I don’t really have a method. I tend to intentionally seek out sources of information that challenge what I think, though. I probably spend more time reading the arguments *against* what I believe, and the arguments I make, than reading the arguments of people who agree with me.

How that approach turns into internet searches, I don’t really know. I haven’t tried to systematize my approach to information discovery in any way that would be terribly exciting to talk about. It would probably be best described as disorganized and scatterbrained, and some internal socratic dialogues from time to time, trying to convince myself I’m wrong about what I think, through imagining counterfactuals, and trying to identify what would have to be true for me to be wrong, or some haphazard positivist construction like that. That being said, I’m not a strict positivist.

With important stuff I always look for more "sauces". Preferably with different biases. And still you can't be sure, even being eye whitness doesn't mean you saw every angle.

The problem I see with big general media is they pretty often write absolute nonsense and you only see it when it happens to be in the field you know very well. And then you wonder what about the rest of their output? Can't trust them? And then the same newspaper "prints" something in the same field that's actually correct and well informed.

Not easy, it never was.

I think this is an intellectual rabbit hole from which there is no tractable escape. When people pose this as a problem, they are usually starting from the in-built assumption that they have libertarian free will (in the philosophical sense, not political sense) and that ethically, ensuring that actuality of ones own choices over what to pay attention to, are not intruded on.

The problem is, is no matter what, the information coming to you is being curated. Even your senses are curating information to you, based on what your biology thinks is important for you to pay attention to, based on things that have been selective for survival. But that’s getting a little too abstract.

As it pertains to knowledge of by the outside world, and in the domain of human affairs, there is no such thing as objective facts. There just isn’t. You are 100% reliant on the testimony of others to obtain information about human affairs beyond your immediate cone of experience. Whether it’s a journalist working for a left-leaning rag, or some anonymous person her on Nostr recounting some information about what’s going on in some random corner of the world, the information coming to you is being curated. Said anonymous person is deciding to share specific information based on their preferences.

A lot of people in these parts have come to believe that anonymous person is as good, if not better, source of truth and un-curated information, than a news organization, given the letter’s interests and agenda. There is this bias, stemming from this demand to protect the idea of the libertarian free experience, that makes one come to the conclusion that a more anarchic process for obtaining information about the world is a better way to uncover truth. This is actually completely wrong, and I think, provably so.

Everyone is being manipulated by the people they consume information from. I’m manipulating you right now. That’s the nature of human communication and dialogue. A parent is manipulating their children, and trying to communicate values to them, based on their curation of what they think is important. A leader in an organization is doing the same thing to the people they lead. The people who post on social media are doing the same.

The belief that the truth of the world is easier to see once you completely reject professional journalism is really a false hope. You’ve just chosen different curators.

I don't really have any main sources of information. There are some news outlets that I generally respect more than others. But I've gotten a lot better, when I'm interested in a particular news event, at reading coverage on that event from 3-4 different news outlets, of different political slants, and from different parts of the world.

Indeed, I am 🙏

too many useless arguments online with people acting in bad faith for engagement, focus on supporting, building, and using tools in the real world, help your neighbors, build stronger local communities

They shouldn't have assumed they were encrypted.

But between state access to DMs, COVID censorship, and whatever other narrative suppression/magnifying he may have allowed to happen or authorized, I see no reason to like the guy despite being pro-bitcoin or funding Nostr development.

Did people use twitter DMs thinking it was encrypted?

Not great, but not exactly surprising.

Jack has owned a lot of mistakes and is actively working towards making Bitcoin better - I suspect that's why he's generally given the benefit of the doubt. Hardly the same thing as Udi 😅

Thanks for letting them read our DMs #[1]

#[0]

GM 👋, I've got a new npub - lost my old nsec and logged out of Amethyst 🤦‍♂️

#npub1a3qwr29jp90868tqeyt6tc4jcj4h4rv9cr6ug5f70nkux3wyf52sz8kzd0 is ded