I cannot agree that because I don't think @ovid, an illness, is a big deal I automatically think there's a conspiracy beneath it. It depends on how you define conspiracy, of course, but I'm assuming we are talking about a secret plan by an organized group. In fact, my hypothesis is that what we are living is what behavioural psychologists call an availability cascade, which is "a self-reinforcing process of collective belief formation by which an expressed perception triggers a chain reaction that gives the perception of increasing plausibility through its rising availability in public discourse". And it is known that in such processes, there is a class of intervenients called the availability entrepreneurs, "activists who manipulate the content of public discourse (...) to advance their agendas". These availability entrepreneus are not exactly conspirators and are not necessarily organized in a single uniform group. The book I asked opinions about is also probably not part of what we would normally call a conspiracy, it's a widely known book about the mess we are in written by people who are powerful and are clearly stating their intention to work as availability entrepreneurs in the process...
I do agree that it is often useful to discuss with people who don't fully agree with us. But for me, that is useful as long as they don't engage in ad hominem attacks. They are free to doing it, of course, but I'm also free to answer them back.
