Rationality when Insulated from Evidence

JustinMElms

Basically: How does one pursue the truth when direct engagement with evidence is infeasible?

I came to this question while discussing GMO labeling. In this case I am obviously not in a position to experiment for myself, but furthermore: I do not have the time to build up the bank of background understanding to engage vigorously with the study results themselves. I can look at them with a decent secondary education's understanding of experimental method, genetics, and biology, but that is the extent of it.

In this situation I usually find myself reduced to weighing the proclamations of authorities:

I review aggregations of authority from one side and then the other--because finding a truly unbiased source for contentious issues is always a challenge, and usually says more about the biases of whoever is anointing the source "unbiased."
Once I have reviewed the authorities, I do at least some due diligence on each authority so that I can modulate my confidence if a particular authority is often considered partisan on an issue. This too can present a bias spiral checking for bias in the source pillorying the authority as partisan ad infinitum.
Once I have some known degree of confidence in the authorities of both sides, I can form some level of confidence in a statement like: "I am ~x% confident that the scientific consensus is on Y's side" or "I am ~Z% confident that there is not scientific consensus on Y"

Once that establishes a baseline on an issue, I am able to do some argumentation analysis to see what arguments each side has that simply should not be included in the discussion. This is usually irrelevant appeals (e.g.: In the GMO labeling debate, "It must be better because it's more natural") or corollary citations that are screened off by evidence closer to the source (e.g.: In the GMO labeling debate, "X many countries require GMO labeling" should be screened off by looking at the evidence that led to that decision).

After that, I find myself with a rather unfulfilling meta-assessment of an issue. I fear that I am asking for a non-existent shortcut around the hard solution of: "If an answer is important to you, do the necessary learning to at least be able to engage directly with the evidence," but I will ask anyway: does anyone else have strategies for seeking the truth while insulated from direct evidence?

Basically: How does one pursue the truth when direct engagement with evidence is infeasible?

In this situation I usually find myself reduced to weighing the proclamations of authorities:

I review aggregations of authority from one side and then the other--because finding a truly unbiased source for contentious issues is always a challenge, and usually says more about the biases of whoever is anointing the source "unbiased."
Once I have reviewed the authorities, I do at least some due diligence on each authority so that I can modulate my confidence if a particular authority is often considered partisan on an issue. This too can present a bias spiral checking for bias in the source pillorying the authority as partisan ad infinitum.
Once I have some known degree of confidence in the authorities of both sides, I can form some level of confidence in a statement like: "I am ~x% confident that the scientific consensus is on Y's side" or "I am ~Z% confident that there is not scientific consensus on Y"

Why? They know it's wheat. Why should they be able to track arbitrary characteristics of the wheat? It's like asking them to track which wheat is grown on Tuesdays, or which wheat is grown by Jews. Their system wouldn't be set up for it.

Supermarkets where I come from do check characteristics of ingridients like pesticide content. They generally care about providing quality products.

If a supermarket wouldn't do quality management of their suppliers I would consider that bad.

Containing peas is a subcase of a general requirement "list all ingredients". It certainly implies that consumers do and should care about the ingredients.

Information provision is not about whether people should care about it but whether they do. In this case plenty of people do care about.

But anyway, that's fighting the hypothetical.

I don't see the point of why pointing out that a given example doesn't work is bad. Don't make fictional examples that wouldn't work in reality in the first place, if you want to train reality based reflexes.

Being in touch with reality is a lot more valuable than being in touch with hypotheticals.

for instance "this produce comes from a company whose owner has had an abortion".

Let's say a business owner asks prospective employees whether they had an abortion and refuses to hire people who had. Do you think that courts would allow that? No, they wouldn't. They would likely argue that it's a protected characteristic.

As I said above, I don't think information about categories that belong to protected characteristics should be required.

But even if you would actually engage with what I'm saying and pick a characteristic of the grower that isn't a protected characteristic, that's not about the ingridients of the food. GMO's do contain different proteins that otherwise wouldn't be in the product.

Supermarkets where I come from do check characteristics of ingridients like pesticide content. They generally care about providing quality products.
If a supermarket wouldn't do quality management of their suppliers I would consider that bad.

That is meaningless unless

"quality management" can refer to arbitrary characteristics, in which case, no, most supermarkets will not keep track of whether the wheat was harvested on Tuesdays, or
You're assuming that there is something special about GMO such that it counts as "quality management"

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Rationality when Insulated from Evidence

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