Check Yourself with Lateral Reading: Crash Course Navigating Digital Information #3

[@uniqueofficial7541]

For all the students out there, Fact checking websites 8:45

[@jiminslonglostjams0903]

who else is here because of school? :/

[@anjoliew5416]

Me :P

[@jenisedai]

Regarding Wikipedia- the institutes of higher education where I have worked or studied have all come to the conclusion that Wikipedia is good to a point. It's good for a student to get a general overview to get familiar with a topic. It is NOT good to use as a source in an academic paper. I encourage my students to instead "follow the footnotes" and use Wikipedia to find good sources that they can use in their papers. Even with conscientious editors, information can be misinterpreted and misstated. I would rather my students do that on their own through the original sources, then have it fed to them through a third party site like Wikipedia.

[@nibblrrr7124]

Agreed. I would add that any general encyclopedia is a bad source for in-depth academic writing. You wouldn't cite Britannica's entry on the prefrontal cortex in a neuroscience paper. You would probably use a textbook, or review journal article - unless you want to talk about laypeople's understanding of a term (and I've seen Wikipedia, alongside dictionaries, cited for that purpose in peer-reviewed publications).

[@nibblrrr7124]

Do most comercially edited encyclopedias have citations? I.e. can I follow most claims to their primary sources, or do I have to trust the expertise of that particular entry's author? Are they even listed? If not, do I trust the dictionary's board of editors in their selection of domain experts? (Scholarpedia is an interesting (if hyper-specific & not very active) project in that regard.) I've only ever used very specialized academic encyclopedias (which read to me like commissioned collections of journal articles), or woefully out-of-date general encyclopedias aimed at general audiences or pupils.

[@jenisedai]

@@nibblrrr7124 I haven't seen a printed encyclopedia in YEARS. Unless pressed, my students only use online sources, and the one online encyclopedia I've looked at recently (Britannica) did not cite sources within the entry I read. Using a source like that is fine for a definition, but I discourage my students from using that or a dictionary to learn the definitions for the terms we use in class, as the subject areas use the terms differently and so the general definitions would be wrong.

[@FriaGram]

Wikipedia is trash, and special interest groups manipulate it heavily. Best thing you can do as an educator is to get access to many of the scholarly databases which are generally paywalled. These have books, journals, news articles, research studies, etc. Most high schools and universities have subscriptions for students to access.

[@nibblrrr7124]

​@@FriaGram Wait, there are high schools with e.g. SpringerLink or JSTOR subscriptions? For students? Or can you name a few of those databases? Anywho, for the unlucky rest of us, there's the Hub of the Sci, and that Library named after Moses's 1st Book. Yar har fiddle di dee. Also open access, preprints, Pubmed, university lecturer homepages, asking on social media, ... ofc. And if you live near a uni, you can usually just walk in and read there. So technically, access isn't a big hurdle anymore.

[@wijione8083]

I'm already doing this, I'm a good boy

[@shadebug]

A problem with reading laterally in the modern media landscape is that sometimes you will find plenty of corroborating articles and not realise that they're all from the same source. It happens all the time with breaking news where everybody's getting on top of a story because it's already out and they have to do something or risk falling behind

[@soullight8632]

Read diagonally 🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️

[@jeremynewcombe3422]

Such as what happened with the supposed MAGA hat wearing provocateur.

[@nibblrrr7124]

Yeah; if you're lucky they include a link in their hot take, or at least mention the other 2nd-rate news site they have all their information from. You could check *Associated Press* and *Reuters* early on; AFAIK that's where a lot of Serious international news originate. And if you often find yourself tracing back news to the same outlet, and they do good journalism, consider giving more attention & maybe support to them.

[@ArtArtisian]

When things aren't too time critical - you can bookmark stuff and come back in a week or two. Good sources will hopefully flag stories they've since got new info about, and related stories will contain people pointing out circular citations or mistakes.

[@fat4eyes]

It's even worse on mobile apps with limited or no search functionality (which is just about every app because they're designed to keep you locked in and not wander off to other parts of the internet). One more case where corporate financial incentives make people stupider.

[@megeaton2080]

Hey, don't know if anybody will see this but if you need help with your tracker/assignment then this is to help you. 4:53 is the answer to the 1st #2 question then 5:18 is the 2nd answer. The last answer is at 10:20

[@TheWonder_OfU]

Thanks dude, really helping me out because of this common sense education nonsense

[@Ozblu3y]

help. im at 50 tabs. on 3 different computers.. And thousands of notes. TOO MUCH INFO

[@swekiwi4517]

What the heck are you researching? How to cut an onion?

[@milesprower6641]

How to build a nuke?

[@nibblrrr7124]

Chromium: Ctrl+Shift+D; or Right click-tab -> Bookmark all tabs Firefox: Right-click tab -> Select All Tabs, then right-click tab -> Bookmark Tabs. Then just close the window. There are also methods to sync or send bookmarks & tabs. And OneTab is a (closed-source... :\) extension for Firefox which can save & close tabs from all windows, and export to plain text files.

[@nibblrrr7124]

For note-taking, I've found plain-text files, sometimes Markdown, to work best. And I know I can read them on any system, for decades to come - unlike most note-taking apps or online services. Name files by topic, or add the date if in a hurry, and put them in a special folder; at least the important ones. Maybe a bit too geeky for many, but I like to work from the terminal (the fastest method to do most things if you know touch typing), and I've made a couple of aliases, so e.g. when I hear of an interesting band, I can just type "recs name of that band", and it appends the line "name of that band" to my recommendations.txt file. I have others for todo, questions, shitposts, ideas... There are a couple of functions like this in my .bashrc file: recs() { # Edit recommendations; or append any arguments as a new line. [[ $# -gt 0 ]] && echo "$@" >> ~/notes/recs.txt || ${EDITOR:-nano} ~/notes/recs.txt }

[@Ozblu3y]

@@nibblrrr7124 Thanks nibblrrr I'll have a look at it, not that I don't even understand what youre saying lol

[@Beryllahawk]

YAY Someone who understands why Wikipedia isn't evil! Oh, I am SO HAPPY right now! Seriously. I can understand why some teachers despise the site - lazy students who wish to NOT do the actual work of research so often try to use a single Wikipedia article as the complete basis of their efforts...But at the same time, *it's so damn useful as a starting point*!!! Wikipedia is, for me, the perfect successor to the old Encyclopedia section of the library. I was always in love with Encyclopedia Brittanica, back then, because I could find such masses of information that I could then follow up. I had the best damn papers in school because I learned HOW to research at least in part from chasing bits of information from the Britannica on out into other parts of the library (and later, from Wikipedia on out into the wild Web). And you're entirely right. It *is* a lot of work to read laterally. But taking the easy path isn't the right choice, not now, and not on the internet. We've gotten too used to believing everything that we read, though I'm not sure how we've managed it since even back when Charlotte's Web came out, it was already a bad idea....!

[@jiangciyang3860]

bruh im having serious in my school research cuz i found real good sources on Wikipedia somehow a lose marks just by using it

[@shadow___shifter6555]

ur high

[@Cthulhus_Mum]

I’m a teacher (albeit a relatively young one; also my topic is maths which doesn’t often require referenced papers) - we don’t tell students not to use Wikipedia because it’s more unreliable than anything else - we just don’t let students cite it because it’s an encyclopaedia. We wouldn’t let them cite Brittanica, either - encyclopaedias are an overview, not a source. Use it as a starting point, then find something else to go deeper. And Wikipedia is good like that, because it offers its own sources for going deeper 😊

[@oftinuvielskin9020]

Strange. I'm in uni and we are allowed to cite info from encyclopaedias. Not wikipedia or any other kind of collaborative wiki, of course, but any official ones.

[@jeffreymunden61]

@@oftinuvielskin9020 likewise. Encyclopedias have always been encouraged to me

[@jeffreymunden61]

Official ones I'm saying

[@parzival5787]

ok boomer

[@alexanderb7721]

He seems far more mellow than I remember... He has grown from his days making World History. May the Savior of AP World Grades Everywhere continue on, and take to the internet.

[@burntpotatoes999]

iirc he said in a recent vlogbrothers he hopes to return for a 3rd season of world history!!!

[@alexanderb7721]

@@burntpotatoes999 My Liege Returns!

[@archvermin]

John sounds mellower because he's speaking a bit slower. If you want that World History John Green vibe, just play the video at 1.25x speed.

[@navrajasamuels5576]

Alexander B so true he saved my life in that class

[@unleashingpotential-psycho9433]

Being able to navigate digital information is a critical skill that’s only going to become more important in the future.

[@kevinconrad6156]

Navigating information has always been a skill. Do you know how to use a microfiche spool?

[@RangerRuby]

I cannot agree more!

[@soullight8632]

Bro I know you are everywhere and you literally just repeat the obvious all the time. I don’t know, maybe try writing a course of action once you’ve watched the vid.

[@aaaaaaa8058]

Why do I see you a lot in the comment section

[@heinzsimpson1077]

sounds like fake news :0

[@d4mdcykey]

ALEC declaring themselves "non-partisan". This just won the The Backhand of Irony award of the day; they are lobbyists in wolfs clothing, while taking advantage of tax-exempt status, particularly their branch-off, called the Jeffersonian Project. Great video! Very impressed thus far with the series; this is a topic that becomes more crucial and vital as each day passes. Let us hope more people are taking personal responsibility with their own minds using rational, evidence-based methodologies.

[@BryanTidwell16]

As a public librarian, I've spent much of my career fighting for the legitimacy of Wikipedia as a resource for students (against public school teachers, mainly). Love that this will be featured in this series and is being given attention. Thanks, John!

[@SuperDaveP270]

I think that because of my strong curiosity and tendency to be skeptical, I have been doing this ever since I began to have regular access to the internet. It just seemed like the only good way to go about it if I were going to try to get my news and information from online sources. Despite constant reminders to the contrary, it just never seems to stop surprising me that too many other people do NOT do this! Thanks for these vids, as always

[@StratosFear1992]

I find it incredibly frustrating when I see friends and family sharing/forwarding articles without even googling their authenticity. So many conspiracy theories get spread by people because they just believe whatever they read as long as it “looks” professionally written. Thank you CrashCourse for providing the tools needed to combat disinformation!!!

[@samanthagroskritz2401]

You're answering questions that I've been asking myself repeatedly for the past few years. Thanks for giving me some perspective on how I absorb information online and what I can do better!

[@Twosocks42]

Wikipedia is a good place to acquire some general knowledge. Be wary of flagged pages or those covering controversial topics (check those sources). For reports and other documents, read Wikipedia to increase your general understanding of the topic then dive into their sources. Use those sources to cite points and use as references.

[@nibblrrr7124]

This. Also, have a look at articles' Talk and History pages, and try to spot edit wars & the like. And be wary of citogenesis. (Wikiblame is a helpful tool to find out when some info was added to a page.)

[@MarthaRoseMoore415]

I've been reading this way for years, but I had no idea that it was called anything other than rabbit-hole research. I spend a ridiculous amount of time looking into dozens of topics, but mostly government and or/corporate malevolence, and conspiracy-based corruption in general. Good stuff!

[@heephay]

The importance of verifying every information we get on the internet can never be overemphasized. Especially in the age of information boom. And the duty is of the private individual to protect his mind from viruses and dishonesty.

[@jang6812]

This is such a great and important series. It's so easy to forget that this is not something that comes naturally to a lot of people. Well done, folks 🙏

[@thomasr.jackson2940]

ALL news media has a point of view, not some. It is an inescapable fact of human produced content. Even choosing to tell a story “without bias” involves choosing the story, deciding how to collect information, and implicitly what biases to avoid, and how to go about doing so. Some of the most objectively reported news articles I have ever read have been from news sites with very strong and explicitly stated biases. They just choose to leave out the explanations of why the particular events are seen as important by the various parties interested. But other news sites, very respectable and declaring themselves “objective” decide that part of the news that people want or need includes how the event is perceived as important to respective groups. Either can reasonably be described as biased reporting, depending on the reader’s point of view. This meshes with your point that there is no one arbiter of truth.

[@KiLLvenom1]

Thank you for creating CrashCourse!

[@LRuth53]

Today in my 20th century class I did this without even thinking and found that a source that looked unreliable was actually very credable. Thank you so much for this series!

[@thomasr.jackson2940]

Another excellent episodes of a needed series. I am agin struck on how superfluous the word “digital” is in the course title. The digital age has made information easier to find and check, and has made it more important for more and more people to do so, but these are pretty much the same principles of evaluating information as are needed for non digital information. I am struck frequently on how often I hear cries for controlling, even suppressing, information on digital platforms, as though they represent some sort of unprecedented new threat to the public. But we have heard all of this before, and have faced the same challenges in multiple generations. The answer, as always, is to handle our information well and know how to evaluate and interpret it. Thanks for helping people to do just that. If you need to throw in “digital” to interest your audience in what they believe is some sort of new and unique problem to their generation, fine. But really, it is just learning to be people who know how to value, search for, and determine the truth.

[@RobbieBlair]

For places to go to check bias: one of my favorite places is All Sides. It's highly transparent about the methodology it uses to classify the political bias of news sites. I use it all the time when encountering new sites, and I've really appreciated it.

[@radagastwiz]

So John's first piece of up-front information is to say the show is made by Complexly. He later directs the viewer to make use of Wikipedia as a reasonable first source on some topics. I am the primary editor on Complexly's Wikipedia article, so hey, no pressure, right?

[@nibblrrr7124]

Thanks, you did a great job starting that article! =) And it sounds neutral-POV and matter-of-fact to me, right from your first version - especially considering the scarcity of sources on the company per se. Also, as of today there have been seven other editors, which are now at least co-responsible, right? :p

[@snowyyyyyyyyyyyyy]

i feel you, i used to be an editor on the crash course page

[@Pfhorrest]

"You can't take anybody's word for it, but that doesn't mean all opinions are equal" is almost verbatim the core foundational principle of my philosophy -- by which I mean my academic system of philosophy, as in, I derive positions on topics like ontology and ethics and philosophy of mind and free will from that one core foundational principle.

[@camiloiribarren1450]

Yes! Thank you, John, for teaching us how to be more careful with our online searches

[@RachelReiss]

It's nice to know that I've been mostly doing it right (so far, anyway). A suspicious mind is not always an asset, but it's not always a negative thing, either!

[@Pfhorrest]

"Journalists are humans"[citation needed]

[@amylizbrarian]

As an instruction librarian (in training) at a university, this is what I tell students: There is no such thing as bad information. All information has a purpose (even if that purpose is to make people buy something or vote a certain way) - you just have to figure out if the information is useful for what you need it for. An example is looking for a soup recipe. Wikipedia probably won’t be the best source for finding the best recipe - I’m better off checking cookbooks, recipe sharing websites, or articles written by chefs/cooks. Another example: finding out the order of a book, movie, or TV series. An academic peer-reviewed journal is not a good source for this, but Wikipedia or IMDB probably are.

[@RangerRuby]

Crash Course is an awesome resource for SO many people! Th a is so much to everyone who makes it happen! Also, the references in this video are awesome! 😉

[@AnastasiaSilvi]

Hey I thought I'm just gonna say.. Thanks to Crash Course for helping me so much throughout my highschool years.. now I'm on my 6th semester studying food science in university 💕

[@justme.1541]

I just realized he’s the guy that wrote the fault in our stars and paper towns. Wow is he talented god damn

[@innocentoctave]

This is a good piece. Some people 'read laterally' already, because that is what they were trained to do at university. Others seem to do it almost instinctively - perhaps because of earlier bad experiences with other media. Most don't do it all, and not necessarily because they have no doubts: the major constraint is simply lack of time. Of course, those who are seeking to use the internet to mislead count on that.

[@cesarignjas]

One of your most useful and needed course on your channel

[@Vegito_Fanpage]

6:33 W-Why are you in incognito mode to search up news sources?

[@AriaNight]

Thanks, John, I've always been so sick an tired of people saying Wikipedia is unreliable "just because other people can edit it". yeah, that's also true about every other written thing. for an active reader as you mentioned, the most important thing is fact checking, and lateral reading, even in the age before the web, the way to go, was to compare many newspapers and books, and those who didn't often fell susceptible to false advertisement and propaganda. and all Wikipedia tries to be, is to make the process of lateral checking much easier. the sources are right there in the bottom, you don't have to search much to find out who wrote anything there. that's the purpose of Wikipedia, not to be the truth, but to be easy to be checked for the truth. and EVERYONE should use Wikipedia and everyone who has a reference must CONTRIBUTE. that's how we can make it more reliable and useful.

[@danienglish9336]

Thank you for this video series. I really thought I was doing enough to combat misinformation but ended up discrediting (quietly, to myself, but still) multiple claims I read online by doing further research I otherwise would not have.

[@f1guremeout]

Ah you've done it again, John. This is great and incredibly valuable information, I feel it's vital to share. Thank you for creating this!

[@andyg46]

Great to see John's back with an extremely relevant topic. Keep up the great work and Walk On John!

[@waynewrz]

I paused this video to open up a couple tabs and learn more about lateral reading. It seems legit.

[@CuriousBiscuit]

Got the jackpot of notifications.

[@timothysmith9838]

I wish Mortimer Adler were alive to see this series. Great content...I really need to check the sources of this curricula. Whoever put this together is really shining a light on the shadows of our times. So much of the best work is done in teams nowadays. This looks like a huge collaborative effort by a bunch of smart minds. (Must be Hank... ... I kid.) David Brooks said tonight on PBS Newshour - quoting some historical research that the printing press was thought in it's time to be a tool for peace since people would be able to communicate better. Instead, it became a weapon to incite bloody religious wars. This sort of meta-reading and meta-thinking needs to be shared and taught in all-out schools (and my own 55 y.o. brain.) Thank you John Green. Thank you, Stanford, Poynter, and Google even for making this possible (and everyone else... and I have to call out Mortimer Adler again. I really feel his ghost in these videos.

[@nickname3380]

Hi! :) Saying hi to you in 2019 feels so odd after I've spent the last two days watching your old videos and reading about you and your brother. I feel like I know you so well and like I have finally caught up with the present time in reality.

[@Departedreflections]

Its harder to read laterally on a phone.....might be a big problem right there

[@ihorabsent1280]

Use browser

[@00100000station]

Some browsers allow thumb swipe between tabs. Damn I can't think of one. Rocket? Puffin. Try some.

[@KannikCat]

Another great way to read laterally, especially when it comes to news, policy, and geopolitical items, is to read foreign news sources. This will often have either a much more fully encompassing and neutral take on things (as they must both inform their audience of the background and have less of a horse in the race), or will come at the issue from a markedly different viewpoint that can provide additional perspective and new ways to parse things.

[@moigoi4957]

My first thought after watching this video is that lateral reading (aka research!) is very time intensive. It also requires someone to be willful, awake/energetic, not too busy, or otherwise in a mental or physical state that permits them to care about the information. So lateral readers need to cognitively judge what they're reading, and weigh the inconvenience of researching the article to just moving on. It sounds exhausting. I have perfectionistic tendencies, so the stress of realizing that I "should" laterally research everything looms irrationally over my thoughts. At least in America, IMHO, I don't think the public was ever taught to prioritize information searching and review as it relates to our everyday lives. Not really. We might do research for articles and essays and papers and proposals. The "important things in life" as defined by in school and society. But analyzing the mundane world around us? We seem very guillable and childish. And many people who aren't financially secure are very stressed from trying to live, and are less likely to take the time to cognitively engage some media. My takeaway: take one subject you care about and spend time engaging, and use lateral reading to learn more. It's a skill, and if we can apply it to low-stakes subjects first then it hopefully wouldn't generate the anxiety that keeps so many adults from engaging in "school stuff" because they're still fleeing from school traumas and stresses.

[@moigoi4957]

Lateral reading also sounds like the approach to effective textbook study. If you've been taught to skim the opening and ending of a textbook chapter first (lateral reading) rather than read the entire chapter (vertical reading), you'll generally retain more better. But you have to be taught that skill. if you learned to vertically read then you have to unlearn that bad study habit. And in my experience, study habits are reinforced outside of school, AKA at home. So some people, those who have these study skills, are already familiar with lateral reading even if it's in the context of school textbooks or materials. And some students won't develope this skill easily because they're working with flawed tools.

[@kevinm9191]

YAYYYY ANOTHER VIDEOOO I LOVE YOU GUYS!

[@briannielsen2002]

I liked the example with multiple tabs.. Whenever I work on a difficult project I have ~ up tp 40-50 tabs open. I even managed to find an extension for Firefox which added multiple rows of tabs, for quick navigation. Also remember that you can download extensions for most browsers that allow you to save your working tabs between sessions!

[@NeonsStyleHD]

Much needed series. I hope you will cover the dangers of diving into conspiracy websites too at some point. These things are often left unchallenged, and people take them as literal when in truth that are extremist propogranda.

[@estrellacasias]

AHHH GOOD MYTHICAL MORNING REFERENCE

[@akivaweil5066]

Pro tip: go to the beginning and hit the left arrow key repeatedly to make John dab.

[@Madidog123]

Thanks! 🙏 Im glad I have a new word: “lateral reading”!

[@Hiralouskhan]

Thank you John Green for existing and being awesome. I will always be a proud nerdfighter

[@ChessMasteryOfficial]

*Aging is not 'lost youth,' but a new stage of opportunity and strength..*

[@shogunofjapan6833]

Discover Your Awesomeness I am wanted by those who have little of me and I am disliked by those with lots of me. What am I?

[@Negentropy.]

A woman

[@nibblrrr7124]

the chinese character for "aging" is the same as the one for "wow does john green work out?"

[@netojccomedy8861]

Had to watch this for school

[@kyliemieko]

Can you please add captions?

[@kyliemieko]

Love all of your videos though! Wish I could afford to give you more than $3 a month XD

[@girlgoplayer]

Captions are available now.

[@ailithic5448]

I ran into an IP from my provider that was banned for wrongly editing a Wikipedia page made me die laughing.

[@ihorbobrus4022]

Sorry, can you do it courses with russian subtitle? Your course is awesome, but more people in russian country (Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania...) have a problem with language.

[@dionysus326]

We also need Chinese and Japanese for my friends. Same reason as Russian I guess. And my country are full of fake news smh

[@aidanokeeffe7928]

John Green for president!

[@ravenn2631]

I remember this one time when my teacher posted a review online for the finals. It told you your score at the end but didn’t tell you what the right answers were, but I had an idea. I copy pasted some of the questions, and I found out the teacher got his questions from another online website. So my advice is, if you want to see if certain words came from another source, copy paste it online. I’m not saying go stalk a teacher online on Facebook if you notice their name appearing a lot in Khanacademy the educational website or something, but copy pasting really helps. Also if you put quotes (“”) around your words, search engines only search the exact terms of what you are looking for, just in case you’re getting unrelated ideas.

[@haswright4933]

Oh my god. Had NO idea John wrote the fault in our stars !

[@CowardlyCrow_]

thank you, mr green :)

[@HM909]

So glad for this project - couldn't have come at a better time

[@illyrian9976]

Always check the authors "Early Life" on Wikipedia.

[@SpookyGhostIsHere]

8:00 ... why is there a Pomeranian head on a plaque? 😳 Great video by the way :)

[@soullight8632]

THE VICIOUS BEAST HAS BEEN SLAIN

[@rosamengual8637]

Y

[@lhfirex]

I tried lateral reading with this video after John Green explained it to me. I found out that Hank Green's thumb-wrestling power vs John Green is uncontested. Although I think that had a "citation needed" thing by it.

[@John-uw2je]

Pro tip, if you have an ad that you don't like you can just type in "I hate ______" and plug in the advertisement's subject so that you won't see it anymore. Note that this can also have the effect of replacing it with an ad that represents the opposite of the last ad.

[@95GuitarMan13]

Nice, can't wait until I get to the Using Wikipedia video! That site is a hugely underappreciated public amenity and probably the best tool we have for making sense of the world in today's information flood.

[@pete-do3fz]

Thank you . Interesting...explained very well . Understandable... good info.

[@angucolos]

commercials aren't actually required by law to tell you about most side effects, at least for prescription medications! They just have to have all the side effects listed in some magazine and have a little line that says "see our ad in golf digest"

[@LaceNWhisky]

I wish more people would watch this series.

[@100BoyEgg]

I was shocked to find out what I have been doing is what you're supposed to be doing; nice :)

[@avi12]

I have a feeling that someone will develop an advanced AI in the future that will be able to seek information in thousands or even millions of websites for every subject, based on the author, give it a quality score and serve the final, unbiased article to the end-user Until then, I believe that companies will develop AIs that will simply give a quality score based on the content and the author

[@mortuos557]

Now the question is... Would that be a good thing?

[@AvailableUsernameTed]

Or maybe the AI will be able to position biased information in all the predicted places that a reader will 'horizontally' fact check.

[@ganaraminukshuk0]

I got a nagging feeling that the algorithms we have RIGHT NOW are a part of the problem we have (also right now). I, however, have no way to prove what I have to say.

[@stormelemental13]

An AI cannot serve an unbiased article. No program, however advanced, can do other than what it was told to do, and it is humans, with agendas and biases, that tell programs what to do.

[@silverharloe]

This AI either has human-like intelligence (sapience), a series of algorithms and heuristics (artificial intelligence), or super-human intelligence. If it is sapient, it has the same problems humans have: flaws and biases of its own (possibly biases intentionally engineered by its creators). If it is artificial, it can have massive blind-spots and people can find ways to exploit its heuristics (this the present state of the internet, more or less, with people trying to game the algorithms used by websites and search engines). If it is super-human, we may have other, bigger problems than getting accurate information, and it may well be manipulating us in ways too subtle for us to understand. In short, don't look to computers to solve the problems of thinking and researching.

[@2LazySnake]

Still great course, thank you very much! And it still just has to go viral, that's why I'm sharing and making a comment.

[@darrellcole6311]

This falls in line with what Dr Bart Erhman professor of theology at UNC at Chapel Hill, teaches. To read the gospels horizontally not vertically. It will come as a surprise at how many inconsistencies are in the gospel accounts. Dr.Dale Martin of Yale Theology class, advocates Dr Erhman's teaching also.

[@jm40004]

Ya know this is the first time I've realised that in about 10 years i'll have finally got the hang of a skill like this whilst the generation being born will learn to do it by being surrounded by those who already practice it like anything else that becomes 2nd nature.

[@jeremybath5499]

Third time he’s low key advertised his books in this series so far...

[@joshuawalker7054]

He's doing it on purpose to get you to think about his narritive. Every time he mentions TFIOS he's calling attention to himself as the author. The test is that you pick up on it... That and also he gets to low key advertise his books so, win-win for him right :)

[@Erica-kj6vq]

Joshua Walker Did she ask tou

[@MartinHaumann1]

Hey John! Love this series! Could you ever do at talk or AMA about your “crash course history” on the Dark Ages? I found it weirdly emotional and never understood what you where trying to convey about westeners self perception and view of history. Love your show still :)

[@delusionnnnn]

One of the most annoying things I find when looking up information on design blogs is that the vast majority think that if they just credit the blog they found something on, that's good enough. The idea that a person might want to know whether a table or a piece of stereo equipment is a student project (which will never see the light of day), something which 20 were made for a luxury design house, a limited production run, a moderately expensive but obtainable thing which might have to be special ordered from Italy, or something you can easily order online because it's been in production for 18 months by the time you find it? Solve this by CREDITING THE DESIGNER AND LINKING TO THEIR SITE OR WORK OR INSTITUTION, not just the design blog you found it on. It happens elsewhere, obviously, too, but it's practically the rule on design blogs outside a few shining examples.

[@goldenpapaya6862]

I really loved this video is super informational and it also solidifies what I have been doing is right. There were of course a few pieces in here that I did not know until thank you for opening my mind a little bit more!

[@robertocastillo1471]

So many brilliant people of the future will have known very well about crash course

[@infinite1der]

@9:46 I'll direct you to the story about a number of Sinclair owned news broadcasts were "forced" to read the same script regarding "fake news". When you have a near-monopoly of media outlets in a given market, it can feel like "The Media" *does* exist.

[@chrisconway9959]

John, you are the man!

[@robinfiybe]

I want to become a journalist and this is the video I needed

[@dianelyvelazquez6170]

That GMM shout out! 🤗

[@Tahvy]

Gotta appreciate a subtle rickroll when I run into one. :)

[@jikunli]

What a great easter egg at 8:44

[@adrienneandcarlie]

Heey John! Missed you😘

[@carolinasoulshine8949]

These videos are great. You are quite funny. Thank you. What's that Stan?

[@RealityCRASHx]

Fantastic video, John! Thank you for making this--it's so important in this day and age that this content is shared. I'll do my part!

[@josephrittenhouse5839]

Did you coin "reading laterally"? I've been doing this for awhile and never thought of it in literal terms, but more in a perspective term. I did it to read across arguments made from different perspectives.

[@Uhhhhhhh541]

"There's no secret meeting..." That's what a person who goes to a secret meeting would want us to think ;)

[@firstjayjay]

Probably the most importen KZbin video out there. This should be mandatory to watch before you get to go online

[@rockclimber129]

THE KZbin LINK AT 8:43 IS "NEVER GONNA GIVE YOU UP" YOU MAGNIFICENT BASTARDS

[@anshulsharma9424]

I feel proud of my self because I use most of the critical tactics . Without been told by someone

[@TRYtoHELPyou]

You have been doing this for weeks? Has it only been weeks? 11:50

[@dijleveld]

Even within Wikipedia you can read lateral. If you're not sure about a wikipedia page, just read it in an other language.

[@Pedro-tm6ue]

The lesson is beware of a group that says it comes from the community when it fights against a subject, especially one you can't verify as legitimate.