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Comment by johnny22 | Hacker News Reader

honestly i see the opposite more often. people being skeptical to the point of absurdity. They also never seem to trust anybody.

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While this can come about perfectly naturally when an intellectually lazy internal ruling establishment only wants agreement instead of critical thinking, it should also be noted that such a result is also a deliberate end goal of social attacks by external hostile actors, such the russian government and it's "firehose of falsehood" method of propaganda.

This can result in paralysis and/or radicalization of the effected population depending on how it's used.

Unfortunately we kind of have both the internal and external problems in effect right now.

This is a lot more common, but I wouldn't call this proper skepticism. It's usually just people being cynical and biased in their own way. They've subscribed to a political tribe and social media echo chamber that happens to be opposed to something in Nature, and that's the reason why they're doubting whatever is written in Nature, with some made-up justification that sounds plausible only within that echo chamber but is transparently wrong to people not caught up in that particular group think. That said, actual skepticism should be applied everywhere, including towards Nature.

Do you think cynical mistrust (so-called "scepticism") truly is more common than lack of healthy scepticism towards information provided by trusted sources? Or is it rather more obnoxiously salient? Someone who rejects Nature claiming that the Earth is an oblate spheroid is much more likely to make their voice heard than someone who would happily accept whatever is published in a scientific journal with no question whatsoever.

Either way, at face value, I do agree that cynical mistrust (especially when partisan) is more immediately damaging to society than uncritical absolute trust, regardless of each of their relative frequencies. However, I do believe that each of these phenomena reinforce each other in a vicious cycle. The contrarian denialist feels vindicated when he sees the blind acceptance placed on certain sources by the naïve truster on the other end of the political spectrum. The naïve truster, on the other hand, feels that any criticism or questioning directed towards trusted sources on his side is to behave like the contrarian denialist would. Hence the mutual polarisation.

There's plenty of stuff in NYT that should by eyed with extreme skepticism. It's got an agenda and is bending its content around that agenda like every other mainstream commercial news outlet.

As if non-mainstream news outlets are objective.

I would relax "plenty of stuff" to "everything" - the New York Times has adopted a policy of "advocacy over reporting" for several years now[1] and is untrustworthy as a journalistic entity as a result. They're no long a news organization, they're an activism organization that uses news as their political vehicle.

[1] https://www.city-journal.org/article/slouching-toward-post-j...

This is dependent on your social circle. My experience agrees with GP and disagrees with yours.

Both over-skepticism and under-skepticism are bad and should be recognized and fought. If you only oppose one of them, then it's likely because your preferred party is, too.

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