I was a late bloomer academically and went back to school in the mid ’90’s to complete my graduate work in Psychology. I was at California State University during the early years of the Internet as a popularly accessible information source. The first course I was obliged to take was geared towards developing critical thinking skills and learning how to weed through the information minefield of the Internet. Even in those neolithic years, it was already replete with bullshit masquerading as credible academic information. A phenomenal text that we used is David Hackett Fischer’s Historians’ Fallacies. This book examines the dozens and dozens of mistakes we all make every day in assessing the validity, accuracy, and reliability of the information that confronts us in the media, the Internet, and even person-to-person.

Child development specialists say that the most effective parenting style is the authoritative model, whereby the child recognizes you as a credible information resource and actually seeks out your opinion. This parenting style is most important as the child gets older and begins to think independently. My son rarely agrees with my opinion about anything, but I am quite proud of the fact that he actually asks me what I think….and then proceeds to argue with me until we are both blue in the face! Nevertheless, I guess as parents we must seek validation where we can get it!

I mention this because our arguments are almost always about the credibility of the information he brings to the discussion table. I almost always ask him: Who says so? What’s his/her background? Do they have a particular axe to grind? What are their credentials? Did you actually witness what they are talking about? Who are their sources of information? Etc. This inevitably drives him into paroxysms of frustration and mutterings of “Yeah, right, like you know everything!”.

Today’s musings are a result of last night’s discussion of the AIG bonus scandal, during “card night” at Mr. Italo’s. By accident, I had actually watched the congressional sub-committee hearings a few days earlier, so had seen the grilling of Edward Liddy. Yet, all of the opinions around the table centered on media reports rather than actual direct fact-gathering from primary sources…my own included, BTW….until I actually watched the hearings rather than waiting for the media to interpret them for me. See the previous post “Edward Liddy – AIG CEO – nailed?” for a sampling of just how pernicious and unreliable the media can be. Some media outlets do a better job than others. Here’s a pretty good summary from CANWEST based on my own watching of the actual hearings.