It's funny how we circle back to reputation - or, in other words, authority. People like to point out "appeals to authority" as fallacious (particularly when they don't like what's being said), but reputation is still one of the best heuristics for rapid evaluation of information that we have.
But then there's the issue whether the quoted authority actually said what's being quoted. Reputation is transitive, so you could technically chain it (a "web of trust" :)), but then again, looking at most regular people I know in real life, this doesn't work - it's hard to trust second-hand information even from a friend or family member, unless you know they're way above average in being pedantic about information provenance in their speech.
Unfortunately, most people I know will say "X is Y", where the correct thing to say would be "I remember reading 2 years ago in Foo that they claimed Bar said X is Y". This makes reports from such people pretty much entirely noise, as it's impossible to evaluate provenance.
But then there's the issue whether the quoted authority actually said what's being quoted. Reputation is transitive, so you could technically chain it (a "web of trust" :)), but then again, looking at most regular people I know in real life, this doesn't work - it's hard to trust second-hand information even from a friend or family member, unless you know they're way above average in being pedantic about information provenance in their speech.
Unfortunately, most people I know will say "X is Y", where the correct thing to say would be "I remember reading 2 years ago in Foo that they claimed Bar said X is Y". This makes reports from such people pretty much entirely noise, as it's impossible to evaluate provenance.