Of course you are correct, as the “you must be fun at parties” and “thanks professor” responses to my posts obviously support.
For me, having being deep in the field for so long, and seeing how it is being increasingly used to influence, manipulate, (and at times control) people’s lives, it is frightening the level of apathy or outright resistance to anyone trying to raise these concerns and help educate others about the way these systems work and why they are important.
I think a lot of that comes with the “we’ve had enough of experts” and the anti-intelligencia movements over the last few decades.
And I can say from experience many entities—public and private—are absolutely capitalising on those trends to take advantage of people. Which is both sad and frustrating from my perspective.