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Great reply. The economic aspect - cost balanced against opportunity cost balanced against utility - is certainly a very good lens through which to view the problem. In my opinion it can be reconciled with the more psycho-physiological approach taken in the piece that started this exchange. One's ability to endure pain can be likened to one's bank account: if one has more financial resources, a given purchase hurts a lot less than if one's teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. One of the things I was trying to get at in the original piece was that comfortable living has made us less emotionally capable of discomfort - in the economic metaphor, poorer.

Another point of unification: a smaller, weaker state with less ability to micro-manage our lives like Nurse Ratchet with a fistful of benzos in one hand and an electroschock panel in the other, has a necessary corollary an emotionally tougher populace. Hard times, strong men, etc. The only way we bring the monster to heal is if we're strong enough to do so, and willing to pay the cost of doing so; and living in a world without Nanny also requires people to be tougher.

Of course, perceived costs and utilities are also not constant in time. As applied to desire for truth: the further society descends into its current psychotic break, the worse things get; the worse things get, the higher the cost of not admitting the truth. Sort of like an alcoholic hitting rock bottom (or a fattie not being able to fit into her septuple-X-L bottoms).

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> "But consider the actual functional value of knowing, say, that the '69 moon landing was faked. [...] If anything, it makes you more miserable, especially if the other people who believe the landings were fake are wrong about why."

Okay, I'll bite. Why does "team moron" think the moon landings were faked? "The aliens warning them off" story?

My hypothesis is that Kennedy set an unrealistic goal and after Johnson bumped him off, he didn't want to walk back such a great achievement and have egg all over his face. Plus, a useful distraction against Vietnam, the Cold War in general, and the assassination itself.

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