How to Stay Sane in a World That Rewards Insanity

Summary

Somewhere around 2016, the smartest people I knew started saying increasingly stupid things.These were folks who could parse dense academic papers, who understood reason, who were entirely capable of holding two competing ideas in their heads without their brains short-circuiting.One friend became “convinced” that every major news story was manufactured consent. Another started treating political disagreement as evidence of moral corruption. A third began using the word "liberal" as if it was a personality disorder rather than loose coalitions of sometimes contradictory beliefs.The common thread: their extreme positions got them more of what they wanted. The friend who saw conspiracies everywhere built a following. Then an audience. Then a 7-figure income stream. The one who tribalized every issue found a ready-made community that validated every prior. Etc, etc. The incentive gradient was clear: sanity was expensive, and extremism paid dividends.We talk a lot about polarization as if it were a disease that infected society, but we’re missing a key data point: polarization is a growth hack, and it works. When you pick a side and commit to it wholly and without reservation, you get things that moderate positions cannot provide. You get certainty in an uncertain world. You get a community that will defend you. You get a simple heuristic for navigating complex issues.Above all: you get engagement, attention and influence.The writer who says "this issue has nuance and I can see valid concerns on multiple sides" gets a pat on the head and zero retweets. The influencer who says "everyone who disagrees with me on this is either evil or stupid" gets quote-tweeted into visibility and gains followers who appreciate their approximation of clarity.The returns on reasonableness have almost entirely collapsed.Which begs the question: why resist? If extremism delivers what people want, maybe we should just let it run its course and stop clutching our pearls?The problem is what hap...