestep having to reconcile the issue of mass shootings with their absolutist notions of gun ownership. It's a simple avoidance strategy.
Most conspiracy theories are a form of denial. Stop the steal was a defense mechanism Trump employed in order to avoid the damage to his ego. His followers (who like all populist drones live vicariously through his ego) latched onto it for the same exact reason.
The most important lesson in learning to reason is to remove your own wants, desires, and fears from the equation, which most people are simply incapable of doing.