For me, it’s a matter of how little they know the world around them and how things affect other things. Case and point, when voters thought that voting Trump in, that he would magically make egg prices go down. They’re going down now, from what I saw shopping earlier today, but they weren’t because of him.
Another example is how when shop lifters, when they shoplift, always think that they’re harming who they call ‘The Man’ aka corporate operating the stores, directly. That’s not entirely true and I know this having worked retail several times and currently.
Who you’re hurting, really, is the store itself and those that work in it. The store pulls its own profits in by how many people shop there and part of that profit, is distributing to those who work there. When you’re stealing from that store, you are actively harming that store’s profits and in turn, harming those that work there.
The CEOs and executives are still raking in millions and they aren’t above having to shut down stores over dipshit thieves which in turn, costs a lot of jobs in that store to absorb the profits to make up whatever costs.
For me, a general lack of curiosity how things work, from human behavior, to technology, to economy, and everything else. And how you inform yourself.
Of course you can’t always be interested in everything and can’t know how everything works in detail, no one has time for that. Also you might be wrongly informed in certain instances. But if you’re so uninterested that you don’t know how almost anything works even in basic ways, or you for example only get your information from “my parents told me” or “I only believe what I have seen” or similar, I’m seriously questioning your general intelligence.
Otherwise, their reaction when their beliefs are challenged. I don’t necessarily mean when they’re told they’re wrong, but when they do something and reality gives them an unfavourable result, idk, like a magnet not sticking to a surface, if they keep trying to stick it on instead of maybe evaluating that the surface (or “magnet”) is not magnetic.