Most accepted knowledge rests on trust in sources, not verification.

Evidence

Our society is based on trust to a much greater extent than we ourselves realize: Trust in the expertise of others, trust in science, trust in government institutions. The vast majority of all those facts that we call our knowledge cannot be verified by ourselves. Can water store information? Have humans landed on the moon? Is genetic engineering dangerous? Unless you are an expert in that field, you have to rely on what you hear about it from others. You have to trust that the textbooks convey correct facts, that the media report truthfully, that there is verified factual knowledge that comes from independent universities and research institutes and is expanded. Your worldview is largely shaped by which source of information you trust. We speak of the “perceived truth.” — Holm Gero Hümmler, Ulrike Schiesser, Fact and Prejudice, 136

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the trust-based social capital material from Coleman and the reputation-system work on trade.

Related

• Science’s trustworthiness rests on being intersubjective and collective (similarity 0.83)
• Truth, not just money or power, reduces intersubjective complexity and enables trust (similarity 0.83)
• Trusting values depend crucially on the information each party holds (similarity 0.81)
• Trust is merely evidence-based expectation while trustworthiness is motivational (similarity 0.81)
• Most of what people believe is taken on trust, not direct observation (similarity 0.81)
• Knowledge acquisition begins with unexamined reliance on others’ claims (similarity 0.81)
• Science substitutes intersubjective certainty for the older evidence of familiarity (similarity 0.81)
• Reputation always retains a link to concrete, factual knowledge. (similarity 0.81)
• Trust requires some prior information and cannot arise from nothing (similarity 0.80)
• Trust arises not from powerlessness but from lack of full information about others. (similarity 0.80)
• Trust grounded in false knowledge cannot be an intrinsic good (similarity 0.80)
• The assumption that people trust only on valid grounds is empirical and provisional (similarity 0.80)
• Trust substitutes knowledge of system structure for unavailable information about others. (similarity 0.80)
• Trust in government is not a major working factor in modern society (similarity 0.80)
• Trust alone cannot explain modern social order. (similarity 0.80)