CBJ wrote: ↑Wed, 10. Apr 19, 22:39
Ketraar wrote: ↑Wed, 10. Apr 19, 19:04
This is easy, just reading 2 distinct sources of information will grant, what I personally think is the minimum of information on most subjects, preferably contradicting ones. Doing this over time will also grant people a "skill", called critical thinking and it gets better the more one uses it. So again, this is not hard at all.
Yes, it IS hard.
No it is not. I did it all the time, I don't see what's difficult about it, and I don't see anything special about myself. It's not like I'm bending myself backward, twisting my arm or giving up my first born to do it, I'm sure there are others who do it too.
Even if you can not obtain all the facts, at the very least it will provide a "balance" view. Hard cold fact is not the only way to make an "informed" decision. Students are taught how to check their answer even in the absent knowledge of what is the correct answer. You may not know what it is, but you can also deduce what it can not be. I said it before: I'm naturally suspicious of what I don't agree with, and I am extra suspicious of what I do agree with. And that's not a new thing: "keep your friend close and your enemy closer", "if something sounds too good to be true then it's probably not true", these have been wisdom through the age, people just don't want to apply it.
Especially when most of the lie are spread through the appeal of emotion and fear mongering, just keeping yourself a level head is often enough to avoid being misinformed. On the contrary, the more people indulge themselves in the echo chamber, the less effort it takes to trick them.
And asking people to read contradicting sources, in this case probably reading a newspaper whose politics they disagree with, is, I'm afraid, a fantasy. People don't do that. Again, you can say that they should do it until you're blue in the face, but it won't change the fact that most people don't want to be confronted with uncomfortable information that doesn't fit their world view, and certainly won't go out of their way to seek such situations.
This view has been brought up repeatedly in the last two pages by you and others, and in summary the tl;dr is: people just don't want to do it. I can accept it if I am given a demonstration of "people want to do it, but can not". But here, we talk about people having the tool and the mean to do something that will benefit, yet don't want to do it, than there can be no excuse. Again saying it's a common issue doesn't make it a non-issue, just like we don't accept wrong doing is not wrong just because "lots of people do it too!".
But here is the my main counterargument for you and others: so if your reason on this is "it's too hard, you can't expect people to do that", this means the only way for them to get the truth is being spoon-fed it by others. And who gonna be these "others"? The Politician and Media? Tell me, if you think expecting people to read a source of contradicting opinion is a fantasy ... then
how realistic it is to expect politician and media to tell no lie? 
And before you say something like "but speaking the truth is the duty expected of them!", I can also reciprocate that in the same manner: "taking things seriously and ensure they are informed are also the duty expected of the voters". You see how this game gonna go? In the end people prefer to talk about expectation of others instead of what expected of them, but ultimately it's easier to control your own action than the action of others. Especially - and I want to put an emphasis on this part - when you have the necessary mean to do so, all you need is a will. There are other places in the world the mean doesn't exist even if people have the will.
Ah well, hey ho...
