Carl Sagan got it right when he spoke about trust

"One of the saddest lessons of history is this: if we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth."

Thanks to Lenore who made a comment in my Deion Sanders article that linked to an opinion piece about trust.

The article talked, among other things, about the Bernie Madoff effect: “And even when it starts to become clear we have been fooled, whether on a small, large, or life-threatening scale, the vast majority reject it.”

This quote stood out for me:

“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: if we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, Even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”

― Sarl Sagan, The demon-haunted world: science as a candle in the dark

For more on this, see the full article.