Strong belief is an easy target

I read a Wired article today about an Indian medical student who, apparently, scammed many thousands of dollars out of, in his words, super dumb MAGA men. All he had to do was use ai to generate social media content from a hot conservative woman - videos, photos, captions, and guns and freedom. You get the idea - a veritable tickbox of beliefs sure to tickle certain gullible minds. I guess this is where we are now. Not that people with unmovable belief systems are any less prone to scams and grifts. In one meta-study, belief inflexibility is strongly associated with delusional convictions. And who doesn't know someone who doubles down on erroneous beliefs when confronted with evidence to the contrary? It strikes me as an interesting example of the delusional capacity of individuals with rigid belief systems that they were easily and quickly separated from their money. All it took was a hot conservative ai generated woman spouting key MAGA beliefs. It seems that a combination of sexual…