More Critical Thinking

Thomas Jeffererson, in a letter to John Norvell in 1807, said: "nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle". Years earlier (1786), he had said: "our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost." I doubt his later sentiment meant he had rejected his earlier one. I think he was acknowledging that the press, run by humans, was subject to and had been corrupted.

Fast forward to 2022, Twitter, Facebook, Fox, NY Times, Washington Post, and all the lie-generating outlets now have agendas. If you don't manipulate, the "other side" wins. Bad behavior is justified by other bad behavior. The conundrum is that once the ends justify the means, ethics get tossed aside.

No matter what your politics, there is always a source of information that you can dismiss by merely referring to the source. In politics itself, if the source is a Democrat, a Republican can ignore the information, and vice versa. Unfortunate, but true. The Internet only makes the problems worse, allowing a handful of jerks to manipulate the easily manipulated.

The answer is to learn critical thinking. Trust but verify, to borrow a phrase. Critical thinking is the rational, skeptical, and unbiased analysis or evaluation of factual evidence. Critical thinking is self-directed, self-disciplined, self-monitored, and self-corrective thinking. It is NOT going along with the crowd or other "like thinkers."