Comment by mitchdoogle | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mitchdoogle | Hacker News Reader

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I can understand the author's frustrations. Things like this could cause real world issues because people put too much faith in Google giving them the correct answer.

I think it is more the fault of individuals, and to an extent the institutions teaching those individuals which have a responsibility to teach about online credibility in our time. I.e. don't just copy information from Google - click the link to verify the source is legitimate and look for additional confirmations of the thing you want to report. Of course, if one "legitimate" writer or website gets something wrong, it exacerbates the problem for everyone down the line.

Maybe Google should have a warning somewhere that there information has not been vetted for accuracy?

The problem is that without strong evidence you should assume that all information you read can't be trusted. This seems to be the root cause of all of the election meddling, fake news and similar social issues that are "popular" these days. The only real solution is to teach critical thinking. However teaching critical thinking to the masses is a very hard problem.

So instead of funding schools we just spend money passing laws that verge on censorship.

Yeah, exactly. There was something I was reading/watching the other day that was advising that you not trust information unless it comes from a credible/legitimate source. But isn't that the problem? I mean, a large percentage of the US thinks that Fox news is a credible source (including our President...). People think they're doing research by watching videos on YouTube.

I don't really know how you fix this either. It seems to me that it's not whether you're ABLE to think critically that's the problem, it's whether you WANT to. It feels like a large portion of our population just doesn't want to put in the effort.

Exactly. But also remember that watching YouTube videos can be good research. The medium isn't important, but you need to be careful that the content is coming from a reputable origin and cross-reference with independent sources. Typing the fact that you want to be true into the search box and watching the first 3 videos is not good research.

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