Trust me, I'm a ...

2006.03.24

(A) Published Author

It's tough to be a published author, you must convince a publisher to believe in you. To do that you must know a lot and write valuable stuff. So what I write must be good, otherwise I wouldn't be a published author.

(B) Poster in a Forum

There is nothing for me to gain by posting on a forum, so it is obvious I must post in forums because I like to help people. It wouldn't help people to answer the wrong thing.

(C) Blogger

There is a lot that I know about something, so I started an online blog. I like recognition too, so I must post accurate information, otherwise I wouldn't get good recognition.

(D) Web Writer

This is my online business, I must generate traffic to succeed. To generate traffic I got to give good information, that way people will come back and tell their friends about me.

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These people all have valid reasons to inform and write useful information, so which ones would you trust? Is that all you need to know to believe in what these people say? It doesn't take much to know that the answer to the last question is no. It is obvious because there can always be ulterior motives. The published author can write a book about products which are profitable to him. Each other type of person can have reasons to be untruthful.

Of course, blatantly false information won't serve their purpose, so they must intersperce truth with their propaganda. There lies the conundrum of the world-wide-web. Information is out there, but no source is certain. Therefore, many sources must be considered to have an idea of the truth. After all, it is more likely that independent sources agree on reality than fiction.

Unfortunately, there is another twist. People who do not know what they are ignorant about, and learn from falsehoods, can propagate such information and create a false sense of agreement. An example of this is apparent in online forums where a large number of members are each convinced of exaclty the opposite and can all reference external sources which support what they believe they know!

There are two defenses to the uncertainty of information, credibility and logic. Credibility is established by understanding who the author of information is and identifying references. Logic can be used to understand that information presented must be true. This is encouraged by authors who support their facts by logical arguments and references. Validating credibility or logic is equality tricky, but if we don't attempt to do that, who can we trust?

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