1. Moore’s Law plus the internet makes smart people smarter, and stupid people less smart.
2. Manipulable people can be reached with a greater flood of information, so over time as data on them accumulate, they become more manipulable.
3. It is often easier to manipulate smart people than stupid people, because the latter may be oblivious to a greater set of cues and clues.
4. Social media bring smarter people together with the less smart more than used to be the case, Twitter more so than Facebook. Members of each group are appalled by what they experience. The smarter people see the lesser smarts of many others. The less smart people — who often are not entirely so stupid after all — can see how manipulated the smarter people are. They also see that the smarter people look down on them and attack their motives and intellects. Both groups go away thinking less of each other.
4b. The smarter people, in reacting this way, in fact are being manipulated by the (stupider) powers that be.
5. “There is a performative dimension that renders both sides more rigid and dishonest.” From a correspondent.