Capgras Syndrome in the Digital Age

“Capgras delusions,” ... the belief that loved ones have been replaced by identical imposters... the brain has separate modules for analyzing the cognitive aspects of recognition, and for feeling the emotional aspects of familiarity...
these functional fault lines in the social brain... have given rise to the contemporary Facebook generation... where nothing is quite recognizable but everything seems familiar.
A dichotomy between cognition and emotion... is false... The two endlessly interact... normal function requires extensive integration of the two.
not only has modern life increasingly dissociated recognition and familiarity, but it has impoverished the latter ... worsened by our frantic skill at ... social multitasking... We reduce our social connections to mere threads so that we can maintain as many of them as possible... we become increasingly vulnerable to imposters... become intimate with people whose familiarity then proves false.
we think that what is false and artificial in the world around us is substantive and meaningful. It’s not that loved ones and friends are mistaken for simulations, but that simulations are mistaken for them.