4 ms·

Not the OP, but this is a leading question that goes in the wrong direction. You can't really trust any source 100%. You need to do your own research and be hum

Not the OP, but this is a leading question that goes in the wrong direction. You can't really trust any source 100%. You need to do your own research and be humble about it. Journalists are good at this kind of work but they make plenty of mistakes (and as the child of Journalists I will also add that they can be total idiots who are more focused on emotional stories than facts). Basic media literacy with a healthy dose of skepticism and humility is necessary to get anything more than urban legends out of the paper.

BeFlatXIII 4y ago
The problem with "doing your own research" is that it is unworkable as a policy for the masses, as it leads most to settle on believing well-spoken hucksters. Humility to know when you should trust someone else as a guide is necessary until you've developed the personal experience+knowledge to evaluate sources independently.
duckmysick 4y ago
> You need to do your own research and be humble about it. It takes me between 30 and 60 minutes to research a short news article in a topic that I'm familiar with. For topics I'm not an expert in it's multiple hours. I simply don't have time for it. Family, work, and sleep already occupy much of my day.
- fidgewidge 4y ago
  That's a common objection, yeah, and it's a problem. One solution is to recognize that, unfortunately, in that case you don't have much reliable knowledge about the world and therefore your default position should be to not try to influence it. Practically that means things like not judging other people, not voting, or alternatively voting for libertarians who don't believe in imposing rules on other people (because if you voted for specific rules, you'd be doing so based on unreliable information). Luckily you don't have to actually research every single article. It's OK to generalize over time. Rules can also be shared. Here's some of mine: ignore any story about Russia because they're always unreliable especially since the war, ignore any study about science or public health, ignore any claims made by (ex)-intelligence agents, ignore any claims that appear to support woke narratives, ignore any statistical claims about China, ignore economic predictions or really anything that depends on academically developed statistical models.

BeFlatXIII 4y ago

The problem with "doing your own research" is that it is unworkable as a policy for the masses, as it leads most to settle on believing well-spoken hucksters. Humility to know when you should trust someone else as a guide is necessary until you've developed the personal experience+knowledge to evaluate sources independently.

duckmysick 4y ago

> You need to do your own research and be humble about it. It takes me between 30 and 60 minutes to research a short news article in a topic that I'm familiar with. For topics I'm not an expert in it's multiple hours. I simply don't have time for it. Family, work, and sleep already occupy much of my day.

fidgewidge 4y ago
That's a common objection, yeah, and it's a problem. One solution is to recognize that, unfortunately, in that case you don't have much reliable knowledge about the world and therefore your default position should be to not try to influence it. Practically that means things like not judging other people, not voting, or alternatively voting for libertarians who don't believe in imposing rules on other people (because if you voted for specific rules, you'd be doing so based on unreliable information). Luckily you don't have to actually research every single article. It's OK to generalize over time. Rules can also be shared. Here's some of mine: ignore any story about Russia because they're always unreliable especially since the war, ignore any study about science or public health, ignore any claims made by (ex)-intelligence agents, ignore any claims that appear to support woke narratives, ignore any statistical claims about China, ignore economic predictions or really anything that depends on academically developed statistical models.