The Convince Model: How we accept things

If we are fully convinced of a matter, then we call it a fact. But what is a fact depends on three major factors, 

1. The end state environment: If the person receiving the information is ready to accept or reject or remain in doubt, because of several factors. One example would be education level of a person prepares him to accept more truths, distinguish dogmatic practices from actual beneficial ones. Another such instance is how at peace a person is, if someone is tired and exhausted after 12 hours of job, he might not be ready to absorb any information in an unhindered way.
2. The medium: How it reached you, were you searching for it and on researching you struck gold or a you just listened the news or it was delivered to you in a package as a information. If the article of information is published in a reliable newspaper or on a shady blog post, they might have different levels of convincing on a person. And the same newspaper might actually have different degree of convincing on two different persons because of their anchoring bias towards a topic or past experience with the newspaper.
3. The credibility of the source: What is the source, is it from a random stranger or a teacher or a scientist or a influential leader. At times we are unable to differentiate the source and the medium, but the source here means the real originator. If a journalist does a primary survey of the incident it is believed to be true, so we seek images, video and local people's comments to authenticate the information. Similarly a scientist running a model and publishing a result becomes authentic source. So, there is something called an expert in the field. But one big problem we face in today's scenario is a political expert becoming a source for health related subject, and without further validation followers take it as a fact.

Now breaking these factors we can have six filters as is described by Scott Adams (https://amzn.to/2FAmRRa)

1. Own experience

2. Close group's experience (family, friends, colleagues and classmates)

3. Experts 

4. Studies

5. Common sense

6. Patterns

We get a model 

 

Source: How to fail at almost everything... by Scott Adams

You can find the book here: How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life