It's not as difficult as you think. It's easier than ever to just do a search for their qualifications.

It's easy for you to say that cause you took classes at a university-level. You know how to search for sources, citations, how to check for qualification..etc. Trust me, for laymen, and by that I mean people who have grade 12 education at most, it's very difficult.

There are a lot of these people.

This post was edited by JessiWan on Sep 5 2021 07:58pm

Ten years ago that would be true. Everybody has access to the internet now, which includes websites from universities with basic things like "how to asses the quality of a source".

It's not availability of the information or even intellectual capacity. It's just desire to do so.

This post was edited by NetflixAdaptationWidow on Sep 5 2021 08:23pm

It's very difficult to assess the quality of a source without having some sort of expertise in said field.

For example, right now I can search for "is gold a good investment" and I will find sources that say completely opposite things and they are both convincing. With no background in finances such as in my case, no online guides on earth can sufficiently help me reach any sort of conclusion.

You will find sources, but not reputable sources. Again, first step is to actually learn how to asses the quality of a source in general.

If you aren't willing to do that you will constantly fall for conspiracy garbage.

And I am telling you that having the desire to do that is not enough. People need to actually be taught the skill/s in order to assess the quality of a source.

If what you said were true then there would be zero need for brick-and-mortar universities to exist. Everybody has internet now and everything is on the internet. People could just self-teach. Teach themselves everything. But is this happening? No. People still need to go to universities. Therefore, your claim that picking up these skills only requires desire, is false.

This post was edited by JessiWan on Sep 5 2021 08:54pm

I fundamentally disagree that everybody has the intent.

In fact, I know of at least a dozen users on this exact forum that are openly hostile to learning how to vet sources, and not just the crazy conspiracy types.

This post was edited by NetflixAdaptationWidow on Sep 5 2021 09:32pm

I never said everybody has the intent to learn. I said, having the desire to learn how to assess quality of sources, is not enough. People need to go to a brick-and-mortar university to be taught that.

I learned how to do it in high school and you can learn it on the internet.

Stop making excuses and learn. Plenty of people have.

Prions aren't even on the radar.

Prions don't happen from any arbitrary protein dude.