I've personally run into fakes all the time, despite my best efforts to avoid it. I've switched between countless news sources after I found out they were dubious for one reason or another.
Clearly I need to change my methodology, but is there a better method? I was just avoiding right-wing stuff...
Training and experience. "f I try to cross a street and see a car coming, how do I know its actually there?" Since our infancy, we are trained NOT to cross the street when a car is coming.
So, we believe that because we're told? Also, this reminds me of an experiement I heard long ago. A woman noticed her baby would always come to her, and wondered if it would walk off a cliff to her. So, she set her baby on a table, connected to another by a plexiglass bridge. The baby refused to cross the bridge. It just sat there crying no matter how much she coaxed it. She was surprised that her baby somehow already knew that you shouldn't walk off a cliff. Do we believe then cars are coming towards us just because we used to have woolly rhinos charge at us? Is that all there is to it?
We start out believing some things because we implicitly trust our parents/caregivers. But even as children most everyone tries to test their boundarries: we experiment and are punished by painful experiences. And some aversions are instinctive. (Even toddlers find millipeds creepy and little chicks cuddly.) Belief is not an all-or-nothing thing; verification is also almost never all-or-nothing. Plus the element of trust (in one's friends, kin, teachers) can never be completely eliminated. -- So, imo, you are overgeneralizing. A friend taught me: People generalize too much ;)
So, when I was told the earth was only a few thousand years old, I should never have questioned that? When I learned about evolution on the internet, should I have questioned that? Also, I really abandond my faith because I got sick of being called an idiot all the time purely for being christian. That was foolish regardless of truth. Should I then still be a young earth creationist? My whole life has been nothing but lies. My parents, my community, the internet, the whole world. I am beyond sick of lies.
(Truth in advertising: The toddlers/millipeds/little chicks statement above -- That I learned from a video on the internet. Yep, guilty as charged. But since I fully share the toddler's sentiment, I do very much believe it.)
@user77033 - A good cure for being sick of lies is to read stuff by people who were also really sick of lies and portrayed this very forcefully. I'm thinking of two books that shattered me when I was about 20 years old: Dostoievky's Notes from Underground and Camus Myth of Sysiphus. The Dostoievky book is both painful, absurd and extremely funny. Reading stuff like that will fortify you. (You can find Dostoievsky's book online: gutenberg.org/cache/epub/600/pg600-images.html)
"So, when I was told the earth was only a few thousand years old, I should never have questioned that?" Why question this? :) It's interesting to see how the first encounter with Chinese philosophy seriously rattled the Western chronology of the world: researchgate.net/profile/Thijs-Weststeijn-3/publication/…
(Sorry I hit the 'send' button before being done editing of my previous comment.)
Just for the record - I am +1 on your question. I think it's an important question. The rise of the internet, social media and things like fake news, are a game changer, at least for public political debate. Those events have intensified (or perhaps even brought about?) a global crisis of authority (a crisis that imo is partially very good and partially very bad and dangerous), a crisis of trust. This crisis plays out on many different levels - even on the most personal one. Political populists and cynical opportunists are taking advantage of it (the kleptocrats in MAGA land for instance).
Suggestion for improvement – the list of questions in your third paragraph is too long and it comes off as both overwhelming and sophomoric. Your point would be better made with about three good ones. Otherwise, this is a good question.
"Also, I really abandond my faith because I got sick of being called an idiot all the time purely for being christian." (comment above) As someone who does not believe in Christianity myself , no one convinced you it wasn't true. You were manipulated into not believing by being made to feel stupid for doing so. That is a common form of manipulative mind control that proselytizers use.
Truth/falsity is not binary, for exactly the reasons you state in your question. Confidence intervals are all you have, try to get better at calibrating them. Truth is an asymptote, and it's Bayes all the way down.
The key concept is interest. Political stuff usually have a lot of interest behind it. You need to know what is the objective of the person who wrote the article. Now, take stuff like the moon landing for example. One of the main interests was propaganda in the context of the cold war. You can expect that the party who is contrary to that interest to try to unprove the fact. Since the USSR actually recognized the moon landing, you can be have high confidence that it is true. But this is just a very simplified example.
it strikes me that the answers here focus on verifying facts, but the easiest forms of media manipulation are about presenting or implying faulty conclusions or opinions — exaggerating the importance of a fact that is actually true, omitting a great deal of information to the contrary, and other kinds of framing tricks. classic example is the infamous fox news clip where they scoff that 99% of "poor" (quotes theirs) households have a refrigerator. that is a true fact which they even source, but the thing they're trying to convince you of isn't factual at all.
even if you had a news source that only printed 100% verifiable facts, you'd still have the problem that the decision of which facts to print and which ones to emphasize more can have a massive impact on the impressions a reader takes away.
Discussion on question by user77033: …
Discussion on question by user77033: …