Well if you have any critical thinking skills and the ability to be objective, it's pretty easy to tell the difference between an opinion piece and reality. It's not rocket appliances
oof, critical thinking AND being objective? you mean ACTIVELY searching out the content that goes against everything you stood for and ACTUALLY engaging with it instead of dismissing it as nonsense?
if that is what it takes, i think the world is doomed.
"I don't respect that source so its wrong, read the article at opinionblog/myopinion.com for the facts"
Need an LLM service to auto generate fake sources as you cite them in your gish gallop comment
Didn’t they have some kind of study about the impact of Google’s curated feed affecting peoples “research”? In that if they start “researching” it’s inclined to just show the results that confirm their biases?
I spent hours with my mother explaining a scientific paper that was paraded around YouTube with the usual half-assed reading they do, and that fucker even ended with "don't trust me, read for yourself!" Which naturally no one does as "well he told me to look so he can't be lying."
Yeah well he was at best just dense and didn't understand, but more than likely capitalizing on sensational bullshit...
No, the Chinese are not trying to create a super deadly COVID variant Mr.Campbell...
We need to start teaching media literacy and critical thinking in all schools.
ABCs of 'research'
Always Be Critical. Doubt Everything, For Good.
Social media has a lot to answer for though. As well as advertisement driven Internet economics in general, driving people further down into rabbit holes when they don't have the skills to navigate it without getting radicalized.
Seeing fucking Qanon as a prime example.
It seems like a general, global sentiment to me due to the internet and not just on the internet. I think it's the combination of our society being more global than ever, and the vastly increased amount of professions due to technological advancement. There's just way too much information that an average person comes in contact with, our monkey brains weren't designed for this.
At least "Educate yourself" is better than "Don't do your own research". So you're bying a new car, well don't do your own research, just listen to the car salesman, he's the expert. People are stupid. "Don't use google" is a way better saying, I use qwant, but even ddg has less bias, censor, rank manipulating than google.