Who Do You Trust? The critical question. (PART ONE)

(PART ONE) 

Who you trust is critically important. In a world of abundant amounts of information it has become almost necessary to find shortcuts to process and summarize data, so that you have time to take in all the information you want to process. 

Sound bites, memes, TikTok video clips, and similar stuff have become huge sources of "life hacks" AKA shortcuts of learning. (Ironically, many people will never read my thoughts here because this is too long to spend time reading. Ha ha ha.)

But can you trust this information?

It is a fact that information can only be one of two things: factual or false. Yes a sentence can include two claims and one of them is factual and one is false, but each idea individually is one or the other; it can't be both! If something is 98% true and 2% false, then it is still false in my book. When facts and falsehoods get mixed it is particularly dangerous. Mixing the two can either be done purposefully or innocently, and most times it is not clear which is the case.

So we come back to the question of trust. How do you figure out what to believe and not believe?

Here are guiding principles I have chosen to follow when examining information. These are somewhat in the order.

1. UNSENSATIONAL - Does the claim seem to good to be true or to be sensationalized? Then it probably warrants a deeper look.
2. RELIABLE SOURCE - Does the source have a good track record for providing accurate info?
3. AUTHENTIC SOURCE - Is the fact really the thing it purports to be and by the source it claims to be from? (This one is a HUGE red flag for me. When someone says my friend's friend heard...)
4. ACCURATE - Can the claim be corroborated with other reliable sources? (i.e. peer reviewed)
5. FAIRNESS - Is the info represented fairly and not taken out of context?

I have several good friends that use "follow the money" as a litmus test for a source's credibility. I do think this is wise advise, but just because someone funds something that could potentially benefit them doesn't mean the results are always skewed. In a capitalistic society it would make sense that those who fund something, like a health study for example, would be someone who could benefit from the results of the study. So I don't feel good about throwing out the results of a study based on the funding source alone.