Epistemology: who to trust?

Philosophy is often seen as a bit of an airy fairy head in the clouds useless endeavour, mostly being engaged in by people with more time than sense. And rightly so - a lot of it is! But in these times right now, with the onset of the pandemic, the introduction of the vaccine, one branch of philosophy is actually at the forefront of public life now: epistemology, and more specifically, how do we decide who to trust?

Trust is of course a fundamental pillar of human life. We have to trust others to survive. Communicating with words wouldn’t be very useful if there wasn’t an implicit trust between the two people speaking, so trust in others underlies literally everything that we do in society.

Normally that trust is pretty mundane. I trust the company who made my sandwich for lunch today not to have poisoned my food, I trust the people in cars not to run me over, I trust my co-workers to give me true information about clients and tasks.

But when it comes to covid, of course the trust is much less mundane. Do I trust government and health organizations who are begging me to take the vaccine, or do I trust these sources I’m finding online that are telling me the government wants to poison me?

If we could each individually test the vaccine for ourselves, of course there would be no need for trust. But it’s obvious that that’s not a possibility, in regards to this vaccine or in general - we don’t have the time, expertise or resources to test everything.

And usually this dilemma about who to trust, like I said, is so mundane, but in this case it’s actually much more pressing and immediate. If you trust the wrong person, you risk illness or death, but you also don’t have the option to “withhold judgement” for free, because withholding judgement itself comes with the risk of illness or death! You can of course withhold judgement, but it’s not a free choice anymore.

And I think that’s quite interesting. The virus and the vaccine have forced our hands to make an epistemic judgement about who to trust.

I have made my own personal decision about who I trust in this case. I’m curious about your guys reasoning, though. Most of you I suspect have chosen to trust the health officials that the vaccine is the right choice. A small number of you have likely chosen not to trust those people. I’m curious about your reasoning. Both groups.

For context, the thing that triggered this post was observing this subreddit:

reddit.com/r/HermanCainAward/

The sub is for making fun of covid deniers and anti vaxxers who later died of covid.

I assume that most subjects of those posts - most of these deniers - are honest in their beliefs. If you assume that they’re honest, and wrong, then you start viewing the sub as a list of people who died because of epistemic errors.

Alternatively, if it’s not an epistemic error and these victims of covid made the rational decision, then of course it’s just a sub of tragedies - it’s tragic either way, really.

It’s fascinating to me that epistemology has literally never been more important, and that people might be dieing from making philosophical errors.

A lot of these organizations … governments, medical organizations, corporations, pharmaceutical companies … don’t have a great track record when it comes to trust.

It makes some sense to use sources which don’t have that same baggage.

Of course, then you have to evaluate the information that they present rather than just trusting them. But that doesn’t seem to happen. Instead people trust these alternate sources because they are going against the mainstream sources that they don’t trust. A philosophy of trust the opposite.

How is this example any different than people who received the vaccine dying from Covid?

I read a comment from a black woman recently talking about how the source of a lot of vaccine hesitancy from the black community comes from a history of medical abuse. Hard to fault them on that take.

If a known liar walked up to me and said, “Take this shot, it will protect you”, would I take it? Not a chance in HELL!

First we are told that the general public doesn’t need to wear a mask. Then we are told a mask is mandatory. Are they making it up as they go along? The first BS didn’t work, so they change their story?

What a bunch of lying crooks!

The difference is in dying because of a bad choice or dying despite a good choice.

Suppose the vaccine is poison. People who trust the vaccine and take it would die because of their error in trusting the vaccine. People who don’t trust it but get covid anyway would have died despite making the correct choice.

Now suppose the opposite: the vaccine is good safe medicine. But it’s not ever supposed to have 100% efficacy. People who don’t trust it and then get infected and die would have died from the wrong choice. People who take the vaccine and die anyway would have died despite their good choice.

I’m not making a claim about which of those two worlds we live in, but I think there’s an obvious difference between dieing because of a bad choice, and dieing despite a good choice.

I cannot see any difference between the ‘bad’ choice and the ‘good’ choice, since neither are confirmed as either.

Whether it’s confirmed or not, there is presumably an objective answer to the question, “will taking the vaccine increase our decrease my expected value?” If it’s poison, that is an objective fact. If it is good safe medicine, that is an objective fact. In my estimation, one of those possibilities is almost certainly true, and the other one false (notwithstanding individual exceptions, eg a person with an unknown allergy to the vaccine)

We live in one of those two worlds. Somebody is right, and somebody is wrong.

BTW, The shot is free? Wow, that’s so generous of the pharmaceutical Industry to create and distribute a free protection for everyone.

Oh, what’s that you say? You say, well it’s not really free free, the pharmaceutical Industry is being paid by the Government, which ultimately means the tax payers paying for it.

…and oh, by the way, in the end it probably cost each person $1,000 per shot. Oh, and you need a new shot every 8 months. …and oh, pharmaceutical Industry is friends with Joe! LOL

They are so worried about Americans dying that they stopped selling opiates that killed over 800,000 people. Oh, wait, no they didn’t stop selling those yet!

I think this is where being pragmatic and logical helps. The problem is most people aren’t both.

So how did you decide who to trust?

I decided when Mitch McConnell said he isn’t there to be fair! I decided when they put that slimy Brett on the Supreme Court. They made it clear they are scum!

I don’t think it should be looked at in terms of good choice or bad choice.

It’s a case of risk assessment.

You evaluate the risks and you go with the decision that reduces your risk.

If you take the vaccine, you reduce the risk of getting a serious case of covid which may kill you. But you increase the risk of side effects which may also kill.

If you don’t take the vaccine, you don’t reduce that risk of a serious case of covid. But you don’t have the risk of side effect.

The current available data, seems to clearly show that taking the vaccine is the less risky option.

Of course, we don’t have any long term data on the vaccine. That’s another unknown risk.

ILP won’t let me outline my thought processes which might help others in an easy to read format.

The shortest version, I already had Covid. My immune system handled it. I am naturally immune to long Covid.

“It’s a case of risk assessment.”

Yes, of course, but the fact is America seems split into two groups: those who view the risk of not being vaccinated as higher, and those who view the risk of being vaccinated as higher. Individual exceptions notwithstanding, one of those two groups is right, and one is wrong.

The two groups are basing these risk assessments, in my opinion, largely on the question “who should I trust?” Do you agree with that? If not, what are the primary factors that cause someone to end up in one group rather than another?

First off, anyone who’s had Covid, mild to moderate, already has a natural immunity to long Covid. There is no need for a vaccine. How many hundreds of millions are already immune?

Why are they vaccinating the immune?

Even though you find yourself in that group, that’s not the primary focus for most people I think.

That’s your particular case. How does it apply to other people?

A lot of these anti-vaxxers who ended up in the hospital or in the morgue, believed that they had a very small chance of getting covid and if they did, their immune system would easily handle it.

It should be since it is logic(natural immunity) against illogic(vaccines for the immune). That alone is a huge red flag.