@927f86b3        “isnt any good way to verify it personally” that’s part of it, I think – an unwillingness to believe anything you didn’t personally verify. Like, go outside and look at the ground or whatever: it looks flat. So to accept this premise that it is round instead of what it obviously looks like, they’ll want to see something personally.

I agree and I think this is the core of it. There are three stages of effort as I see it.

1) I believe what I superficially believe with my eyes and wont do any digging or investigation beyond this.

2) I only beleive things I can personally verify experimentally, but I will go through the effort to test things… whether i do so in an intellectually honest way or not is another matter

3) I will rely on other experts and their network of endorsements/citations/whatever as an authority and honest source that I can use to draw conclusions, or agree with.

#1 is suspect because its either out of extreme intellectual laziness, or as a scapegoat to justify some underlying less logical reason you just wont admit, usually religion, or a prejudice

#2 is where most people are comfortable

#3 is the hardest because it requires you learning about an entire body of knowledge and people and make subjective judgements about authority… the subjectivity of judging the chain of trust is ultimately where failures can occur here.