| Being informed is hard. Now, I'd be talking about the spanish speaking-sphere, but I guess some of this may apply to the US too. Every time I want to dig in a subject it always comes down to this: 1. If the topic has scientific coverage, try to find meta-analysis. If there isn't any the field has a high chance of lacking ground truth. Sadly you need at least statistics knowledge to know where are you getting into, and some times this isn't enough because domain knowledge is a must. Some words may be used in a different meaning than you're used to. 2. If there isn't any scientific coverage, try to find specialized sources. Most of them are not open access though. 3. If your only resource is main stream media or internet outlets, then try to balance out different approaches. This is a very hard task because the amount of noise is staggering. It's not only agendas but journalist really doing a poor/cheap/lazy work or a combination of them all. If you happen to know a domain, then try to avoid anything other than specialized media upwards, because you'll get angry or at least you won't believe how weird some realities are depicted to the general public. It's also a good exercise to read info that doesn't reinforce your beliefs, try to break the famous "eco chamber", it's probably the only way to not become an idiot, even if you know the truth from first hand, because it's useful to know what people are being told to think and how some other people can reach other conclusions. |