Who or what can you trust?
Suspicion is what leads to the effort to reveal the deceit of propagandists and imaginative dreamers. It doesn’t always lead to truth but very often reveals and makes deception more difficult. Without suspicion how would the world have ever discovered that it wasn’t actually flat and that China had patented the covid-19 virus and was already working on a vaccine while telling the world that there was “no evidence [revealed yet]” that there was any human to human transfer? So I would have to say that suspicion isn’t all bad.
In contrast, another aspect of suspicion is that it leads to doubting what really is the truth even if that truth was a part of a social propaganda narrative. Suspicion was used to impeach Mr Trump citing a phone call and Russian collusion. Mr Trump’s claim of innocence turned out to be the much hated and rejected truth while also revealing the secret treachery of people planting and spreading false evidence.
So when can an otherwise preoccupied citizen who only sees the propaganda headlines (most of the people around me) know who to trust and about what? They really don’t have time to go investigate to see how often the propaganda media has lied verses their opposition and often don’t have the mental faculties to make such a discernment. In an effort to decide how to vote and who to hate or love, truth seems to have little weight or bearing.
I think all of that is because so much suspicion keeps the world in turmoil.
For a while those who initiated Science developed public trust through distant, independent, and carefully scrutinized testing of important ideas. But that is difficult to do anymore as crowding has made everything very political, manipulated, and corrupt – too many people being cited as “scientists” who haven’t actually done any comprehensive, published, and scrutinized research yet paid or rewarded in one way or another to testify to the propaganda narrative.
So now that Science can no longer be trusted either (due to political interference), how can wreck loose suspicion be at least reduced to a civilized level? Where is the line between reasonable suspicion and political or confirmation bias?
Any proposals (while I am personally scrutinizing James’ SAM co-op on this issue)?