It is hard to understate the damage. The loss of national cohesion, the exacerbated division caused by the "choose your own reality" consequences of no longer having trustworthy institutions. And maybe worse of all, the self-fulfilling nature of distrust. When you do not trust someone, and they know it, they have no incentive to behave in a trust-worthy manner. It will take a long time to dig the country's self-image out of the hole dug during the pandemic.
>consequences of no longer having trustworthy institutions.
Those institutions just spent years getting called deep state by half the country, systemically racist by the other half and in the pockets of entrenched and moneyed interests by both. Color me shocked that nobody trusts them.
The same people who were so happy a year and change ago to earn cheap internet virtue points trotting out tropes about about how the noble FAA has been neutered by Boeing and the revolving door are complaining that people don't trust the CDC. You can't have your cake and eat it too.
This is a feedback loop. The lower the expectations from these institutions (government, academia, etc.) the less they have to lose by behaving poorly and the more they will behave poorly. It will get worse until it gets so bad it starts getting better.
See "The Evolution of Trust" which was posted on HN a few times, simulating how trust is created and destroyed, with reference to game theory. I don't think it covers institutional trust, but is interesting nonetheless:
Like pretty much everyone in this thread, who are at the very least failing to acknowledge the fact that this is a feedback loop.
I'd be a lot more willing to acknowledge the notion that the media and government are so terrible if the alternatives that most people have chosen to trust instead weren't so laughably bad sources in comparison.
This isn't people making an informed judgement about what sources to best trust, it's people being caught in a wave of bullshit and not actually thinking about anything. A lot of the comments here in this chain are just part of the wave.
Vetting an information source can be extraordinarily difficult in this day and age, at least for those looking for more than confirmation of their world views. There is an ocean of well funded, profession disinformation out there. Telling BS from fact is barely doable for the technical elites who gather in this forum and it certainly cannot be expected from the average citizen. This is why the corruption of our sense making institutions and the unavoidable loss of trust is so devastating to the fabric of our culture. This is a very big deal and blaming the stupid rubes that believe obvious BS (to us smart people anyway) might feel good but its not just missing the point, it is actually making things worse.
