3. a fact or belief that is accepted as true.
The BIG issue with the net is that it is GIGO (garbage in-garbage out). There are no unbiased fact checkers… Not Snopes, not Urban Legends, nada…
If you don’t do the hard work and analysis to decide if that IS actually a truth supported by references that you checked yourself, that YOU are comfortable with (at least for it’s validity), you’re spinning your wheels. And if you believe pretty much anything that you see from .gov well… Much less anything you take for granted from a MSM outlet in a 30 second sound bite.
Wiki-whatever is even worse… ANYBODY can make any change they want to any Wiki entry…
As one who grew up with hard copy books, yeah those big heavy awkward things that sat in the bookcases and had words like Encyclopedia Britannica…
And two volumes of Webster’s Dictionary when there was a word I didn’t know…
EXACTLY like this set… But I digress… We believed what we read, because of two things, first- The entries were fact checked by numerous people, and real scientists were consulted IN THEIR AREA OF EXPERTISE for entries… Second- These were neither cheap nor routinely changed.
Once an entry went in, it stayed until there was overwhelming evidence it was wrong or outdated. You could also get ‘yearly’ books that updated things that had gone on in the previous year.
Time, Newsweek, and other magazines had articles that were fact checked, and references could be gotten by contacting the organization/university/or whomever was involved.
I can remember writing the British Museum back when I was in the 7th or 8th grade about the Rosetta Stone and actually getting a rather extensive monograph back from them…
Contrast that with today- Media is ‘fluid’… What you see in hard copy may or may not be available online. Research today is often ‘sponsored’ by organizations or individuals looking for a particular answer, or set of statistics… The advent of supercomputers and parallel processing have made it possible to keep changing stats by varying the values until you get what you want… And do that in hours… Peer and ‘scientific’ review have become by and large a pay to play scheme, again with people who have vested interest in specific answers. Revisionist historians have also played havoc, especially with anything having to do with war, disasters, and anything not considered PC today…
And the generations today are known as the sound bite generations for good reason. They don’t read, literacy is down, and the ‘communication’ seems to consist of mostly texts, tweets, instagrams, and whatever the new latest thing is…
What’s a person to do? My suggestion is digging in and doing your own fact checking. It’s not fast, it’s usually not pretty, but you can learn some interesting things along the way. And you may even find that elusive truth out there…
When you have had enough salt water under the keel, you tend to be better able to tell when information – particularly historical information is BS and when it isn’t. The younger generation doesn’t understand that many of us have pi$$ed more salt water than they’ve sailed over and that we lived through a portion of the history that they incorrectly cite.
God do I hear ya!!
I had my 26 old son tell me to “Check my Privilege.” But unlike the Gunny, we had a long, loud discussion about his ignorance. IGNORANCE disguised as TRUTH.
Funny how people dismiss the then accepted Domino Theory so quickly today!
Most of what passes these days as news is gossip and rarely has any factual information attached to it. Whispers of misinformation, lies, slander and libel are shouted by all sides as the word of the gods. If you don’t believe their version, you are by definition a heretic or infidel and neither of those are ever treated with respect.
I’m right there with your Gunny friend — only I think I might have left quicker, lest my temper get the better of me.
And you are so so right about “truth” as it is to be had in today’s instant world. Or, rather, not to be had.
TRUTH! Great post and exactly on point. The internet is both friend and foe. The internet also looks like the polluted America…garbage everywhere. Bring back the Encyclpedias!
Oh, and the kid that said that to Gunny. Grrrr.
Disrespectful!
“We both have truths – are mine the same as yours?” Pilate,to Jesus, Jesus Christ Superstar
gfa
These days, you can’t even get two people to agree that some truths are absolute … much less on the details.
I blame George Bush. No? Okay, Woodrow Wilson & the Fabian Society. The U.S.A. has spent the last century dumbing-down the public school curricula, and then we wonder why young people know nothing.
Sigh…
“When the Gunny asked him where he’d gotten that BS, the guy said that’s what he’d learned at Columbia,…”
Ah, yes. Columbia. Take a listen…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6c_dinY3fM
And here’s another one, well, just because…
And what is called truth is often just emotion, because feeling something is more important these days than actuality.
Telling a Master Guns that basically he is a liar is not conducive to ones health or well being. The Guns must really like his granddaughter or the fiancé would have a hole above his shoulders with feces in it.
In re: encyclopedias. I had a full set of the Encyclopedia Americana in my bedroom as a child, the 1948 edition. Unfortunately my parents weren’t too good about getting the yearbooks that came with the purchase so the encyclopedia was all but worthless… except for the pure historical entries… by the time I hit high school in the late ’50s. That said, those volumes were the ONLY thing that saved my childhood, given I spent about half of that time (my childhood) “on restriction,” confined to my room with nothing but school books and the encyclopedia for reading material. So… I read that entire gotdamned encyclopedia, over the course of ten years, or so. My parents… who were basically clue-free at that time… did me a GREAT favor by buying that encyclopedia. Much of what I know today was learned from those books.
Thanks, Mom and Dad.
LL- Exactly!!!
Danny- I’m betting he ‘now’ understands your privilege! 🙂
Gerry- Oh yeah…
Momma- Both my kids learned on them too… 🙂
Ian- Yep!
gfa- Good point!
Rev- Exactly, if they aren’t TAUGHT the truth… Guess what…
RHT- Yep, dammit…
PH- Another great point! Goes back to lack of responsibility!
Jon- ROTF, I think ‘that’ was why he left!
Buck- There with ya, except my folks bought the yearbooks!
I’m thinkin’ maybe it’s past time for the Master Guns to have a sit-down with his granddaughter – I’m trying to envision some snot-nosed, over-“educated” metrosexual boyfriend of our daughter’s making that kind of comment to either my Dad or the FodGuy …………………… NOT a pretty picture ………………….. 😉
Semper Fi’
DM
DM- I ‘think’ that’s coming… Just sayin…
If you listen to the left in this country Truth can’t be defined. It’s whatever the victim du jure wants it to be.
If Lu’s dad were still alive he’d be livid at what that little shit said to The Gunny. Sorry for the language but that’s the way I feel about that kind of crap. Still happening after all these years…
Six- We know that’s BS… And yeah, I feel the same way…