Let’s move to the next category of factors that might be used to evaluate information sources when doing research: social.
By social, here, I mean having to do with other individuals, or groups. You might value sources that have any of the following characteristics:
Social
– popular
– seeming authoritative or charismatic
– appearing to have whatever character traits you find desirable
– attractive
– acknowledged, awarded
– positive reviews or recommendations
– with whom you have a reciprocal relationship
– tribal: you belong to the same group, or aspire to belong to a group they are identified with
With social factors, an important question is always: “says who”, and why should they in turn be trusted. If someone is recommended, why should the recommender be listened to? Does someone’s charisma mean that they know what they are talking about? Just because they are trending and popular does that mean that people have done any investigation into the quality and validity of the information?
Exercise
1. Think about some times when these social factors have been the most important in choosing which sources you use to answer a question, solve a problem, or make a decision.
2. When do you go beyond these social sources?
3. What are the pros and cons to selecting sources based on these social reasons?
4. What would you add to any of the categories we’ve covered?
5. How do the items in the three categories we’ve covered overlap?
About Learning
This project is about improvement, which is closely related to learning: learning for a purpose, to prevent previous errors, to do better than has been done before, to fit in new information, skills, and experiences with previous ones.
I would encourage you to develop your learning skills and appetite, your enjoyment for posing questions, finding answers, solving problems, and fitting it all together.
At the base of this is a genuine curiosity that most of us had as children, that we can develop by wondering, by asking what if, by being gentle with our process of exploration and discovery.
We can learn not to listen to the internal voices that tell us our questions are stupid, that what we wonder about isn’t important, that we waste time dreaming, and so on.
We can learn, and improve our learning abilities, just for fun, for ourselves, for those around us, extending up to a global scale. That may sound ambitious or unrealistic. Bear with me.
Start small, and see what happens. That’s what curiosity and exploration is about.
References
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Diversion
“I do like clarity and exact thinking and I believe that very important to [humanity]. Because when you allow yourself to think inexactly, your prejudices, your bias, your self-interest, comes in in ways you don’t notice and you do bad things without knowing you’re doing them. Self-deception is very easy.” Bertrand Russell, philosopher