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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   29622 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 18, 2023

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This and a handful of other threads over the last couple months have got me thinking about doing another Inferential Distance post on "trust" and "credibility" because it's becoming increasingly clear to me that there are a lot of people who seem to think that it's something that can somehow be arbitrated or imposed. The New York Times is a "Credible Source" because [reasons]. Appeals to academic consensus are "credible" because [reasons].

The idea that credibility and trust are resources that can be acquired, expended, and undermined just doesn't seem to factor into liberal thinking.

The idea that credibility and trust are resources that can be acquired, expended, and undermined just doesn't seem to factor into liberal thinking.

They believe, apparently correctly, that they have a set of institutions sufficient to manufacture and maintain credibility indefinitely no matter what they say, as long as they back each other up. The NYT can say whatever it wants and it will be credible -- just ask NPR, CNN, the Washington Post, whatever nonprofit NYU just spun up, etc. Whatever Fox News (or the New York Post or the Washington Times) says is "not credible" because "Faux News". The ground truth is too hard to reach and so never enters into it, at least for a majority of those paying attention at all.

This is exactly what I'm talking about.

You and I clearly have fundamentally different (and functionally incompatible) understandings of what the word "credibility" means.

What does credibility mean to you?

What I'm getting at is that to answer that question is an effort post in itself because it is clear that my concept of "credibility" is very different from that of many other posters.

If it's published in the NYT, a sufficient number of people will believe it or act as if they believe it. That's "credibility".

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