Ask Lemmy

I don't. I ignore the news to the best of my ability. I can't be misinformed if I'm not informed in the first place.

Books?

I'm very critical on what kind of information I even need on daily basis. If my only reason for getting information on something is To Be Right On The Internet, I don't bother. I don't need to know shit about how a particle accelerator actually works and it has no bearing on my personal life. If I want to satisfy an intellectual curiosity about something, I can get some pop-science about it from a source that seems credible enough after a cursory glance (they need to cite studies/statistics at the very least, and I take a look at the studies too depending a bit on the gravity of the matter. I'm not going to scrutinize a cooking video about a historical dish too deeply, I'll assume the general idea is close enough - but I will be very critical of anything talking about politically divisive topics, especially ones where there are people who have a very strong idea of what the "correct" opinion is), but I keep the awareness that it does NOT make me an expert and I should NOT inject myself into conversations about the matter (except to ask questions). And if some smalltalk touches on the topic, I can frame my comments appropriately like "I'm not familiar with the topic but my understanding was...". Though even then I'd consider the critical thinking capabilities of the person I'm talking to. If I think they're dumb enough to take what I say as a fact despite the framing, I'll not say anything.

As for actually important information: local news, universities of good reputation, science organizations of good reputation. All the while keeping in mind that they're not infallible. There's just a greater probability that the information there is accurate and unbiased. In general I've taught myself to think of the world in terms of probabilities, not in binary "true/false" statements.

You don't really.

Skepticism is a practiced skill, rather than just "being skeptical", you can learn how to assess credibility of a source, and develop a habit of doing so.

I quite like skeptics guide to the universe podcast. Although I admit I usually skip chunks of each episode.

Another avenue is researching about cognitive biases. We all do it.

AI is poisoning Wikipédia.

Huh?

RSS ( multiple sources for current events) , Wikipedia, and forums.

For news: the Bylines network in the UK. They have a source checker for every article.

Similar to the top comment, I learned leftist political theory (mindset in their case). Once you understand what capitalism and socialism truly are, you have almost like a shield to protect you from certain propaganda. This sounds arrogant, but its genuinely been my experience

really you don't. you read forum posts and try to guess to what degree the information is credible.

Nothing is a panacea against slop, but for general search, I've become a huge fan of Kagi. Gave up Google years ago, went to DDG, but Kagi is a cut above. There is a subscription fee, however. (Not shilling - no association with them, just a happy user).

I don't know if it's a location as much as a mindset for me.

I look for fallacies and falsehoods and should they arise at rates that would.be hard to chalk up as honest error, I stop trusting the source.

most news are from propaganda sources, look for how its being worded in the title.

Use the Google flag of "before:2022" added to any search. This will limit returned results to only those captured before 2022, which is when AI slop feedback started. Obviously this doesn't work for current events, but if the data you're looking for doesn't need to be recent it can be useful.

Example:

I just follow you around and read what you throw out.

I'm a user of Brave Search and I get reliable information with every search. I wonder what kind of information you're even looking for though. And Wikipedia is still pretty reliable for me.... Maybe try Brave Search instead of Google?

What kind of information are you looking for?