Trust Error
Description
Hard problems are beyond the expertise of any one individual to solve. Often, no one person has expertise in every part of the problem system. For global problems, most of us can only comprehend a small part of it, so we need to rely on other people’s opinions. When we can't work out what to believe, we need to work out whom to believe. Ideally, we should consider both the credibility of the evidence and the credibility of the witness.
Gullibility is bad. It involves automatically trusting someone without properly considering their information or their motivation.
Scepticism is good. Sometimes people are wrong. Sometimes people's priorities tempt them to believe something that benefits them and to convince others of the same belief. We need to be mindful of such possibilities.
However, scepticism can be taken too far. Just because someone has a conflict of interest doesn't mean that they're attempting to mislead us. A billionaire trying to sell us something that he produces may be correct that his product is the best. We shouldn’t assume that everybody is lying because everybody is self-interested. If we do so, we’re placing too much confidence in our own judgement and will be unable to learn from others.
Examples
Popularity
For some people, popularity is a high priority. They may be tempted to tell you what you want to hear. Beware of YouTubers assuring you that you can lose weight by eating large amounts of chocolate. Beware of politicians announcing that the economy is doing so well that they will reduce taxes if re-elected (while failing to mention the burgeoning national debt).
Ozone Layer
Since 1974, there was growing evidence that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) could destroy Earth's ozone layer. The chairman of the largest producer of CFCs called this “…a science fiction tale… a load of rubbish… utter nonsense”. CFC producers formed a lobby group to fight against regulation of CFCs by making people distrust the science. The group managed to delay global action for about a decade. CFC production was a multi-billion dollar industry; was it a trustworthy source of unbiased information?
Global Warming
Global warming is a hugely complicated issue, involving aspects of science, economics, ethics and other fields. None of us knows everything about it, so we all need to decide whom to trust. As always, this requires us to consider the credibility of the message and of the messenger. When quality of life is at stake, we must be especially wary of messengers with ulterior motives.
Related Issues
This section describes similarities and differences between this issue and related problem factors and thinking traps.
Problem Factors
Any factor that makes a problem hard for us to understand increases our need to trust the advice of others.
Underconfidence
If we can't comprehend all aspects of a problem and we reject other people's expertise, we may lack the confidence to make a decision and take any action.
Risk Factor Misjudgement
Trusting the wrong people, or not trusting the right people, can cause us to reject valid science or history. This is a type of risk factor misjudgement (denialism).
Confirmation Bias
Confirmation bias is listening predominantly to those who have the same opinion as ourselves. Sharing similar views is not a sufficient justification for trust.
Insignificance
Big issues usually require actions to be taken by more than one person. If we don't trust others to play their parts, we may be disinclined to do anything since our personal contribution wouldn't make much difference.
Related Engine Processes
Later, we will describe a thinking framework that comprises multiple processes. This section points forward to the processes that deal with this page's topic.
Open-mindedness
Open-mindedness is especially relevant to trust errors. We need to be willing to consider other people's opinions.
Priorities
We need to be careful not to believe someone just because they're saying something that suits our personal priorities.
Further Reading
Newell and Proust describes a method for blending views from experts in different parts of a large system.
To Do
Murdered Darlings
Rename: 'trust'? 'trust miscalibration'? 'misjudging', 'error'. Recast content if changed.
Aim for just the right amount of distrust. (fig caption)
No one person can see the whole of a big problem system. [Newell and Proust, p.10]
cynicism, belief in conspiracy theories, etc.
this is an aspect of cultural evolution (which is normally a good thing).
It can be easy for scepticism to become cynicism, with the result that we disbelieve good advice.
For tricky problems, gullibility will just confuse us because people’s opinions won’t all be the same.