Thursday, August 27, 2020
A change in government is coming ironically through power
Tuesday, August 25, 2020
Are you ready to get to work?
Sunday, August 23, 2020
How to Make Sense of Information That You Are Not an Expert In
Evaluation of Information
Another aspect to consider of the information being presented is of the quality of the underlying information. How was the information taken, how has it been presented, and what type of framework is used. This can lead to skewed results of impressions. For example, you can say, "please get out of the car," which sounds more like a request, but is still something you must do. Or somebody can say it this way "I order you to get out of the car or you will be arrested." Again, same action will occur, you getting out of the car. However, one is much pleasant and may get you to be more cooperative later on. Then there are statements that can be factually wrong and misleading, just by using the same technique as I demonstrated above. Furthermore, if you're going to continue to evaluate a piece of information to see if it is determinative as good, how would you critique your own position if it agrees with the sources that you're reading?
Critiques of Information
Saturday, August 22, 2020
The Problem With Thinking About Concepts in the World
Some of the issues that are occurring today is due to the
lack of critical thinking skills. I am making this as an overall claim to what
is occurring in the United States and globally right now. What I am going to tend to address in the
next few articles on this blog, is how to proceed evaluating sources on the
Internet. I find it quite ironic that you're referring to this blog now, as
I am about to discuss how to evaluate a blog. This leads you to believe that
this blog should be irrelevant to your considerations of information. Now, I
am writing this in a style of dictation and the software is writing it for me. I
found Microsoft dictation software in Word to have gotten slightly better than
my dragon NaturallySpeaking software. I am testing this theory by
writing this post with this software through Microsoft Word. I would also go on
to state, we're going to cover different topics.
What is truth or a fact versus opinions?
This is a debate that has been all the rage in academic circles for years. What is truth, is it spelled with a capital T versus a lower case t. This debate goes back to religion and science. How do we
know what is going to be the best way of summing this up, and this is
the where the problem begins. We could say that the Internet has increased the
amount of knowledge that is exposed to an individual however, the individual now
must sort through what knowledge is good and what knowledge is bad. An individual must make
a decision based on that information he or she is presented.
The information will that be determinative of how they
form their opinions of the world. Do vaccines cause autism? Do vaccines
cause other long-lasting effects in children into adulthood? This has been one
of the classic case examples have been raised about how false information is spread.
Well, examine the author of articles, consider their academic standing in their
ability to discuss the topic. Is it coming from a primary source? Or, is it
coming from a person with an opinion that might be picking quotes out of a
primary source article or paper to justify their position, when the article they
are citing is completely contradictory to their point of view?
Let's take for example this article, what's to say that I, the author, have the authority to discuss this topic. Look at my academic credentials, I have a Master’s
Degree in History from Western Connecticut State University, and I have an
undergraduate degree in Meteorology along with minors in Math and Physics, also
from Western Connecticut State University. These credentials can be verified by asking me
to provide you with a certified transcript from the university, or your ability
to contact me to pose questions. You can also do cursory searches to
verify articles from the period when I would have been attending University to
see that I was there as a student.
So therefore, you could verify that I am somewhat of an
authority figure I'm figuring out how to define truth with a capital T versus a
lowercase t.
What are good sources?
After you examine the author of the material that you're
consuming, the question becomes, is this a good source or a bad source for you to
base your opinion on? In that case, refer to how we determine the truth and what
is the authority of the figure that you're reading. Are you going to weigh my opinion on the biology of the human brain cell, or
what the forecast is going to be for the next 5 days? Honestly, I would not
compare my paper on a human brain cell to a neurosurgeon's paper on the same topic. However, I would not hold as much
weight for a neurosurgeon to give an accurate, detailed forecast of the weather for the
next 5 days.
Furthermore, when you are watching television, what is
the news portion versus the opinion portion? It's a question that needs to be
further examined. The first question that I always like to ask myself is, "what are the
facts?" Facts are intangible pieces of information that can be either proven
true or false by careful examination of the written record or by evidence-based
testing. These concepts I will come back to in a later post.
The way I typically parse any type of source or information
is the following. There should be a claim of the facts that the
author is trying to get across, then followed by some sort of supporting information to support
that claim. If there is no supporting information underneath the claim based in
any type of fact or truth, then we can assume the claim is based on an opinion. This is where the issues begin, let's say the claim is that the a person who committed a crime has been charged in a court of law. Does this mean the
person is guilty of said crime? The answer is no. The reason is that the
article or the statement did not mention the individual was convicted by a jury
or pled guilty. If the piece that you're looking at says, "no, the individual has committed
the crime and is guilty," without supporting evidence of the jury conviction or
the plea, the individual that made that statement in the piece may be subject
to legal action for defamation of character.
Some picture of Parks
Here are some picture I have been taking around town of Southbury, CT.