Thanks for posting this. It's refreshing to meet someone who's not afraid to say that everyone who disagrees with them is a complete idiot.

I don't care if someone disagrees. It often motivates me to look harder at the information, but when the disagreement is motivated by the exact same source every time it starts to get frustrating.

Same here, if you read my politically fueled journal entries.

It must excite people, otherwise they wouldn't look for "Miffy's next flameworthy journal of revelation". :/

Pat yourself on the back for getting them riled up!

Unfortunately, I wish it were not their reaction as well. ;S

hmm...I'm not afraid to be proven wrong, but I'm becoming more, and more leary of almost all sources of information.

but I should think that pbs, would not have any motives, or adgendas, they'd state the facts honestly.

I will do my part, and give a bit of research, when posting.

but that won't stop people from being retarded.
it just gives me leverage to make them look even dumber.

yay for the bbc ^^

but yeah. i actually have a genetics degree so i understand the whole GM debate from a lab level and a "gene pool" level and i gotta say, i agree with you, GM bad.

another reason for disliking GM is how is drastically affects the genepool, things evolved a certain way for bloody good reasons, to tamper with that without the many many years of adaption is only going to give unknown results in the long term and the global term. i'm not opposed to GM in some cases but it's very rare, and i wish the scientific "they" would consider more than their bank accounts with this.

BBC and The World are both great sources.

PPL if you want to know more about truth about the country you live in, listen to the news from other countries.

I'm also a botanist, and I've talked with a professor friend of mine about the subect.
Sorry if I made myself sound like if I lacked refs (or like an idiot). I lacked time: this, surely.

Welcome to the internet!

People are dumb, arrogant animals. Once they have an idea rooted in their head it's hard to get it out. Just something we all have to come to learn and accept because I don't think it's going to change anytime in the foreseeable future.

Critical thinking is important, but so also is probable rationalization -- When making a point that goes against "common sense" (or the general self-regulating principles of occam's razor), you should cite all your sources, and make as few unsubstantiated remarks as possible if you want people to take any of it under serious consideration. Truth is not some sort of elite secret, nor should it be. It should usually make sense when properly elaborated upon 8)

Just remember that the internet is no less biased or infallible than the news. Theres a reason why wikipedia isn't a valid source for professionally researched and referenced information. :P

It all depends on what the subject is bud. It all depends. Sometimes PR is telling the truth, you never know. Best bet is to HONESTLY not to even bring it up outside of real life. It it doesnt involve the fandom, people blow a gasket. Hell they do if it does some times or at least from my experiance. -shrugs-

It also happens to deal with the fact that your a pop-u-fur and some furs get off on trying to tell you wrong, no matter how right you may be. Its their 15 seconds of fame.

Just a fleeting thought.

Dont let em' bug ya. Because in all seriousness, the internet is serious business... unless you are google... then it really is.

See, this is why I get all my news from the tiny man with the pointy hat who lives in my sock drawer.

After seeing "PENIS" flash across my screen, I have to wonder if this is a sexual metaphor.

No; I just like the word 'penis' so gosh darn much, i feel I have to share it with the world.

Oh, okay then. I just felt like 'sock drawer' made an awesome reference for underpants or something. Needed to make sure if my giggle fit was unfounded or not. =3

I may be a semi-subconscious reference to Underpants Gnomes.

Pop culture (which I think you mean the more popular, and therefore more sensationalized websites/TV shows) are valid forms of information, though. The trick is being able to take the information out away from the extra crap. Knowing the limits of your source (no matter what) is just as important as the source itself.

according to Fox news hamsters are dangerous pets to keep!!!

... yeah, your point is agreed upon :3

What ever happened to thinking for oneself?

Honest question. i mean, is it too dangerous to do so?

I really wish people would try that sometime :P

you forgot Air America and Nova M radio.

I love the BBC. Anyway, one reason why I do not engage others online so much anymore is because of all the PR pushers and other junk listing for "information." I would say the last discussion on GM and GE is an example of why I am not interested anymore.

You get people who want to argue, then you get the other 99% who wants to spew, rave and rant. Then when you post information or sources for them to delve into they ignore it as propaganda.

Being proven wrong is not bad in any way possible, it means both sides should grow from it and rework their arguments to make them better and more reliable. Sadly I do not see that anymore, I remember about 5 years ago you could talk politics online in SOME forums and point out someone wrong and they you without it turning into a giant mess of mudballing, spitballing or hostility. I have never found anywhere since then where you can have a decent argument without mudslinging.

As someone else said and I shall elaborate it: All people are idiots.

Refrences will always be biased to the other party should they show anything at all against their position. Gotta love how politics work now dont we?

I get my info from the newspapers and news sits, and even then I'm a li'l picky. I find most stuff from the Associate Press to be fairly reliable.

Almost all news is from AP & Reuters :P

For a good laugh on all this, look for "Fite Nite Starburst" on YouTube.

It's sponsored by StarBurst and is VERY funny!

~Otaku-Man

LOL...I hate to say it...But you are asking people to do something they really hate to..."Think for themselves"...Good luck with that, most are just very stubbornly stuck to whatever they have been told.

Well, You post a controversy, You're inviting in your journal, silly squish.

It's hard to manage thing when you're talking about most things. I forget that sometimes because most of the things I debate or refute are all sciences, which means that there are multiple, nigh-irrefutable peer-reviewed sources. With the "squishy" matters of public opinion or the state of situations (Or soft sciences like psychology and sociology) it's a little harder.

There's no such thing as credible information, unless you can somehow find it with no human involvement whatsoever, researchers and those writing the information counting as human involvement. People will believe whatever best supports their opinions regardless of whether it's from a "good" source, and will try to bend their words and information to convince others. Trying to convince people of things contrary to their opinions is futile and leads only to the inevitable argument over information and opinions which may or may not have any amount of merit or validity to them.

It'd be nice if more people did that, indeed, and its good to call everyone on it. The main problem is that everyone's opinion is their comfort zone, and far too many people nowadays don't see disagreement as a means of establishing an intelligent dialog so much as a personal attack; far too often, disagreements include personal attacks in them as well, which doesn't help. Then, add the propensity for people online to just barge into conversations with random BS (especially on public forums with little or no moderation), and you have a nice, steep slope to fight before worrying about presenting a valid argument. It's because of this I rarely make comments on controversial subjects and am even less willing to start such discussions outside of people I know fairly well.

Still, you bring up a good point - it's really hard to find good, reliable sources nowadays that are immediately agreeable outside of a given circle. Every major, and most minor, media network has its biases, and they're so well ingrained that presenting them as sources runs the risk of people seeing the bias first and the information second (if they even bother to look at all). It hasn't helped that some of these media outlets, notably within the past few years, have been caught red-handed fabricating news to further their political agendas while other agencies pick up the stories with minimal (or no) research so as not to appear behind the competition. Alarmist baiting tactics also get old fast when used for stories of relatively low interest/importance/consequence.

The simplest solution, I've found, is to take information from multiple sources (even ones you may not agree with) and draw your own conclusions. The more research you do yourself, the more time you take to look at who's presenting the information and how they've treated such material in the past, the better chance you have of making a reasonably informed decision rather than just parroting one source's words. Furthermore, by looking at multiple sources, you have a good chance of seeing (through the differences of presentation) where fact ends and source-bias begins.

Problem is, most people either don't have the time or the will to make that effort, and certainly not over every bit of information that pops up over the course of the hour/day/week/month/year/etc. Hence their willingness to fall back on sources that most strongly corroborate with their mindsets without devoting as much time to looking at the facts as they should. I know I'm guilty of it at times, and it's a rare person that isn't.

A shame we can't just pause time and take a relative day or three to sift through things.

Very well put.

I trust BBC as much as I trust CNN, which is about || this much. You forget that BBC is just England's version of mass media--in fact, BBC controls almost ALL MEDIA in Western Europe. One source with that much power? I'd rather trust rat poison, because if I ingest it, I KNOW I'll die.

This little comic speaks way more truth than it was meant to...and it applies to almost the entire world, not just the US.
http://spamusement.com/index.php/comics/view/119

Very true. Both statements.

Even better would be to go straight to the source...check out scientific journals that deal with environmental and agricultural biology, and see for yourself exactly what the research is saying without viewing it through the lens of a media outlet. Most college libraries have good subscriptions to journals, and if they don't, you can usually get them in .pdf format in a few days. That way, you can stare at the numbers yourself and decide what they say about GM crops...

Even the research itself can be tainted in some cases. There are numerous incidents where researchers funded by specific organizations are "encouraged" to get results that support whatever the organization prefers. I noticed how rampant this was when I was looking into MSG research paper.

Well, the idea of scientific journals is that other scientists in the field who DON'T have a vested stake in the results of the research can call bullshit on biased results and not publish those papers...the problem would then be whether these huge pharmaceutical and agribusiness companies have corrupted the journals themselves. Some journals are more rigorous than others, and it's absolutely true that you need to pay attention to who funds the research.

I actually use an aggregate to compile news and got get my information. I tend to be mistrustful of media that heavily uses ad space, whether TV for the main internet news sites. There is often not a particularly bad source for getting news over another, though Fox News tries its best to be on that list. As a rule I use Google News which will give me 'many' to 'thousands' of sources worldwide. State owned, or heavily state influenced sources are often the worst, then sources that proclaim a particular view and filter it (both right and left). Whether it be from the government controlled Chinese media, Iran's IRNA, Fox's purported 'no spin', Greenpeace and its ilk and everything in-between. Above that looking at more mundane sources, a keen eye for rhetoric or sociopolitical catchphrases helps filter things even more. In the big scope of things, reading news that comes from outside of your particular realm helps. The BBC for instance can be useful for those in the US but is likely to have a EU flavour on anything in its own news sphere. Gannet might be useful to those in the UK and so forth. PBS can be useful too, though I find it leans a touch left, especially on news from the middle east. A co-worker of mine likes to joke and call it the Palestinian Broadcasting Service. Religious bents are also problematic, the 700 club for example or the International Islamic News Agency. You wouldn't for example look at an Iranian news agency to learn about the US or the holocaust. Once upon a time when it was rather costly to print a book you could get decent data about many subjects since the writers wanted to be accurate. In the past 20-25 years though printing a book has become quite cheap which has led to a huge amount of junk print media. Heck, even James G. Watt and Dan Quale are published!

In closing I'll repeat a line from earlier.

In the big scope of things, reading news that comes from outside of your particular realm helps with getting to the real truth.

I don't try to sway peoples' minds anymore. I just make my argument and walk away. No point sticking around.

...and for heaven's sake, get multiple sources and cross-reference. One source, even a typically reliable one, is just not enough for serious research.

Sad but true. I've faced this again and again but hey, that's a basic problem of human nature. We blieve what we are spoon-fed by our peers. Be that the Govt, media, school, church etc. We then vomit it all back up again without thinking. Very few people stop to question their point of view and decide if it is really their own.