In many cases, there's forums, wikis, clever people's blogs, but none of them are easy to find through Google/DDG, and essentially rely on manually "indexing" them in your head/bookmarks/notes.
How do YOU go about this?
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In many cases, there's forums, wikis, clever people's blogs, but none of them are easy to find through Google/DDG, and essentially rely on manually "indexing" them in your head/bookmarks/notes.
How do YOU go about this?
I try different search terms for the same topic. Differences between the articles presented help in finding areas of disagreement that can be explored further.
When I find a result that seems interesting, I search for the opposite to find opposing point, and ask which one seems more reasonable. I try to allow any stance to be changed as long as I manage to find anything more reasonable than what I had thought.
I search for different categories of media: articles, videos, podcasts, forums/comments so that regardless of the creator's preferred media platform for delivery, I can look at it. Longform videos are oftentimes helpful because they go into a topic further and it is easier to find more points that can be investigated further. Many books are not online and can be an equally good resource.
I go to the sources linked in the article. Sometimes, I use the time or location search filter to find what the search engine suggests for different locations and geographies.
When I come across something that seems outlandish, even over Group Messaging or comments sections, I search for those even if I know it is wrong because there is oftentimes something to be learned in how it became a prevailing view for some or many.
Of course, this is for online information only. Information you get offline is as important and in many cases more important.
Claim 1: "Wind turbines are committing genocide upon wildlife and if they weren't subsidised by Daddy Government they wouldn't exist"
Claim 2: "The levelised cost of energy is $40/MWh for electricity generated by wind versus $50/MWh for electricity generated by natural gas, and capacity factor for wind can be 35-40% in the UK"
It's a little bit of an extreme comparison, but if I feel like it would be impossible to find a counterexample to prove a source wrong, then I find it less trustworthy. If it would theoretically be easy to disprove the source, but my independent searches keep confirming it? I trust it much more.
And there's one other trick: if I don't have a basic grounding in a certain field then I will just reserve judgement. I am pretty happy to evaluate claims across engineering disciplines, but once it gets into medical fields for example? I just outsource my judgement to government health websites - they might be wrong but they are NEVER going to be more wrong than me.