 I tend not to attribute people's militant opinions too much to wanting to make money. I think there's psychological forces that are at work that are more powerful, like wanting to belong, wanting to seek approval from certain segment of the population, at least taking sides. Taking sides is psychologically satisfying because now you belong. Now you are accepted. Now you have external allies that tell you that you are good because you're on team good in the war on evil. And at a time when the stories that help us create an identity through participation in a common goal are breaking down, people are having an identity crisis and therefore they gravitate toward partisan political and other opinions. Because we used to have a unifying story of civilization. It was of ascent. It was of progress. And you're an ambitious young man, well, here's what to do. You become a rocket scientist. You become a doctor. You become even a lawyer because you become a functioning, productive member of society and you are part of this glorious ascent of humanity toward this amazing future. Like that infused life with meaning and we don't have that anymore. And people are just grasping, struggling to make life mean something. When you ask, well, why does somebody have the beliefs and convictions that they have? Is it because they made a dispassionate survey of all of the possibilities and applied critical thinking and sifted through all the data? No, usually people believe what is convenient for them to believe. And in what sense it fits in with other things that they believe. It garners the approval of people around them. It enables them to say that they are a good person. It helps them to belong to a community of other people who hold the same beliefs. So people naturally gravitate toward those kinds of beliefs. One of my favorite sayings is you cannot reason somebody out of a belief that they didn't reason themselves into to begin with. This is human nature because we are social animals. And for thousands of years, the most important thing was the acceptance of the group. In ancient times, the worst punishment wasn't even execution. It was ostracism, banishment, which probably amounted to execution because people were dependent on each other. I've been subjected to a certain amount of cancelling and denunciation online. And man, it hurts, you know what I mean? Like on a deep level, it's really distressing. And yeah, like I can grow a thick skin, you know? But when it happens, my instinct is to find my tribe, find the people who will say, oh, yeah, those fuckers are just totally wrong and they're subhuman in some way unlike us and like, ah, yeah, my people. And I recognize that pattern as very close to the origin of the problem. That tribalism, that mob mentality where social tension is relieved by turning on some victim. And I better make sure that I'm not that victim. I better be tight with my folks so that I don't get dehumanized and victimized, scapegoated.