Humans believe all sorts of things based on authority for the simple reason that we cannot verify every idea/claim ourselves. We have neither the expertise nor the time to do so. We have to trust what competent authorities tell us. As long we don’t have good reason to doubt what we are being told by the authority, we consider the authority to be reputable and trustworthy (it helps when a bunch of other people trust that authority, too).

This is why people become so skeptical when they discover that a source of authority in their life has been lying to them: They naturally wonder who else might be lying as well. And since they can’t verify most claims, they become skeptical of most claims. They don’t know if they can trust any authority at all to tell them what is true.

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