Warning: long, philosophic (or just sophistry)
It would take multiple lifetimes to achieve mastery in every field of knowledge: medicine, cosmology, quantum physics, psychology, economics, etc. And that is just what we can know without the help of divine revelation, potentially. Accordingly, most of what we know (beyond what can be known through the senses) is founded on the testimony of trusted authorities, in their various forms (ancient books, scientists and philosophers, news sources, parents, etc) or derived from such sources.
Now, why is it that some people trust in some particular subset of authority, whom arrive at a particular set of conclusions about nature of man and the world, and others in a different subset, with their different set of conclusions?
Different news, different books, different authority figures. If reality is objective, why?
I believe that the grounds for trusting our personal authority subset should be given critical examination. Especially if after examination we discover that we trust in our sources because they tell us what we want to hear, or trusting in this authority is common in our particular region of the world, or because we’ve trusted these sources since we were too young to have any discernment, as did parents before us, etc. Because these reasons have no necessary connection to truth or reliability.
We should instead ask these authorities: Who are you? What are your qualifications? What are your sources? What are your methods? What is your evidence? What background assumptions inform your views? In what ways do you work to overcome your own biases? What do your opponents say in response to your views? Why does what you say seem true to me and not others? And so on.
This is part of what I believe is the way forward: trusting in better authorities. And that can only begin through an examination of self.
