Internet – Knowledge or Bullshit?
How much of what we read on the Internet should we believe? The web is a place of mystery and absurdity, knowledge and fantastic concepts, but it is also open to a high level of abuse.
Even leaving out the dangers of which we’ve all heard of being stalked and having young children misled and abused, there is the issue of just how true the information we find might be. We need to know just how reliable the facts and figures are that we find in our searches. Take a look at this…
Now this search was from a Search run by Mr JM as he researched a site he was reading. They mentioned ‘quantized redshift’ and as he was unsure what that meant he googled it.
What he got covers a range of responses that demonstrate what I want to talk about.
The first item is from wikipedia. A lot of people take what they read on a wiki page as true gospel, but they don’t realize that anyone can add to or change what is on there and they don’t need to prove that what they add is actually true. This makes it mostly useful information but it needs to be cross-checked against a reliable source before relying on it.
Then there is a University page (www.cs.unc.edu – Computer Science at University of North Carolina) which should be a more reliable source of information, but then if you’re looking for fringe information, established sources like Universities have the drawback that they will not endanger their grants or reputations.
The next, http://metaresearch.org is a site that sets out to challenge the established areas of science, with the view that if they aren’t working, they should be challenged. Some research here might be needed to decide just what their point of view might be. Some of these sites are very good; others are a mask for a dedicated group of fanatics who wish to push their dogma.
www.electric-cosmos.org is a site bringing out an alternate view of the cosmos – it may or may not be showing us Truth, but they at least have to show a good amount of scientific ‘truth’ or get labeled as ‘crackpots’ by mainstream science.
www.bautforum.com is a site that strives to present orthodox science and show up alternate views when their science fails them. They may or may not be flexible enough to adapt to new evidence, but they have a large number of active members who will happily tear into any problem brought to them.
www.answersingenesis.org is a Christian site with a definite bias towards proving the bile view as the only correct one. Anything that can be used by them to show how the bible is correct will be used and everything else is either misrepresented or ignored in the quest for biblical supremacy.
And so on… that search brings up 230,000 sites.
So be very, very careful just where you get the information you use in your life from – check into the sites, find out what you can about those purporting to be offering you Truth, and double check everything that comes up on your screen.
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