Re: Plausibility Check

In message <1154068000.433763.135680@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Franz Gnaedinger <frgn@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes
Me:

> I get my information from various reliable sources,
> for example from radio programs

Richard Herring:

Says it all, really.

Half of education consists in learning how to gather
and evaluate information. I am very good at this task.

The other half is learning how to present it in such a way that others can assess its credibility for themselves. You are very bad at that.

You are here in the Web, a medium, you have to evaluate
information you are given in sci.lang. How do you proceed?
You find some people you can trust,

Trust nobody.

and you consider
what they are telling you.

Which includes estimating its accuracy and credibility, their motivation, by how many levels of hearsay it's been distorted, etc... If they don't provide the metadata for doing that, they get low scores.

I do the same. I consult media
of any kind including the Web and radio programs and
TV documentaries and books and peer reviewed journals
and friends of mine and newspapers and so on, pick up
what I can use, and evaluate every piece of information
on the background of my knowledge.

But you fail to present the evidence from which you made your evaluation.

Already in my early
schooldays I followed projects of mine, kindly encouraged
by several teachers, and then I gathered information along
my ideas. Thus I acquired what I call an organic knowledge,
one that springs new ideas and insights, which again help
me find and evaluate information. I can only recommend
my way. Be interested in everything, consider all sources,
make your own experiences in life, follow ideas of your own.
If you exclude this or that source you may miss information,
and if you lack experience and ideas of your own you won't
be able to evaluate information properly.


--
Richard Herring
.