Re:Why science is so hard to believe
by eli_gottlieb on Monday February 16, 2015 @12:51PM
(#9058106)
>People nowdays see the failure of trust and strive to design systems that don't depend on trusting its actors at all. I'm not sure it's a good direction. As we increasingly don't expect trustworthiness from other people, we're digging ourselves deeper into the hole.
It's an extremely bad move: at the sociological level, trust shows up as coordination. To reduce the level of trust means reducing the level of coordination, increasing the chances that someone does something stupid and harmful for what turns out to be no good reason.
>So yes, anti-vaxxers, anti-GMOs, anti-nuclear, et al. are wrong. Stupidly wrong. But it's hard for me to blame them. They've been lied to so many times that it's hard for them to trust authorities anymore.
Moreover, it's not like anyone bothered to teach them the actual truth-finding and truth-tracking methods of science, so that they could understand the difference between science and authority.
It's an extremely bad move: at the sociological level, trust shows up as coordination. To reduce the level of trust means reducing the level of coordination, increasing the chances that someone does something stupid and harmful for what turns out to be no good reason.
>So yes, anti-vaxxers, anti-GMOs, anti-nuclear, et al. are wrong. Stupidly wrong. But it's hard for me to blame them. They've been lied to so many times that it's hard for them to trust authorities anymore.
Moreover, it's not like anyone bothered to teach them the actual truth-finding and truth-tracking methods of science, so that they could understand the difference between science and authority.