There seems to be a saying now that
everyone with a smart phone is an expert on something in five
minutes. That depends upon where they look and if they believe the
information spurted out by Google, Bing, or Safari or whichever
search engine they choose. I don't quite believe it, but I don't own
a smart phone.
Believe me, their pull is intoxicating.
To basically have the internet at hand anywhere sounds fantastic,
but we do not have the money. There are several problems with being
a five minute expert, are you really an expert or just someone who
looks up the information and then promptly forgets the info after you
did the “I'm right and you are wrong” dance. It is like a
calculator. Many people think they do not need to know math because
they will just use the calculator. But what if the calculator is
wrong? This can happen due to transposed numbers and other snafus.
Shouldn't you check the math in your head to make sure? There are
still some things that we fundamentally need to know. With that we
need critical thinking skills to assess the accuracy of what we are
reading. Unfortunately, this does not happen enough, why do you
think there are viral e-mails about the air movement from fans being able to
kill you. By the way, that is a real urban legend from Korea. If it sounds
true, why actually check the accuracy?
My favorite example of how dangerous
the internet can be without using critical thinking skills is Jenny
McCarthy. Her influence of the decision making skills of parents has
been scary. If a parent looks into the science behind vaccines and
still decides against vaccinating their children, fine. But if a
parent just reads Ms. McCarthy's book and decides from her “analysis”
and her internet search leading to a degree from “The University of
Google,” to not vaccinate their children, I weep for the future.
The billionaires from Google must be
pleased, because there is no vetting of the websites from where she
got her information. Theirs is a university full of crap, but the
tuition you pay is what you also pay for accessing porn (although I
think they charge more for that) so there should really be no
surprise. You get what you pay for.
There is one tiny shred of information
that Ms. McCarthy could take as science. The completely inaccurate
and fraudulent study sadly published in the journal Lancet by “Dr.”
Andrew Wakefield linking vaccines to autism has been retracted
and continually is shown to be wrong. But, boy has that study did
open a Pandora's box of paranoia, and sadly, leading to the
unnecessary deaths of many children.
The vetting
process – is it accurate? Even the political vetters can get it
wrong. If you go with a political outsider and do not vet them
properly, you get Sarah Palin, 2008 Republican VP candidate. If they
had only vetted her actual debating experience, they may have thought
that she would be out of her league. It is just my opinion but John
McCain would have had a much better chance with a seasoned female
candidate, such as Christine Todd Whitman. As I have said before,
there is a lot of crap out there on the internet, and any idiot can
have a website, and one of those idiots got Sarah Palin on the
ticket.
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia done by
crowd-sourcing. They make no qualms about that. Fortunately, for
every prankster and crank who wants to get a giggle by changing the
information, there is usually someone out there on Wikipedia who will
set it right. It is these people, the anal ones, who we need to keep
things accurate. It is sad to say, but the “know it all's” will
keep us honest because they actually know it or learn it and commit
it to memory. A good dose of their education comes with skepticism
and the critical thinking skills that let us find what is really
correct.
Amazingly, many of these people are at
or are from ACTUAL UNIVERSITIES! So the next time someone tells you
a university education is a waste of money, wait for them to tell you
how much they love “The Real Housewives of New Jersey” or
“Keeping Up With The Kardashians.” I believe there is a
correlation there, but that is definitely not scientifically proven.
This process takes time, you cannot be
a five minute expert, because it will take much longer to verify
things. Real experts take decades to educate themselves properly.
That is the problem with accuracy, it takes too darn long for those
those of us used to things on demand!
Next time you look up a piece of
information to win an argument on your smart phone. Will you
remember that little nugget of information? Or will you have to do
the calculation again later? Also, where did you get that
information? This critical thinking stuff is hard...
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