Facts: Why they matter and how to check them

In the age that the majority of the younger generation does not want to spend time to read serious in-depth articles and only has an eye for eye-catching titles or just some short notices on social media and likes to do cherry-picking of short reviews of sayings without fact checking, our world needs to keep offering more details and research journalism as well profound scientific research.

As it has been always, mankind has to keep doing self-introspection as well as investigating all the information which comes unto him or her.

Living in the golden age of misinformation it is up to reasonable figures to put things right and to dare to speak up when it is going in the wrong direction.

In the United States of America too many allowed too often some people claiming that there were “alternative facts” and “fake news”. By not reacting against the false accusations the 45th President of the United States of America continually could spread certain ungrounded ideas and succeed his brainwashing. It was then only a little step to fulfil his “State Terrorism” and bring people to storm the symbol of democracy, the Capitol. The dignity and fate of American democracy will now largely depend on how politicians will deal in the next few days with that president’s call to go to the Capitol and claim their rights.

We can wonder how many noticed and were willing to react on the way Donald Trump showed no respect at all for ethics and human values, and how he disintegrated every rule of public and political decorum and conventional wisdom.
What happened on January 6^th was the result of too many people having been silent and letting it happen.

The U.S.A. should now receive its Wake-up call and come to see what a similar act happened as in 1938. D. Trump managed to get his followers to break many glasses and to enter the house where Trump wants to be the boss or having all power. Here in Europe we only can hope more people in the States shall come to see that D. Trump is of the same calibre as the one who instigated the Kristallnacht or the Night of Broken Glass, also called the November Pogrom(s) in Germany. It is a fact that the four years of Trump and his call to the people is just a prelude to worse things to come if we allow it to continue.

It is high time enough people will stand up and shall come to open the eyes of the many blinded people and making them receptive to facts they were previously ignorant but also many blindly dismissing them as “fake news.”

*

To remember

• Many people = living in an alternative reality > everything that agrees with them = true, + anything that disagrees with them = biased, fake news or “just an opinion.”
• fact checking = to boil down to, “from a source I like => true, +  if from a source I don’t like => false,” ==> extremely faulty & dangerous dichotomy.
• all prone to cognitive traps & biases
• Scepticism = skill to be practiced + requires training
• fact = objective statement of reality > inherently apolitical
• opinion = subjective perception of reality based on individual views, beliefs & preferences.
• flawed thinking = pervades science denialism
• veracity of a politician’s statements & reported actions matter > People are impacted by things politicians do & say
• search & look for a broad range of sources
• Many view fact checking as an exercise to find sources that agree with them, but = opposite of how it should work.
• fact check = look for primary + well-respected secondary quality of source + verifiable information + agreement among sources
• objective ways to evaluate whether or not a source is biased
• look at evidence presented > verify & compare

+

Preceding

Shall the American again being put to the test

Yup

The Weight of History

He Becomes a Fool Through His Endless Desire

Francis Fukuyama and ‘The End of History?’

The one that exploded the great American story that lay beneath it

The Trump clan declares itself a Kennedy-like dynasty

So-called own sacred values under threat

U.S.A. Investment in a demagogue

Dear Mr. President

++

Additional reading

1. Blinded crying blue murder having being made afraid by a bugaboo
2. The clean sweeper of the whole caboodle
3. At the closing hours of 2016 #1 Looking down at terror
4. In denial, Donald Trump continues to insist that nothing serious is at hand and everything is in control
5. A president daring to use the Bible for underlining his hate speech
6. Trump going over the top bringing a blasphemous act
7. The Hero of the greatest …. failures
8. Hollowness of democracy
9. A new decade, To open the eyes to get a right view
10. 2020 in view #1 The 45th president of the U.S.A.
11. 2020 in view #2 The 45th president of the U.S.A. not willing to go
12. Stress-test for democracy #1 Storming of the Capitol in Washington
13. Stress-test for democracy #2 A coup d’etat with bloodshed
14. The death knell of an Empire
15. 💬 Misquotation Pandemic and Disinformation Polemic: 🧠 Mind Pollution by Viral Falsity 

+++

Related articles

1. It Was Hate
2. Donald Trump’s Impeachment
3. Big Tech pauses political issues after the Capitol uprising
4. The 147 Republicans That Still Objected To The Election Results After The Capitol Attack
5. Systemic Failure: Trump Was Right About the Deep State
6. High school teachers, students learn from Capitol breach
7. What is Malignant Narcissism?
8. ‘Ruling Class’ Trump-Doubters Still Don’t Get It. And They’ll Pay A Price
9. Ep 69: Coup The New Year
10. America Has Been Wounded
11. Capitol, Legacy of Trumpism and China
12. Ep 70: Crisis at the Capitol, Crisis in the Church
13. So you want to impeach president Trump …. again
14. How big tech companies reacted to the Capitol storm.
15. Trying to make sense of it all
16. Jake Angeli Brings to Light the Hatred of Whites Pervasive in America
17. Don’t mistake an assumption for a fact
18. Facts aren’t political (or religious)
19. The fallacy fallacy: Reject the argument not the conclusion

The Logic of Science

We seem to be living in the golden age of misinformation, and while cognitive biases and motivated reasoning have always existed, they seem to have reached epidemic levels in recent years, with attacks on the very nature of facts coming from the highest offices in the land (the phrases “alternative facts” and “fake news” come to mind). Many people seem to be living in an alternative reality where everything that agrees with them is true, and anything that disagrees with them is biased, fake news or “just an opinion.” Indeed, I have frequently encountered an open disdain for facts and those who check them. For many people, fact checking seems to boil down to, “if it came from a source I like, then it is true, and if it came from a source I don’t like, then it is false,” but that is an extremely faulty and dangerous dichotomy. So…

View original post 3,616 more words