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Thanks for your comment. I broadly agree with your points and find them insightful. In particular I appreciate that you model authority as an analogue for trus

Thanks for your comment. I broadly agree with your points and find them insightful. In particular I appreciate that you model authority as an analogue for trust, and trust as an analogue for independent verification. I think trust is a prerequisite for successful convincing, because it is hard for human brains to overcome the emotional and relational elements of discourse, and we need to be in a receptive frame of mind. [citation needed] We should study how authorities have built and lost trust, but I don't think we should be rebuilding those authorities using this knowledge. Instead I think focusing on how members of the public and different experts and scholars can build more diverse networks of trust relationships would create a more resilient system in the Internet age. For example, instead of "I trust the CDC because they are an authority on disease" or "I trust Fauci on COVID because he is an immunologist", what if the common relationship was "I trust Fauci on COVID because his work on Zika and HIV was very interesting". A related problem is what I call the 'knowledge gap'. Researchers develop a very comprehensive understanding of their chosen subjects, whereas members of the public have only a lay-person level of understanding. As experts become increasingly experienced and knowledgeable, the gap between lay-person understanding and expert comprehension grows. This means researchers are not always able to understand what a member of the public needs to know or how to explain it: how do you compress years of learning into a few minutes of talking, as part of a conversation? Good science communication skills are essential for experts if they want to develop trust relationships with members of the public, and if we as a society want to move from authority and coercion and towards education.

jimkleiber 5y ago
I actually think we may learn a lot by studying whom someone distrusts and the underlying causes. I imagine we would find that most of the times, the distrust is projected distrust—in other words, I distrust X person in my life because they did A thing and person Y is like X therefore I distrust person Y as well. For example, I think many distrust Fauci less because of Fauci himself and his behaviors and more because his behaviors may remind them of their primary care physician who treated them condescendingly, saying they were stupid for asking a question. Or because their parent got Alzheimer's or cancer and don't know where it came from and were told by doctors that their family member would be fine, even though their family is not fine. I guess I just wished we paid more attention to the transgressions that happened to find the presumed cause of distrust so we can repair it, because I think trust can be highly efficient and distrust highly inefficient at times.
- thwarted 5y ago
  And yet few people want to hear "your family is not fine". Many people don't want honesty, they want comfort, and they (wrongly, IMO) look to experts for comfort. This puts doctors in a damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-dont situation. It's easy to translate "doctor was honest" to "bad bedside manner".
  - jimkleiber 5y ago
    I think people want both—I believe I do. I want people to be honest with me and considerate. I don't think it has to be one or the other, yet we often haven't learned how to communicate with both. I can say, "I want to be honest with you, your relative may only have a few weeks left. I imagine that might feel really scary to hear or perhaps you might even feel angry, I don't know. I wanted to be honest with you and to let you know that my team and I will be here for you and your family."
throwaway22032 5y ago
Thank you. I've posted elsewhere in the thread about my own opinion that I believe the main issue we have is not with trust in the scientific sense (e.g. I think that most people generally _do_ believe that epidemiologists know what they're doing and that the outliers are exceptions), but with trust in the plan of action e.g. the entire chain of process. Examples, all primarily via trust (I'm not a biologist): I believe that excessive consumption of sugar can cause diabetes. I know that alcohol can (will, given enough time) cause liver disease. I know that driving my car drastically increases my risk of being in a car accident and therefore meeting a swift end, an agonising end, or perhaps a lifetime of disability. I still engage in those activities despite the downsides because I believe them to be of net benefit, both to myself and to society as a whole. I'm willing to fully argue through that process. Where I think the issue lies at present is that we're sorely lacking in convincing full-chain argumentation. A person can trust that the UK health authorities know their stuff, they can believe that coronavirus exists and can be dangerous, but that doesn't solve the problem of whether or not they should skip out on their friend's birthday party or not. It only makes up a very small part of the jigsaw puzzle, the rest still has to be filled in somehow.
- gilleain 5y ago
  Agreed, it can be very difficult for anyone to make useful decisions outside of just trusting the existing consensus. I mean there is no real way for me to know if a vaccine is safe. I assume it is, and prefer to gamble on it not harming me and potentially helping the current situation. But there is really no way for me to know for sure. To put it another way, when the Omicron variant emerged, there were newspaper articles that often showed pictures of the spike protein labelled with different mutations. As it happens, I did research in protein structural bioinformatics, so I have a good idea what the detail in these images 'mean' in a certain sense. However they are of zero use in making a single meaningful decision about how to alter my behaviour (or not!). Of course, the journalists add these images as decoration, but to me it symbolises the mass of irrelevant detail provided. Which is not the same as saying 'just believe science!' as that is also wrong and unhelpful. I'm not sure what the answer is, really.
- raxxorrax 5y ago

jimkleiber 5y ago

I actually think we may learn a lot by studying whom someone distrusts and the underlying causes. I imagine we would find that most of the times, the distrust is projected distrust—in other words, I distrust X person in my life because they did A thing and person Y is like X therefore I distrust person Y as well. For example, I think many distrust Fauci less because of Fauci himself and his behaviors and more because his behaviors may remind them of their primary care physician who treated them condescendingly, saying they were stupid for asking a question. Or because their parent got Alzheimer's or cancer and don't know where it came from and were told by doctors that their family member would be fine, even though their family is not fine. I guess I just wished we paid more attention to the transgressions that happened to find the presumed cause of distrust so we can repair it, because I think trust can be highly efficient and distrust highly inefficient at times.

thwarted 5y ago
And yet few people want to hear "your family is not fine". Many people don't want honesty, they want comfort, and they (wrongly, IMO) look to experts for comfort. This puts doctors in a damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-dont situation. It's easy to translate "doctor was honest" to "bad bedside manner".
- jimkleiber 5y ago
  I think people want both—I believe I do. I want people to be honest with me and considerate. I don't think it has to be one or the other, yet we often haven't learned how to communicate with both. I can say, "I want to be honest with you, your relative may only have a few weeks left. I imagine that might feel really scary to hear or perhaps you might even feel angry, I don't know. I wanted to be honest with you and to let you know that my team and I will be here for you and your family."

throwaway22032 5y ago

Thank you. I've posted elsewhere in the thread about my own opinion that I believe the main issue we have is not with trust in the scientific sense (e.g. I think that most people generally _do_ believe that epidemiologists know what they're doing and that the outliers are exceptions), but with trust in the plan of action e.g. the entire chain of process. Examples, all primarily via trust (I'm not a biologist): I believe that excessive consumption of sugar can cause diabetes. I know that alcohol can (will, given enough time) cause liver disease. I know that driving my car drastically increases my risk of being in a car accident and therefore meeting a swift end, an agonising end, or perhaps a lifetime of disability. I still engage in those activities despite the downsides because I believe them to be of net benefit, both to myself and to society as a whole. I'm willing to fully argue through that process. Where I think the issue lies at present is that we're sorely lacking in convincing full-chain argumentation. A person can trust that the UK health authorities know their stuff, they can believe that coronavirus exists and can be dangerous, but that doesn't solve the problem of whether or not they should skip out on their friend's birthday party or not. It only makes up a very small part of the jigsaw puzzle, the rest still has to be filled in somehow.

gilleain 5y ago
Agreed, it can be very difficult for anyone to make useful decisions outside of just trusting the existing consensus. I mean there is no real way for me to know if a vaccine is safe. I assume it is, and prefer to gamble on it not harming me and potentially helping the current situation. But there is really no way for me to know for sure. To put it another way, when the Omicron variant emerged, there were newspaper articles that often showed pictures of the spike protein labelled with different mutations. As it happens, I did research in protein structural bioinformatics, so I have a good idea what the detail in these images 'mean' in a certain sense. However they are of zero use in making a single meaningful decision about how to alter my behaviour (or not!). Of course, the journalists add these images as decoration, but to me it symbolises the mass of irrelevant detail provided. Which is not the same as saying 'just believe science!' as that is also wrong and unhelpful. I'm not sure what the answer is, really.
raxxorrax 5y ago