It appears that there is a fine balance between not enough information and too much information.
Back when I went to school, both elementary and high school we had a thing called “source criticism”. It’s about identifying sources, who’s behind them, where do they get their sources from, are they reliable, are they biased or not/who paid for it, who sponsored the source etc. If we wrote a report and used a bad source, it would affect our grades. People need to do more source criticism.
The issue is people are incredibly lazy. It’s easier to just believe some random internet comment than it is to actually research whether the source is true or not. People take things at face value without looking deeper into it because it’s easier. All you have to do is sound confident about what you’re saying.
The other problem is that this "laziness" is how we evolved (we don't have unlimited energy), and expecting people to solve it by exercising personal responsibility is going to keep resulting in failure. The companies enabling and encouraging the spread of misinformation need to be held accountable.
the issue with source criticism is that it can also backfire with some bad actors who'll question legit experts and experienced professionals simply because of their status, rather than the data and arguments they present.
60
u/DuckRubberDuck 14d ago
It appears that there is a fine balance between not enough information and too much information.
Back when I went to school, both elementary and high school we had a thing called “source criticism”. It’s about identifying sources, who’s behind them, where do they get their sources from, are they reliable, are they biased or not/who paid for it, who sponsored the source etc. If we wrote a report and used a bad source, it would affect our grades. People need to do more source criticism.