Okay. I'll admit to being a white guy with a fairly privileged upbringing. I have the advantage of having been exposed to a lot of things many people never have the opportunity to be exposed to. As far as that goes, I'm willing to share what I've learned with anyone willing to learn.
Honestly, I was stoned through much of junior and senior high school but a couple of things I came away with...
Evidence:
You can say what you want but unless you can back it up with facts, data, substance, it's just talking...
Facts:
Facts are verifiable and ALWAYS true. For everyone. I can say, "Today is Thursday, October 2." However, that is not a fact. For someone in another part of the world right now, It's already Friday, October 3. For my tomorrow, this statement is no longer true. This was a difficult concept for me but once I accepted it and tested it, it became clear.
Primary and seconday sources:
Primary sources are the people who have first hand knowledge of a subject or event. People who were there when it happened.
Secondary (and tertiary and quarternary...) sources are people who were told about an event or who came later.
"Real News" typically requires more than one primary source.
Data and experimental results:
Data is an observation of some phenomena. It should be quantifiable (measurable).
Experimental results are bullshit unless they are replicable - someone else should be able to apply the same conditions and arrive at the same result within an acceptable margin of error.
Anecdotal evidence:
This is where stuff gets fuzzy... there may be a lot of people experiencing a particular result from, let's say, DTW in coco coir. That in itself doesn't make it fact. That's just the beginning. This gives us the basis for making and then testing a hypothesis (an educated guess).
We don't have to know why something works to know it works:
Aspirin.
What you think, what you've been told and what you know to be true are often very different things.
Let's face it, most of what you read or see or hear on the internet is just bullshit. I hope everyone can thoughtfully apply these simple concepts.
Looks like Donald made yer day, Hope gave you hope and Donald covid.
