How Do We Know What We Know?

 Some famous guy once said, "All I know is what I read in the newspapers."  Of course, that was long before the TV and the internet, but the same concept still applies.  Almost everything we know, we got from other people, either directly or indirectly.  If one guy tells us one thing, and another guy tells us another thing, and if these two things are mutually exclusive, we have to decide which guy we want to believe.  Well, we could decide to believe neither of them, but we can't decide to believe both of them.  It's human nature to believe the guy we heard from first, but that doesn't mean we can't override human nature.  If, however, we don't decide to override human nature, we will default to it.  

When you say that 99% of the scientists believe something, what you really mean is that somebody told you that 99% of the scientists believe something, because you have not personally interviewed 99% of the scientists.  Okay, maybe 99% of the news articles you have read or saw on TV have said that 99% of the scientists believe something, but if you only access information from either conservative or liberal sources, you are getting 99% of 50%, which is less than half.  Well, maybe not half because we don't know for a fact that either liberal or conservative sources are exactly half of the total sources out there, but you get the idea.

For example, almost every time I read about Trump's claim that that the 2020 election was rigged, it says something like, "Trump's false claim that the election was rigged."  That would be like saying, "John Smith is the murderer.", which is not how it's usually written.  It's usually something like, "John Smith is the alleged murderer." or "John Smith is the suspected murderer."  That's because the writer of a news article is not supposed to make himself the judge or jury of the John Smith case.  It's different with an editorial or opinion piece, but a news story is supposed to be written from a neutral point of view. 

Be that as it may, it really doesn't matter what you believe until your belief inspires you to actually do something like vote or get vaccinated.  I got vaccinated because I believed that the vaccine was not as likely to kill me or make me sick as the COVID was.  There are people, however, who believe that the vaccine is more likely to kill them or make them sick than the COVID.  For these people, not getting vaccinated is a no brainer.  The fault is not in their logic, it's in their belief, which is based on what we believe to be false information.