Artistic Science

crowvo:

catbountry:

Like learning how to make infinite chocolate, for instance.

I feel like this is a good time to point out the problem of trusting crowd-sourced information. Over the years wikipedia has become more reliable, but that comes at the price of it being heavily monitored—even then it frequently has errors in it.

Tumblr is not monitored. Anyone can say whatever they want, and there’s little to no consequence to saying it. That’s social media. Nobody posting here has to get a PhD in what they’re talking about; it’s all exactly as casual as posting status updates on Facebook.

This can lead to many good things, like spreading information about under-reported horrors (Ferguson, for example, would’ve been most definitely swept under the rug and forgotten if not for the combined efforts of all social media). However, it also leads to a dangerous climate for learning.

Everyone assumes that whatever they see on Tumblr is true so long as it has enough notes. Last year, for example, a text post grew wildly popular because it accused the creator of Five Nights at Freddy’s of being anti-abortion and a hardcore Christian, something which the OP heard from someone else, didn’t bother fact checking, and posted. This got out of hand quickly, with thousands of social justice-minded people reblogging and spreading the word. By the time that the real information got out, the damage had been done.

Treat Tumblr the same way that you treat wikipedia: it is a starting point. Do you see a post with NO source claiming that ___ is problematic/bad? Look it up on google. If you can’t find any non-tumblr sources, it just might be the highest form of bullshit.

Tumblr is not a place to “learn more”. Entire chunks of Tumblr are dedicated to claiming that teachers are evil for getting pissed off that you’re talking in class, or that parents are “ageist” for establishing a curfew, or yes, that you can somehow make infinite chocolate. It’s a springboard: you need to go to reputable sources with experts in the field to get the actual information.

EVEN if what you’re looking at isn’t something that is talked about at a reputable level, it is ALWAYS a good idea to look for multiple voices. If one source-less, proof-less person is spouting nonsense and literally nothing else meshes with what they’re saying, you might not wanna accept that as the truth. That’s how the anti-vaxx movement got so batshit out of control.

(Source: forevrdreamingofbetterthings, via windowless-van)