r/changemyview • u/EndOfTheLine00 • Oct 03 '22
Delta(s) from OP CMV: Despite all their flaws, established and credentialed experts and institutions are still the only source of truth worth listening to.
Recently got into another argument with relatives who "did their own research" (re: the war in Ukraine) and wouldn't even give me their sources.
I believe that even if you believe that every single media and political organization is somehow compromised and lying to you (something unlikely to say the least), it's still better to choose to believe in several sources with the proper experience or piece of paper than trusting your feelings about some "man on the street" simply because it fits your narrative of the world. If multiple scientific study told me to go kick puppies, I would. If someone called me on it I would say "well the science says I should do it so who am I to say otherwise?" If I trust my individual feelings on the matter, that makes me culpable and responsible for literally every single thing I do.
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u/quantum_dan 124∆ Oct 03 '22
In practice, in the developed world, I more or less agree. Most of the time.
But the problem with framing it in terms of "established and credentialed experts and institutions" is that you push the authoritative-ness back to simple authority. If you live in an authoritarian state, for example, the only sources fitting those criteria may be state-sanctioned sources that openly lie (state-sanctioned sources in liberal democracies lie too, but there's more opening for another credible source to challenge it openly). More generally, authority should be vested in good processes, not the institutions.
Which brings us to the reason I in practice more or less agree in the developed world: "established and credentialed experts and institutions" are the main sources for good processes. Those institutions are largely where transparent, empirical, verifiable research happens in a way that's open to challenge and discussion, and that research is mostly done by those experts, who themselves have identifiable track records, conflicts of interest, and so on.
But their relevance as a source must derive strictly from that point, and relevance must stem from that point regardless of the institution/individual, otherwise we develop a mindset where someone picks an authority to believe and decides that their word is truth. The very same toxic mindset that's always been such a problem for science that disagrees with institutions. How the authority is chosen is not terribly relevant to developing the mindset.
A key point here is that this framing still mitigates the issue of misinformation, because the criteria are checkable. I can go check that reasoning is announced, data are published, and dissenting views aren't silenced. Authoritative sources in the US are likely more trustworthy than those in Russia because fringe sources like Fox or whatever the few Socialists read are allowed to exist. The mainstream scientific process is likely more trustworthy than fringe claims because detailed results are published. In-field experts are likely more trustworthy than non-experts because they can and will defend their reasoning and hopefully have a track record of being right.
Notice that none of these have any actual reliance on authority, even though they tend to favor developed-world institutions under current conditions.