Surrounded By Hearsay

No one has to believe what they are told by others about everything from the location of everyday items in a house to historical events to specific experiences they say they have, and it would be folly to believe anyone else's claim that they are experiencing certain emotions or that unwitnessed events occurred.  The one exception, the only case when believing what others say that is rational, is when one is told about purely logical or introspective truths that anyone could access with or without help, as these are intrinsically and independently verifiable.  Self-evident logical axioms, the nature of the laws of logic, the existence and contents of one's mind, the presence of one's perceptions, and various logical truths that follow from these things are all knowable, and one can quickly confirm or disprove what someone else might say about such things.

The regular stream of verbal or written claims from others about unprovable things--things that are not self-verifying or provable by logical deduction with no assumptions whatsoever--might be so normal and so vast that some think it is impossible to not just believe people by default.  Nevertheless, it is true that being surrounded by hearsay does not mean that it is ever rational to just assume that someone is telling the truth about something that cannot be proven by reason and introspection.  Assumptions are idiotic leaps into uncertain beliefs and are thus irrational by default.  Even if the ideas assumed are true, and regardless of whether it is possible for a human to know if they are true, assumptions leave someone without any way to know if an idea is true.

There is actually no way to prove or disprove an enormous number of claims that must be encountered through others because they are not knowable by logical deduction and direct introspection alone.  Although some people think there is an epistemological difference between hearing that a first century Jew rose from the dead and a friend saying they have the day off from work, the only major differences are one's proximity to the event (or supposed event) and the importance of the claim being made if it is true.  Epistemologically, there is no distinction between the inability to prove the former and the inability to prove the latter.  There can still be evidence for or against the truth of such claims, but the idea that some hearsay is epistemologically valid to believe in and other hearsay is not is objectively false.

Ironically, most of the supposed "proof" that someone was lying is still just fallible sensory evidences, hearsay from other people instead of the supposed liar, or other things that do not have to be accurate and yet are still assumed to be true by non-rationalists.  Believing that one person is lying about what they say their motivations are because of the words of a third person is not rational.  Both people's claims about someone else's motivations are unknowable for a being like myself, as the only motivations I can prove to myself are my own.  It is folly to think that something other than that one is observing claims is either true or knowable based on hearsay.  In other words, hearsay proves only that one has heard or read the words of someone else.  It does not even prove that other minds exist!

It is not just matters of history like the occurrence of wars or certain matters of science like the existence of a quantum realm that no one can prove, even if one can amass limited, potentially illusory evidence that these ideas are true; it is impossible to know if someone is being honest when they say that they love you (although this is far easier to directly support with evidence than something like historical events) or to know that they are correct in saying that they have seen some random event.  Hearsay is easily found all throughout daily human life and yet it is never rational to believe the contents of someone else's claims just because they made the claim.  It is almost just as easy, unfortunately, to find fools who believe in hearsay as it is easy to find examples of hearsay itself.