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Everybody must "do their own research." There is no alternative.

No matter how dumb you think you are, you still have to make your own decisions. Even if your "research" is just to figure out who you choose to trust, that decision itself is 100% yours.

Trusting the authorities on non-controversial stuff is usually ok, but society goes mad from time to time and trusting the authorities where there is widespread disagreement turns out to more often than not (in my 53 years of experience) to be the wrong decision. Authorities don't act from a drive to find the truth regardless of consequences, they act from other drives, for other reasons, that are complicated and complex (fitting in themselves, pleasing the people with the most money, etc) but generally are NOT scientifically driven towards the truth (and do not speak for science no matter how much they claim to). Anyone who says "I want to reassure you" is immediately untrustworthy. Reassurance is the biggest give-away that they are a running a confidence game.

Viktor Vsk 2y ago

This is wrong, doing own research in every area prevents humanity progress and is in general dangerous. Thats why we have social systems of trust often times accompanied by a set of regulations. Yet of course every professional who dedicates their life to specific area is reassured that everyone MUST be a specialist on this area, because thinks its easy for everyone since its easy for them (like you think its easy to DYOR consuming information on internet)

- when suddenly your stomach starts to burn with pain do you DYOR or blindly trust doctors its appendicitis that must be removed immediately and believe they have experience since they work in the hospital and you don’t have to check their knowledge?

- when you want to repair your car do you DYOR on what employees do and how good and you 100% understand each part of the process or you believe reputation institute and let them do their work?

- when you buy something from supermarkets, so you DYOR that food is not poisoned, fresh and actually is what is claims to be or you used to take govt licenses for granted and forget some professionals already did research for you

There are too many areas in life that you trust somebody and don’t DYOR yet you think internet is exceptional area, well you are not alone, every professional in his area believes the same :)

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Discussion

Mike Dilger ☑️ 2y ago

Did you read my post?

Nothing in my post referenced the Internet.

Nor did I say you shouldn't trust anybody. It is a fact of life that ultimately you must decide who to believe. Even if you want to trust society in every case on every issue, that in itself is a form of doing your own research -- researching who in society you choose to trust (because society isn't a single person). Hence my opening statement - there is no way out. You can't avoid it even if you wanted to... unless I suppose you just decide to sit perfectly still like a vegetable and never act.

When it comes to the doctor or the mechanic or the supermarket, these all fall into the category that I mentioned in my post" "Trusting the authorities on non-controversial stuff is usually ok."

It is only on topics where society has a significant fraction of dissent where you need to tread carefully.