Category: Uncategorized

I’ve noticed over the past few years that the trust that we put in our mass media and scientific community has greatly depreciated. Conspiracy theories are rampant in this day and age. I’ve noticed that people want to believe that nothing is a coincidence and everything is connected by this group of lies. I’d argue…

“In authoritarian regimes, creating a broad cynicism about all sources of expertise—the press, academics, professionals—serves to make sure political power, not truth-seeking, is the ultimate arbiter of what’s true.” – Caulfield & Wineburg Anxiety around news consumption seems to be getting worse. Not a single person I know seems to have a solid grasp on…

Verified makes a point not to trust the websites we want to trust. The most professional looking websites, like for doctors or health-related sites, have formal logos and scientific tones to fool us. Use the web to read the web and find the information you need using lateral reading. We must not use all the…

This week’s readings from Verified inspired me to think a lot about believing information in general. While the medium that information is delivered on calls for different approaches in the process of verifying information, the methods and mistakes Verified points out seem analogous to mistakes made in other areas like general conversation, speeches, or television.…

Mike Caufield is great at creating visuals to help readers better understand the concepts he covers. In the past I’ve read “lateral reading” and I’ve been able to understand what it is and why it is important, but I’ve never fully understood why reading vertically was bad. That was never fully described to me so…

I found this week’s reading of Verified to be the most interesting yet. I think it was the most interesting because it definitely had concepts I had not considered before. And I can see how these concepts will be very helpful.  In Chapter 4, something I found important that was mentioned is that we shouldn’t read print, such as books, the same way we…

The way we consume information seems to becoming increasingly “lazy.” As loathe I am to call anything lazy, that just seems to be the way things are. Instead of getting the newspaper, flitting through to the section you actually care about, reading, and discussing what you read with family, neighbors, or friends, we stare at…

As a philosophy major, I was quite taken aback by some of the points made in Verified thus far. My primary educational world for years has revolved around assuming other’s ways of thinking, exercising them, and analyzing their logic. One practice that I have consistently included in my reading and study is the practice of…

I found myself scrolling through X (formerly Twitter) last night and noticed something about myself. As my eyes roved over the endless scroll of posts, I noticed how much information I was digesting without question. Of course, there were the obvious tweets that stood out as engagement bait and blatant misinformation. I’d scoff at them…