> I am not comparing anyone to anyone, I am asking a simple question, that I think can be extrapolated to all news of this sort. You were literally comparing i

> I am not comparing anyone to anyone, I am asking a simple question, that I think can be extrapolated to all news of this sort. You were literally comparing in the line I replied to. > Why do we assume certain news stories to be true/false? Because that's how we build our world model. I would venture a guess and say that what you claim to "know for a fact" in life is to 99% things that you yourself have not verified. That is not to say that you are incorrect, but merely that we build up a reasonability ranking based on trusted networks, authority, plausibility, etc. We decide - not what is true - but what is probable enough to work with, as a world model, as a basis for discussion, as frames of reference. Bill Gates the last decade tries to cure polio, that's his thing. Now there's a story about him and his wife using their money to pay off a debt related to polio, of a sum a fraction of the amount their charity uses annually to fight polio. You are free to not believe it, but there is no reason not to. There are no conflicting reports. > All it takes is a tiny bit of research to show that almost all diseases are cured (massively in society) by clean water, nutrition and clean living conditions. But Gates isn't doing that, he's supporting vaccines. > Now this changes the argument from "do we believe Gates is altruistic?" into a vaccine debate. See the problem? No, I don't. Getting clean water, nutrition and living conditions set up for millions upon millions of people is both vastly more expensive, but also ridiculously more time consuming, while vaccines are cheap and fast. On top of that, the prior doesn't negate the need for vaccines, so then we're still back to square one. In short: They're trying to do the most within the budget to reach a pre-defined goal. You are employing the Copenhagen Intepretation of ethics to ask why they're not doing Y instead of X, when that wasn't the scoped target. We can illustrate this differently, just give me a random link from news you read daily, and we'll replicate the questioning to see the effects.