The short answer is, much of what we believe, both individually and collectively, is simply incorrect. In this case, my
perception is that a person believed something to be untrue due to the idea having been labelled a conspiracy theory, and then after reading this story, he was less confident in the belief.
Generalized, we might state this as: the perception of high accuracy in our beliefs is illusory. Not only does this occur at the individual level, but also at the group level (see: religion, Trump supporters, etc)
I then compared that to the manner in which different people exhibit "unexpected" differences in insistence in accuracy/quality across different domains, demonstrating that the inner workings of this behavior can be counter-intuitive at times.
In light of this ongoing global pandemic, I am curious whether this "illusion of truth" phenomenon that psychologists suggest occurs within human consciousness may possibly have been a contributing factor to some of the perceived shortcomings involved in our response.
For example, as I understand it, Donald Trump seemed to believe that this pandemic was not terribly important, and the result of this was that the response from the United States government was slower than it could have been.
Similarly, prior administrations, I'm not sure going how far back, were also aware of the possibility and consequences of the outbreak of a global pandemic. It would have been possible at that time to make a significant permanent investment in nationwide infrastructure for stockpiling critical supplies, but for specific reasons not known to any of us, it seems like very few countries went forward with such an initiative. Not only in the United States, but many other countries.
Generally, I think it's fair to say that historic decisions related to pandemic response were less than optimal. Assuming this is true, it seems reasonable to speculate that a misunderstanding of risk was a contributing factor to the imperfect responses.
If we take a hypothetical example of two different countries, one with a brash, super confident leader, and the other with a much more restrained, cautious leader, one who is naturally distrustful of casual optimism and a culture of "don't worry about it", might these two leaders have had different perceptions of risk, and as a result made different decisions and taken different approaches, both during and in the years before an actual outbreak occurred?
I believe this is possible, and also that the magnitude of the difference may be significant, depending on the circumstances
And if that scenario is possible, might this phenomenon also occur in other domains, and if so, what might the plausible range of possible consequential variances look like?
Take the Iraq war as an example. Might it be possible that errors in perception of risk were a contributing factor in the decision to go forward with the war? Using a similar example to the one above, might a leader or society that insisted on a higher standard of certainty and trustworthiness of evidence have made a different choice on whether to proceed with a war? And if so, might this have had an effect on the amount of money spent as well as the number of casualties? I suspect that if the Iraq war did not take place, both cost and casualties would be significantly lower than they were under the scenario that actually did play out.
So what? Well...if we made better decisions, might we realize better outcomes? This seems both plausible and potentially significant to me.
If one assumes this is true, a question arises in my mind: should we perhaps consider collectively exerting additional effort towards the goal of making better decisions, and what are some of the things we could do in an effort to achieve that?
To be clear, I'm not suggesting we do such a thing at this particular point in time, and I'm certainly not insisting we do it. It's mostly just an idea I've had knocking around in my head for a while.