How to Recognize A Reliable Person?

These issues are frequently the subject of confused debate, and it can be difficult to know who to ask for help from. As a result, we must make difficult decisions about who we allow to influence the way we think.

Under these circumstances, it is helpful to have an idea of what kind of person we should allow to help us when we are contemplating. In such a situation, philosophy comes in handy because it helps us establish a set of inference methods that we can trust in our intellectual lives.

Think about any recent complex problem. Perhaps you're considering how you feel about a particular social issue or how to revive the economy following the pandemic. Since you depend on people for both good and bad things, it is highly unlikely that you consider any of this in isolation.

People we depend on might fail us in a variety of ways. As false information may spread quickly on social media and rip apart society, people will sometimes lie for their own benefit. Among other things, coworkers conceal knowledge from their teams for career promotion, while opportunists prey on the weak. Each year, this costs businesses billions of dollars.

You might think we can easily solve this problem by consulting experts; they know what they're talking about, even if we don't. That's good advice, but it's not always enough. Sometimes it is difficult for us to determine who these experts are. Sometimes the experts themselves differ, or we may be unable to reach them.

More importantly, experience alone can rarely be decisive with questions that concern us. This is because resolving these issues is not just about preparing a list of facts; it is about dealing with these realities in light of our values and objectives. We have to understand what we have to do with those facts in each of our cases, and we can't figure it out without moral clarity and knowing ourselves.

This is why we often turn to people we trust for guidance. We listen to what they say in discussions; it is our task to ask questions and risk sharing our current ideas in the hope that they will help us consolidate them. So, we build our knowledge of the world within our intellectual accreditation networks, and what we need within these networks are intellectually dependable people.

This article explores these people and those who are in contrast to them. We will offer five benefits to intellectually dependable people, comparing each to the shortcomings of their unreliable counterparts. Searching for these intellectual merits can help us do a better job when we think together about the issues that matter to us.

What Should We Do?

The most important sign of intellectual reliability is that someone genuinely cares about your intellectual comfort and wants to help you get to the truth, gain knowledge, deepen your understanding, and develop your inquiry skills. The intellectually giving person shows real interest when others make intellectual gains and is happy to do so. They also possess mature views of the relative importance of such gains. For example, they understand that it is better for anyone to develop and gain extensive knowledge of a subject than to provide a short list of ready facts.

American geneticist Barbara McClintock was known for these traits. Around 1930, she set a course for building the chromosomal basis of genetics through her work on maize seeds. Rather than insisting on pursuing this research alone, she presented the project to her brightest graduate student, Harriet Creighton, who was later known globally for this discovery.

One can fail in various ways to reach intellectual bounty, and intellectual malignancy is the most obvious and extreme of them. This type of person wants to cause intellectual harm to others; they enjoy when people make mistakes or look stupid, and they take pleasure in causing them confusion.

Social vigilance is a subtler form of intellectual unreliability. Socially vigilant individuals are highly motivated to influence the opinions of others. They want to win arguments and lead people to see things their way. They believe that they have understood things for what they are and that those who do things properly are responsible for leading others to do things correctly.

At first, there might seem to be something appealing about the idea that those "intellectually superior" should help those less fortunate intellectually. At least socially vigilant people are interested in how others think, which also seems good.

But the problem is that they care the wrong way. They are not interested in others' having valid opinions; rather, they care that others share their perspectives, not that others make their discoveries. They only care that they lead others to their conclusions.

Research reveals that social vigilance is associated with several problematic features and behaviors, for example, a tendency to attract more extreme perspectives on more controversial topics such as climate change. Socially vigilant people defend their extremist attitudes vigorously and defend others who have already initiated them. This way, they attract beliefs into their societies rather than fostering mutual understanding and discovery.

It is not always easy to differentiate between an intellectually giving person and someone who is socially vigilant. But one way to do that is to pay attention to what excites them. Are they pleased with your intellectual progress in general, or only when they succeed in influencing your thinking?

The second sign of intellectual credibility is that a person tends to share their point of view with you faithfully, motivated by helping you advance. They realize that sometimes, if not always, they are in a position to reinforce your point of view by sharing their own. They are skilled at articulating their perspectives and assisting you in understanding and appreciating them.  In other words, this person has intellectual transparency.

Students of the English philosopher G. E. Moore described their teacher as a transparent person, especially in his teaching. In one lecture, he presented an attitude that he wanted to adopt, and then he began the next lecture by explaining why his previous point was wrong. In some cases, if he cannot see a clear logical path forward, he declares that he will dig deeper and see if this might lead to greater understanding.

There are several ways in which an individual can fail to be intellectually transparent, one of which is to be intellectually sterile. A sterile person wants others to think well of them; they care about their reputation. When they shared their views, they did so with that concern in mind.

Unlike a transparent person, a sterile person does not share his point of view to enhance intellectual comfort. Rather, they share it selectively to convey the best impression of themselves. Oftentimes, intellectual sterility results in a person exaggerating their intellectual standing, pretending to know things they don't know, or having stronger arguments than others to win support.

Another way of failing to be transparent lies in being intellectually shy. Unlike intellectual sterility, shy people tend to adopt negative attitudes towards their intellectual attributes, have a weak opinion as to their knowledge, and are afraid to reveal their ignorance. This leads them to move away from the spotlight and refrain from contributing information, even when they have something to say. They prefer to remain silent to avoid compromising their self-esteem, which may result from disclosing to themselves that they are not familiar with the matter, so they might not tell you what they know, even when they can help.

How can you distinguish between an intellectually transparent, sterile, or shy person? Focus on how they react to other people's opinions of their ideas. Fear of how others will understand their ideas or being overly concerned that those ideas will please you or others are all signs that these people may lack transparency.

The third sign of intellectual reliability is that the person tends to remove or resolve sources of ambiguity when communicating with you. They know that they can only help you if you understand them, and ambiguity gets in the way of understanding. Hence, this person removes or resolves any ambiguities so that you understand what they mean, and they have the skill of clarity in communication.

There are several techniques to resolve ambiguity. Those who communicate emphasize their main points, distinguish them from mere marginal words, identify keywords or phrases, and explain how their views contradict those of others. This is because the two may be confused. They have designed their communication in a way that is easy to follow, and the function of each part of their ideas is clear to you.

One method of failure is that communication has false depth. These people are open and accept potential insights. Some tasks were designed to assess individuals' level of susceptibility to false depth, and participants were asked to assess the depth of the compositions randomly created from circulating words, such as "There is a hidden meaning that transforms abstract and unparalleled beauty."

In general, people classify these terms as somewhat profound. Those who were classified as having a high level of depth were more prone to false depth.

While assessing visions is good, looking deep is a responsibility when it comes to being an intellectually dependable person. Those with a tendency to false depth also tend to be more vulnerable to the misconception of fake news and see it as real news.

Moreover, these individuals may be excited to make their views deep, even when the subject they raise is weak. Fortunately, you can distinguish those who communicate clearly from those exposed to false depth. If someone says something you can't understand, ask them to draft it in a form you can understand. If they avoid or insist that you have a problem understanding, this indicates a lack of communication skills.

The fourth sign of intellectual reliability is that people with this skill value the distinctive features of their audience. They care about your opinions, experiences, abilities, and inclinations; they adapt their communication to your plight to help you progress; and they are adept at making sense of the crowd.

By contrast, one form of public insensitivity is as follows: when one pays little attention to their listeners or cares more about their  own characteristics, a trait that psychologists call self-awareness. These people tend to agree strongly with claims such as "I always try to figure myself out." As a result, self-conscious people do not have time to know their audience.

People can also be very selective with their attention. For example, people who make judgments are on high alert for the embarrassing, bad, or problematic features of their listeners, whereas they are less interested in their audience's strengths. Or they may be alert to only their audience's well-reflected features. They are excited to see themselves as superior and then look for other people's relative weaknesses. This gives them a distorted view of their audience.

To determine whether the person you rely on is really sensitive, you might ask yourself: Do they show you that they understand your point of view, your intellectual needs, and your abilities? Do they ask you about these features in their attempt to get to know you? Do they communicate personally with you? If the answer is no, it is likely that they cannot be trusted.

In Conclusion

Intellectually reliable people display some sheer wisdom in supporting you with your inquiries, and they value the decisions involved in your quest for knowledge. They understand that people make decisions about when, where, and how to collect more evidence, as well as what methods to use and whom they can rely on. They are skilled at helping you get ahead by discerning the potential risks and benefits that arise in your pursuit of learning. And they have the skill of intellectual guidance.

In contrast, some people have a psychological need to get it all done. They are highly motivated to answer queries, discouraged when confronted with confusion or ambiguity, and want specific answers quickly to hold onto them. Psychologists call the two ingredients that trigger this need seizure and freezing.

Those who need to get things done invest in any information that is a solution to their questions, and after choosing an answer, they tend to ignore any contradictory information and freeze the answer they have come up with.

The strong need to end things is not always a problem. Decisiveness is a very important capability for leaders. However, this need can be an obstacle when it comes to sensitive topics that require careful, systematic thinking, specifically those topics on which others' guidance is often needed.

Such ambiguities demand a kind of reasoning that those who need to bring things to an end cannot bear. Instead, they are likely to give you unwise advice that oversimplifies the problem.

Patience is the key quality to look for in an intellectual guide. Does the person you rely on take the time to understand and appreciate the complexities of your plight, or are they too quick to try to fix it?

Whether or not a person can be intellectually dependable, they will tend to reveal themselves through their emotions, thoughts, and actions. The better we deal with these signs, the better we can do within our networks and know what to think about the complex problems we face.