Coffee is good for you. Coffee is bad for you. Red wine supports heart health. Red wine causes cancer like all alcohol. Follow your passion, you will be rich. Don’t follow your passion, you will be poor. Play hard to get, Mr right will know what to do. Let your guard down, you are blocking Mr right. Potatoes make you fat. Potatoes support fat loss. To say nothing of mixed political messaging that never tell you what is really going on.

You’re not confused because you’re weak — you’re confused because the world bombards you with contradictory signals until you lose trust in your own perception. In practice this means you are constantly exposed to news, opinions, trends, outrage, counter-outrage, pseudo-expertise, and algorithmic manipulation that all point in different directions, leaving your inner compass spinning with no stable north. When perception breaks down, people stop acting from instinct and start acting from external cues: what’s approved, what’s safe, what’s trending, what won’t get them attacked. A population that can’t trust its own eyes or gut becomes easy to guide, not through force, but through ambiguity — when people don’t know what’s real, they surrender to whatever feels most certain. The blade cuts deepest when you realize that confusion wasn’t a flaw in the system — it was the system’s most efficient tool.