Right, exactly.

See, I thought what made conspiracy theorists different was that they were doing what I was doing (and which is simply what I thought everyone should be doing): using the resources of logic, judgement, and a knowledge base of facts that you had previously built up to validate new facts and feed them back in to your knowledge base. Turns out, that's pretty much not what happens.

We all criticize normies because they get their "truths" from the mainstream. like picking books off a shelf. They are allowed a limited selection, so some choose the book labeled "Fox" over the book labeled "MSNBC", but the Elites control the books on the shelf.

I was surprised and dismayed to determine--really only very recently--that almost all "conspiracy theorists" operate the same way, just with a different set of books. They pick books off the shelf labeled "Joe Rogan" or "Clif High" or "The Greek" or whatever. Some more shadowy versions of Rupert Murdoch control or influence the vast majority of what goes on this shelf. But see how it's just an enhanced version of the other thing?

To me, a real seeker with any hope of finding out what the hell is really going on must to be able to recognize admissions of truth when spoken by a known liar, reject falsehoods and errors from their own most valued sources, and accept truths even when rejected by every other person. IDK exactly what qualities it takes to do this, but it seems clear to me that it's what we should all be shooting for.