"Where do you even begin? How do we find truly credible sources that aren’t the same old smokescreens they’ve become? And that’s a truly honest and sincere request. Because I don’t know where to begin or who to really trust for the dark honest truth"
Oof, if you ever find a source that fulfils this request let me know!😅 As I said, my sol…
"Where do you even begin? How do we find truly credible sources that aren’t the same old smokescreens they’ve become? And that’s a truly honest and sincere request. Because I don’t know where to begin or who to really trust for the dark honest truth"
Oof, if you ever find a source that fulfils this request let me know!😅 As I said, my solution is to consume a range of sources, from across the political spectrum, whenever I'm really trying to get at the truth of something. If there's a quote or a clip, I always try to find the full source and understand the context. If there's a statistic, I go and find the original research and check the quality of their data.
Obviously, this is intensely time consuming work. And not something that every body can do, or has any interest in doing. But having done it for a while, I think I've become reasonably good at piecing together a story if I think it's important.
For everything else, for the stuff I'm not super interested in, I just leave room for doubt. If I've only read one source of information, even if I've read it thoroughly, I basically consider myself to know nothing at all about the story. If I have a conversation about it and encounter a conflicting account, I try to probe to see where the difference is coming from (is the person I'm talking to misremembering what they read? Am I? Is there some obvious aspect of this new information that discounts one or both of our perspectives?).
The real problem, as perfectly illustrated by Brigit, is how certain people can be on limited information. If we can't recognise that there are always things we don't know, we sabotage our own ability to learn.
"Where do you even begin? How do we find truly credible sources that aren’t the same old smokescreens they’ve become? And that’s a truly honest and sincere request. Because I don’t know where to begin or who to really trust for the dark honest truth"
Oof, if you ever find a source that fulfils this request let me know!😅 As I said, my solution is to consume a range of sources, from across the political spectrum, whenever I'm really trying to get at the truth of something. If there's a quote or a clip, I always try to find the full source and understand the context. If there's a statistic, I go and find the original research and check the quality of their data.
Obviously, this is intensely time consuming work. And not something that every body can do, or has any interest in doing. But having done it for a while, I think I've become reasonably good at piecing together a story if I think it's important.
For everything else, for the stuff I'm not super interested in, I just leave room for doubt. If I've only read one source of information, even if I've read it thoroughly, I basically consider myself to know nothing at all about the story. If I have a conversation about it and encounter a conflicting account, I try to probe to see where the difference is coming from (is the person I'm talking to misremembering what they read? Am I? Is there some obvious aspect of this new information that discounts one or both of our perspectives?).
The real problem, as perfectly illustrated by Brigit, is how certain people can be on limited information. If we can't recognise that there are always things we don't know, we sabotage our own ability to learn.