how do you trust?
You know that feeling when you and your friends are arguing about something trivial like when an album came out and everyone is 100% sure of the year, even though they are different years, and someone finally says, google it.
Google confirms one side’s opinion and you would think they had just won the Super Bowl. Yes! I was right!
God it feels good to be right, doesn’t it?
Side note: I sometimes have this thought that much of religion is belief in a final “I’ll be right.” In other words, so much of the motive is that I will get to Heaven, see my mean neighbor who is going to Hell, and get to say “See, I was right!”
Side side note: This is much of the vaccine stuff. See, I was right. Except, most people don’t ever get it. If you didn’t get vaccinated and end up super sick, you get to say “I was right” and if you did get vaccinated and didn’t end up super sick you also get to say “See, I was right.” An interesting question is: when do I get to say I was right?
Which brings us back to Google. Right now, the vast majority of Americans trust that when you google when did Hysteria come out, you get the “true” answer. But, why do we trust Google? We don’t trust it for “Are vaccines safe?” or “Is COVID dangerous?” but maybe because those are “opinions” and the date of an album release is a “fact” which brings up what the hell is the difference, sometimes, in a fact and an opinion? The world being round seems pretty factual but there are thousands of people who think it is not.
Which brings us to… how do you trust? I have some friends that tell me they don’t trust anyone… which sounds good but is impossible. If you don’t trust anyone, do you trust the people that tell you not to trust anyone? How do you trust? How do I trust? It got me thinking… honestly, how do I decide who or what to trust?
I came up with 10 general guidelines - which I’m not saying are right - and none of them are foolproof by any stretch, but I’m generally curious what yours are.
Educations/experts. I generally trust a pilot on how to fly a plane more than someone who read about planes on Facebook. I get that “experts” disagree on many things so this one doesn’t go very far.
Fat Stacks. Of course, everyone has money involved but if someone is making money directly because of what they are trying to convince me of I’m less trustworthy.
Makes Sense. This one is also vague and subjective but it’s kinda the Occam’s razor rule. I mean a global conspiracy involving every government to make money for big Pharma generally makes less sense than a virus mutating from an animal to a human.
Jackaass. Also vague but if a jackass is trying to convince me of something, I generally don’t believe it. If the person is kind, I’m more willing to listen.
Consistent. If someone tells me that Hitler is still alive and that I should eat snow to cure a fever, I’m much less likely to trust the snow thing - because Hitler is 99.99999% not alive.
Lazy. Related to the above… if someone is really adamant about something that takes about 10 seconds to google (assuming we can trust google at some level) to learn why that thing is not true…. I’m less trustworthy of anything else they say.
Majority. I generally trust fact checking, peer reviews, and research only because I generally trust a scientific or journalistic majority. I know this is very scary - especially if you don’t trust majorities - but I just personally do trust the majority of experts for many of the reasons above.
Balance. I feel like facts balance this weird line of opposing forces of evolution and consistency. If it’s too stuck, I mistrust it, but also if it’s too out there (from what has been consistent) I tend to be suspicious. In other words, it seems like we learn at a nice pace for the most part - if someone is saying we haven’t learned anything in a thousand years and it’s all the exact same or someone is saying that everything we believed for a thousands years has been a complete and utter lie, those get hard.
History. I love reading history. It seems like a lot of the things I don’t trust, are things I don’t trust because people didn't trust the same thing 1,000 years ago and, even if they have not been proven in their mistrust, they sure haven’t been proven right.
More. This might be my most important gauge. I generally trust things that benefit more people than those that benefit less, especially if it’s only the individual saying it who gets the benefit. This one is really important to me. The less people that benefit the more suspect I am.
Finally, it’s worth repeating… trust is a scale, not a yes or no. I’m not sure I trust much at 100% or 0% but 75 to 80% seems pretty solid.
Alright, those are somewhat off the top of my head and I’ll stop there. What you got?