I wouldn't judge someone who shows up to a campground at 430 am too harshly...

They're probably running on pure lizard brain at that point.

Like, depending on your definitional of rational, there was/is a reason for this behavior, but it's not like someone intentionally decides to do it. It's just autopilot.

A lot of what we do is just autopilot and rationalizing it later. Shits crazy interesting, but we can't really study it because it's not ethical to just cut people's brains in half for no reason other than to gain knowledge. And there was only a brief period it was a valid medical treatment for things like epilepsy.

Sperry performed another similar experiment in humans to further study the ability of the right hemisphere to recognize words. During that experiment, Sperry asked volunteers to place their left hand into a box with different tools that they could not see. After that, the participants saw a word that described one of the objects in the box in their left field of view only. Sperry noted that most participants then picked up the needed object from the box without seeing it, but if Sperry asked them for the name of the object, they could not say it and they did not know why they were holding that object. That led Sperry to conclude that the right hemisphere had some language recognition ability, but no speech articulation, which meant that the right hemisphere could recognize or read a word, but it could not pronounce that word, so the person would not be able to say it or know what it was.

In his last series of experiments in humans, Sperry showed one object to the right eye of the participants and another object to their left eye. Sperry asked the volunteers to draw what they saw with their left hand only, with closed eyes. All the participants drew the object that they saw with their left eye, controlled by the right hemisphere, and described the object that they saw with their right eye, controlled by the left hemisphere. That supported Sperry´s hypothesis that the hemispheres of brain functioned separately as two different brains and did not acknowledge the existence of the other hemisphere, as the description of the object did not match the drawing. Sperry concluded that even though there were no apparent signs of disability in people with a severed corpus callosum, the hemispheres did not communicate, so it compromised the full function of the brain.

https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/roger-sperrys-split-brain-experiments-1959-1968-0

I just really liked the idea that OP thought they were exaggerating the timeline with that, when they were still waaaaaay off on how baked in that behavior really was.

Modern life makes a lot more sense when you realize we really weren't built for this shit. On an evolutionary timescale we went from taking a shit while walking like a horse to Star Trek in an afternoon.

It makes it a lot easier to let shit go instead of assuming the other person is fucking with you intentionally. Which ironically is another thing baked into our instincts. It's safer to think someone you don't know is a threat and is acting maliciously. Now a days it's maladapted into road rage shootings because someone forgot to signal for a merge.

Don't worry, the wendigo that breaks into your car at night to wait for you to return will keep it company :)

Not to quibble but technically dispersed camping, according to the USFS, is camping anywhere outside designated sites. The distinction is important because people believe they can't camp on USFS (or BLM) land for free, almost anywhere they want. In fact with relatively few exceptions and with a bunch of rules like time limits, proximity to water sources, fire restrictions etc etc, you can.

After rereading they do mention they’re at a campground. I focused on the ‘dispersed camping spot’ phrase.

The only conclusion I can come to is OP uses different camping terminology than I’m familiar with. For me ‘dispersed’ can have a broad range of meanings but always means ‘not at a campground’.

Not saying I'd do it, just throwing one more option out there.