[trafficante]

Sure, “trust nobody” is a literal impossibility even if you’re way off the grid like Ted K. But I don’t see many people pushing that sort of extreme ideal as a response to the replication crisis or the fraud coming out of highest levels of soft sciences.

You just end up having to treat sci-news the same way most of us likely already treat regular news media: with heavy suspicion by default for any unfamiliar topic. Reverse Gell-Mann Amnesia, I suppose.

It’s not particularly good for one’s mental well-being, but it’s a rare person who can go back to being blissfully ignorant of something this widespread.

Mini-rant: I just now realized that the Andrew Tates of the world have made it nigh impossible to casually drop a pop-culture reference to the Matrix in these sorts of convos.