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This chapter clarified the principles of charity and fidelity and explored the intricacies of assessing unusual claims. Our judgments of improbability depend on our background knowledge and the evidence available. When a claim is inconsistent with our background knowledge, we judge the claim to be improbable. Our most reliable source of information is our own observations, but when these are not available, then we turn to other sources of information. Often we accept a claim based on the credibility of the sources who tell us to accept the claim. The reliability and credibility of magazines and newspapers and websites differ radically; with the less credible ones, we should always get independent verification before accepting any of their unusual claims. The more knowledge we have, and thus the closer our body of background knowledge approaches that of the experts, the better will be our judgments. Anecdotes of people's experiences are not as good evidence as statistical reports. When we don’t have good evidence for a claim we should suspend belief or continue with our disbelief if we already have some information to disbelieve it. Getting useful information about whom to vote for is very difficult, but we’ve seen a few examples that tell us what to be on the lookout for, and we've learned that news about candidates early in an election race is usually more useful than news late in the race.

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