Being impervious to persuasion isn’t about raw intelligence or common sense, but about recognizing and understanding the mechanisms behind how persuasion and hoaxes are manufactured.
Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, explains it well on his daily livestream:
Being able to be free from persuasion is a specific skill.
It’s not a general intelligence thing at all.
In fact, general intelligence works against you; you’re easier to fool.
Dumb people are harder to fool sometimes because they’ll say, “Hey, you smarty pants, looks like you’re trying to pull something on me.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I don’t know. I just don’t trust you.”
“But what do you see that’s tipping you off?”
“Don’t need to see anything.”
“I just don’t trust you, and you’re going to be right.”
So the low IQ person who says, “I just don’t trust you,” ends up being right, and the smart person says, “Let’s look at all the facts and the details by reading The New York Times.”
“But I’ll cross-check it with CNN to make sure, and—oh—they both got it right.”
“It looks like they agree. I guess that’s true, so now I’ll act like Trump is Hitler because CNN and…”
“You know, being smart isn’t helping you.”
It just is a different skill than understanding persuasion.
So you can see the mechanism—you have to be able to see the machine.
If you can’t see the mechanisms of the machine, the machine owns you.
But once you learn enough about how it’s done—such as learning how a ‘rupar’ is done, learning how incentives work, etc.—once you realize how the machine works, it just sort of materializes in front of you.
When a new hoax comes out, you go, “Oh, that just came out of that hoax machine,” and then you’re immune.
But you’ve got to see it.
You can watch him talk about it here: https://youtu.be/miIAXqb9tq4?si=LGUHPT_Iq9LCphI_&t=1925