[kzrdude]

Some people go through school life the same way, and that is probably partly the cause. They never really understood the subject, just went through learning about it and accepting it - without deeper understanding(?). This shapes people to basically believing anything - if it comes from a source with enough sheen of authority.

[meheleventyone]

This is literally everyone, look at experts trying their hand outside of their field of expertise.

The issue isn’t that we need to take some things on trust it’s how to work out who to trust.

Even scientifically literate people find this hard, you’ll often find people arguing something quite general by linking a paper that is very specific (or actually says the opposite!).

Less honest people will outright lie and link to a source in the hopes you won’t read it and trust them to be diligent. Just the other day a user here stated some facts and linked to a wiki page that immediately and outright refuted them.

We’re not just in an environment where we need to make sure people aren’t making mistakes. It’s also highly adversarial.

[kzrdude]

It's about something else than just having to work out who to trust - that just sounds like a restatement of the relativization.

Not everyone can be scientifically literate. And I agree, there are many things masquerading as scientific literacy - including picking out single papers while being clueless of the wider stream of knowledge in that field.

Yes, it really is much better to ask someone in the field - for example - what does this paper mean when you see it in context, and so on. That's what the good science journalists use to do.

But, we can't just give up. We can't be perfectionists in the sense that - "either you're an expert and know the field or you just don't know anything". We can all be curious and humble about what we don't know, while still trying to understand things in their context and fit them into our model of the world.

> We’re not just an environment where we need to make sure people aren’t making mistakes. It’s also highly adversarial.

Here I'm a bit unsure what you mean. Maybe, if I do: I don't think 0 mistakes is the goal. Mistakes are allowed. The differentiator is always, how we handle and correct our mistakes.

[meheleventyone]

I’m not advocating giving up.

By the last bit I mean people are not just making mistakes they are also deliberately lying by making things that lead people to making mistakes.

[pas]

I think it's worse than that. Sure there are intentional liars, but they are the easy to spot bullshit factory managers. What's harder is dealing with the true believers, who lie to save their own world view, who need that thing to be true.

[datavirtue]

Bingo. You figured out public school.

[beckman466]

> Bingo. You figured out public school.

what do you see as alternatives?

[sk2020]

Mandatory, universal indoctrination of the youth by the state long into adulthood wasn’t even normal until about a century ago. I suppose the Ottoman Janissary Corps is the only older example I can think of.

Outside of knowledge-based fields, most adults I know obtained all of their practical knowledge in the course of their careers.