Author and professional poker player Annie Duke on how conspiracy theories gain ground

Earlier today, Facebook said it has removed hundreds of QAnon groups from its site, and that it’s restricting many more groups, along with hundreds of pages, and more than 10,000 Instagram accounts.

As the New York Times observed in its report about the maneuvers, four-year-old QAnon, once a fringe phenomenon, has gone mainstream in recent months despite a wide range of patently outlandish conspiracy theories, including that the world is run by pedophiles trying to damage Donald Trump and that 5G cellular networks are spreading the coronavirus.

How is this happening exactly? Because we happened to be talking this week with the famed former professional poker player turned best-selling author Annie Duke — an academic who has made a career in most recent years of writing about decision theory, including in her upcoming book “How to Decide: Simple Tools for Making Better Choices” — we asked for her thoughts about whether and why more people than ever have grown susceptible to conspiracy theories.

She had some interesting things to say that we thought worth sharing. Stay tuned for a longer piece from our conversation about her new book and how it can help both founders and investors.