No Stupid Questions

Experience of credibility with a source. If you know a news site is credible, then it's appropriate to trust at least most things.

If it's a journal or a blog, then it's most likely opinion with no real substantial evidence.

Experience of the writer of the source. A lot of official articles will have a small bio about the writer or at least their name so you can research the writer.

Citations. That's all on that point

Site security. If it's an unsecured site, then it is not a good source of information

Verbiage. If bias or insulting language is being used, then it's a bias source which makes it a bad source.

The discussions here are a bit prosaic, though valid, but on a higher philosophical view you can check Descartes Discourse on the method. It is the basis of all natural sciences and the philosophical foundation of science and rational truth establishment. Maybe grab an explaineer on those ideas.

There are further developments that discuss the sociological proceeds of the scientific community. But the best start point is to always check any statement of truth and fact for four things: controversies, criticisms, corrections and praises. With those four elements you can assert for yourself the credibility of a source's claims.

A small thing, and only for "creator" content and people. If they say multiple things, some you know about and some you don't, then evaluate the stuff you know. If you detect bullshit in the stuff you know, throw it all out.

Someone that lies on one thing is fully untrustworthy.

Clearly doesn't work when you are wrong.

I dont have an answer other than vet with an authority you trust (be it wikipedia, a teacher a friend, a parent)

But this is not a stupid question. Its probably the most important question when making a decision in this modern techno era to have an answer for yourself

If its peer reviewed then it should go through the experimental setup, the data and accompanying math. They can be evaluated by anyone with enough basic knowledge with math usually being the limiting factor. For example there was this study about animal intelligence that the criteria was if they could recognize themselves in a mirror. Birds and dolphins made the cut but not dogs. My complaint was it was biased to animals where vision was their more primary sense. Now im not an expert in the field but I can still find fault in that way.

There are different standards in different fields of knowledge. Medical science is different than journalism, which is different from history, which is different from public safety.

In general, a given field has sources that publish information with the highest standard of credibility. In many fields, these are peer-reviewed journals. They may be published by large universities (Harvard Law Review, Oxford Review of Economic Policy), by government bodies (e.g. Smithsonian Magazine, NIHR), by professional organizations (eg. JAMA, Annals of Internal Medicine), or operate independently (e.g. The Lancet, Nature).

Credibility is earned by being consistently credible. A source that posts misleading or false articles can be assumed to not be credible, and I don't trust them just like I don't trust people who say stuff that ends up being not credible.

With newer information, concensus between difference sources us a good indicator as well.

What I am far more likely to use to dismiss something is checking out the purpose of the group. If they have a website and their description sounds like a weasel pretending to be a benevolent protector of a hen house then I just ignore them. Anything that sounds pie in the sky, like revolutionizing or disrupting an established industry is probably another Theranos and easily dismissed. If they say anything that sounds like conservative doublespeak, they get ignored.

It seems to be a pretty reliable system even if the occasional thing that is too good to be true slips in because I want it to be true. But having low expectations and recognizing potential being different from the results helpas a lot with being pleasantly surprised when things turn out better than they sounded.

Media literacy crash course https://youtube.com/watch?v=sPwJ0obJya0&list=PL8dPuuaLjXtM6jSpzb5gMNsx9kdmqBfmY&index=1&pp=iAQB

If we can agree that all "news" sites slant to the right or the left. Then you should check out the story at a few of both leaning sites.

The main point is to be able to handle uncertainties in a normal basis, the greyness of reality, despite the temptation of blacks and whites of our minds.

For sure it costs a lot. The consideration of the superposition of possible truths and the weight of potential biases is a huge burden without granted full coverage, but allows you to accumulate a landscape of plausibility of things: yes, is not 100% precise and is still built by personal prejudices but, with a systematic acceptance of new bits of information regardless of how comfortable they are, it can grow a mostly reliable understanding of reality with a variable amount of temporary uncertainty on some facts… and you can still convert greys into quasi-b&w once they reach a decent amount of independent evidences, you now, to free a bit your RAM.

PS: Peer review is neither 100% perfect, is just more solid.

It's peer reviewed if it has the name of a peer-reviewed journal on it. If it's on arxiv (a pre-print server) it's not. (Or not yet, or published on several platforms/journals.)

I don't fully believe anything I can't test and verify myself. Thank fuck NASA left things on the moon you can ping to prove they went there and it's easy to prove the planet isn't flat, otherwise I'd be in trouble.

The short answer is you don't. Even in philosophy, a leading model of "truth" is something like "a statement is true if it's true". We humans are doomed to be confused and unsure.

I'm not checking things for peer review, but a lot of bullshit can be filtered out by a simple Google search. If Aunt Brenda posts a major event on Facebook, but it's not on any news site, she probably fell for a lie.