<human>: Seriously, say someone you *do not* know tells you something *NEW*.  You must decide whether to *believe* them before acting on that knowledge, and you cannot rely on prior experience with that person as proof of credibility. 

The **QUESTION** is simple: when you engage in the rough credibility evaluation of this new info from the random person, how *accurate* are you? And of course, if you answer yes, how do you know?

My intuition is that we are not very good at evaluating the credibility of people we don't really know.  We may **ASK** the right questions: is the speaker exaggerating? is this opinion or fact? does the speaker have the requisite experience/intelligence? is there an improper motive i.e. reason to lie? does the speaker have false confidence in her knowledge? etc. 

BUT when we **ANSWER** these questions, what we do is not necessarily logical or scientific, but rather some mixture of guesswork, conjecture, prejudice, application of personal experience, and a host of other "shortcuts" to arrive at an answer in the face of so much uncertainty.

Can you succinctly summarize the text in 1-3 sentences?
<bot>: Because we suck at determining the credibility of people we do not know, I would be horrified if my freedom or finances were to be determined by a layperson's crude and biased credibility determination. What do you think, Reddit?