So many opinions, so little reading?

Question

I'll be the first to admit, I love clicking little news stories and developing elaborate opinions on issues. The Iraq War,
the Middle East, political science, elections, religion...

But I've actually done very little academic reading in any of these fields. I don't read books devoted to these topics. My knowledge is completely anecdotal.

And based on nearly all posts on Y! Answers, for example, it appears as though most people are in my boat. Nobody's citing actual literature written by anyone credible. And it seems like the people who still take a walk to the public library in order to inform themselves tend to be so introverted anyway that their knowledge only increases their salary, but isn't professed to the more ignorant masses.

Has the internet made it too easy to gain cheap mass media knowledge of issues and then form super strong opinions?

How do we correct this?

Answer 1

What do you mean by academic reading? Books written by people blessed by universities? Information produced by Nobel Prize winners? You seem to imply that knowledge must be blessed by some organization deemed credible to identify what is information and what is not information. Sorry, but that is a bunch of nonsense. Universities have their own agendas, take for example Standford, which houses the Hoover Institute, an organization looked upon as a very biased organization in the way it develops it's ideology. Al Gore now has a Nobel, does that mean his is the word we must now agree to as the proof of global warming?

Why walk to the library when you can find a great deal more information on the internet, and by the way, libraries now use the internet as well. Just because something is printed in a book, does not make it any more accurate than anything posted on the internet. Another problem is that if you are not at the library checking facts, you have to spend far more time finding the book and checking the facts, and this can take enormous amounts of time and resources, and books are often mis-quoted.

The advantage of the internet is that the good web sites list credits and sources of information, and you can often quickly go to the source of information and verify the facts to a reliable extent, and find other legitimate sources that concur with the information posted on the linked to web site that is the source of information. When your sources are in a book, they are often very difficult to verify. The fact that you can quickly find several sources of information on the web is what makes the internet such a fantastic, reliable source of information, far better than books put our by so called academics.

In the past many books were written claiming to have been based on solid research embraced by the academics as the written proof of the truth, only to have them debunked by other scholars who researched the information on which these books were based, often times years later, after these book had been proclaimed the truth and used to base many decisions upon. Then, what had once been proclaimed the truth was revealed to be based on false, or misinterpreted information and faulty logic. All too often these books put out by academics and their institutions favored opinions that these universities and their benefactors wanted to be believed, often resulting in enormous profit to certain individuals connected to these groups.

The best way to determine reliability of sources is to apply reason, logic, and probability. Look at the reported facts, look at the concepts applied to the reported facts, and make up your own mind how probable it all is. In addition you should also look at where the sources come from, and who is funding the publication of this information, or in other words, follow the money.

I happen to be working on a book about this very subject, identifying how to determine for yourself what is true.

Answer 2

Will he read it? NO Believe only 10 % of what you read and 50 % of what you see. Being an English teacher my grade; Overall grade C+ Composition D Punctuation C Quote Reliable Sources F You as voter have the power to elect into office or elect out of the office. Do we stand for freedom? What about the Mosque in New York? Do we stand for equality? What about gay marriage? The freedom to choose to have an abortion? The list goes on. So, yes we are not a perfect nation, but instead of writing a hate filled letter back the candidate of your choice to replace the man you voted into office.This President did not start the phony war we now find ourselves in. That blame goes to Bush the liar, the cheat the one who hid Information before the attack on 911 just for the fact that he could go to war and finish what his chicken father could not finish.Then he hid more information on WMD. There were none, all BS from this spineless man. I know you voted for senior two times and his useless son two times as well. Look in the mirror you are to blame for the war we are in. Just like the last one against Vietnam a war we can not win no matter how many troops we send in. I know that a 90 year old geezer did not vote for a wacky woman from Alaska. And if you did not vote than you must wait for the next election and vote as that is what you fought for. Thank-you very much for your service to the country.

Answer 3

No.The dumbing-down process has been in the schools and done with utter brilliance.And the mass media controls the thought of sheeple that do not research history on their own.It is too late to correct the problem.We are a stone's throw away from being serfs in a Fascist One World Government.

Answer 4

Sad part about the Internet is you can find any information to support any information true or not. I don't think kids (including many in my generation(age of 21'ish)) don't know how to look up information unless it's on the Internet. Sad, but true.

A way to correct this is to have people go through some of these sites putting a signature of some sort to identify it's valid or not. Something tells me not many sites will be valid after that.

Answer 5

and just who has time to do all this academic reading? and even if you do the reading required, all that would do is make your 'opinion' a more informed one but not necessarily a correct one. the media, as we all know, is completely biased and getting information from any news source these days, be it the internet or whatever, is THEIR opinion. and you know the old saying, "opinions are like assholes, everyone's got one"...

Answer 6

Fantastic question, love your honesty.

"Yes" "Correct this by shifting focus from opinion to evidentiary support"

All, Know-it. "Together We Can Fix Things".
.........pulledouttamybutt.edu. November 26 2007.

:-P

Answer 7

we dont , the world is being made to easy to be stupid, instead of spending hours in the library we spend 10 mins online , and we have no idea who wrote or if its correct on here. also no one is open to new ideas they have become closed minded and stuburn

Answer 8

close down yahoo answers.