Why do people hoard toilet paper at the first sign of an emergency? Why are Super Bowl ads filled with ads for crypto? Why, in American presidential primary voting, do citizens typically select the candidate they believe is preferred by others rather than their... See more

In my interview with the producers of Behind the Curve, I argued that observing how curious, logical, intelligent people get led astray by their own psychological mechanisms—aided by the conspiracy-friendly algorithms of Google and YouTube, and the tribal and identity-stoking context of social media—shows how we are all prone to this kind of

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presume the existence of a demand for misinformation, even though consumers themselves might not interpret their own desires that way — it is a “revealed preference,” as the economists like to say. It can be deduced ex post facto by how much misinformation circulates. The authors suggest that there is already an equilibrium in that market that is... See more