How can you make your information credible?

[Brandlogies]

The information we provide in our content must be trustworthy because it is the most crucial component of both traditional and digital marketing. It's utterly important to provide real information in your content if you want the readers to accept them. In other words, the data you use in your articles or blogs should come from reliable sources.

[rproffitt]

Or you could circle it with a big sharpie?

[Reverend Jim]

Annotate your sources

Provide links so the reader can check your sources for themselves to ensure you are properly representing the cited material. Are you providing the proper context for a quote? Are you selectively editing material to make it say something that it is not?

Provide qualifications

In order to be a credible source, the person cited must be an acknowledged expert in the field. For example, Linus Pauling was not qualified to offer an informed opinion of the efficacy of mega doses of vitamin C. Religious leaders with no scientific training are not qualified to offer informed opinions on evolution, astronomy, biology, geology, or really, anything that requires detailed scientific knowledge.

Provide affiliations

If you are citing a position, the person's affiliations are critical. Does the person you are citing have a financial interest that would influence that position? The lawyer who kick-started the anti-vaxxer movement stood to make millions from the resulting lawsuits.

[digiupdates]

Absolute truth: one should never share false information since many people will read it, and we cannot take the chance of giving them the incorrect information.

[Dani]

I don’t think there ever will be “absolute truth” so long as humans each evaluate their experiences from their own perspectives and their own senses. I, for example, was born with no sense of smell or taste. I can tell you without question that it’s indeed true that the chocolate bar I ate doesn’t taste sweet. Someone else might take a bite of the same chocolate bar and conclude that it is very sweet. That is their experience. Both experiences are equally valid and both recollections are accurate. So is the chocolate bar sweet?

[Reverend Jim]

I don’t think there ever will be “absolute truth”

First of all, how are we defining "truth", as opposed to "fact"? A fact is a reflection of reality (objective). Truth may depend on your perspective (subjective).

Experiences are by definition subjective, but that doesn't mean there are no absolute "truths". Taste, for example, is subjective. The presence or absence of a particular gene in your DNA may determine whether broccoli tastes bitter or not. Taste is subjective but mass is not.

If you say broccoli tastes bitter you aren't stating a fact unless you qualify it with "to me". Whether or not that is a true statement is something else entirely. It also could be time dependent. Orange juice may taste sweet, but not after just brushing your teeth so even the truth of a statement can vary for a particular person.

So is the chocolate bar sweet?

Sweetness, colour, etc. are not properties of an object. They are entirely dependent on perception.

For the record, I find the phrase "my truth" to be particularly obnoxious, at least the way it is currently used (see "alternative facts")

[Dani]

First of all, how are we defining "truth", as opposed to "fact"? A fact is a reflection of reality (objective). Truth may depend on your perspective (subjective).

You're missing my point. My point is that, as fallible humans who don't fully understand the universe (hell, we could be living in a simulation for all we know), there's no such thing as absolute truth because our reflection of reality is still shrouded by the human senses. Even scientists are still limited by their perception of the world. One person can look up, and say it's absolute fact that the sky is green. That's a concrete observation. That's not subjective. They are looking at the sky and it is definitely clearly green. Them seeing the sky as green isn't based on their perspective, their experiences, their opinions, etc. But that person may be color blind.

I would argue that something's color is a property of an object. I objectively look at a chair. The chair has a back, a seat, and four legs. The chair is made out of wood and painted red. It's 3' tall. Those are the properties of the chair. Whether the chair is comfy, whether someone happens to find it too big for them or too small of them, ... those are all subjective.

[Reverend Jim]

we could be living in a simulation for all we know

Remember Occam's razor. Introduce as few assumptions as necessary. If you are going to raise the possibility of a simulation then there is no point in debating anything since the rules of the simulation would be completely arbitrary and subject to change without notice.

as fallible humans who don't fully understand the universe...

And we never will. That doesn't prevent us from forming a consensus as to how the universe appears to operate and modifying that consensus as new information becomes available. A typical ploy of one particular political party is to "wait until all the information is in". That never happens, even if 999 out of 1000 scientists come to agreement you can always say "scientists don't agree on x". The laws of physics as we currently understand them have allowed us to create some pretty impressive things like the computers we are currently using. That tells me that those laws must be pretty reliable.

One person can look up, and say it's absolute fact that the sky is green. That's a concrete observation.

No it isn't. You are missing my point. The sky is not green or blue or purple. We see the sky as a particular colour based on the biology of our eyes. All we can really say about the sky (at a specific time of day in specific weather) is that the light is of a particular wavelength.

The chair is made out of wood and painted red.

Yes, it is made of wood. No, it is technically not painted red. That's just a convenient convention that we all agree to use. It is painted with a substance that absorbs certain frequencies of light and reflects others. We agree, by convention, that a particular frequency is red. A colour blind person would perceive it differently. A person blind from birth would have no concept of colour at all. Colour is not a property of an object.

And that chair would be "red" only under the right conditions. Many things appear to be a different colour under different light whether incandescent, fluorescent, ultra-violet, infra-red, etc. Some people after cataract surgery report that they see colour differently. Some rare individuals have a fourth type of colour receptor in their eyes.

[JamesCherrill]

. Colour is not a property of an object.

A surface will absorb or reflect light according to the wavelength of the light and the physical properties of the surface, independent of who is looking at it. That is what most of us mean by the “colour” of the surface and it most definitely is an objective property.
When a person describes their experience of looking at it that is a subjective statement that needs to be qualified by who is looking, when, where etc

The words we use for colours, although imprecise, are objective. “Red” means light within a certain range of wavelengths. Surfaces that reflect mostly light within that range are “red”. Regardless of how any individual experiences it.

[JamesCherrill]

For me it’s a statement of faith that we exist in a single internally consistent <everything> (Universe, nature, simulation …). Statements about that <everything> are true or false solely dependent on how precise they are. That, for me, is the meaning of ‘absolute truth’.
Imprecise statements are neither true nor false because their meaning is unclear.
Yes, our perfections and observations are incomplete and unreliable, but that doesn’t stop us from trying to understand better.

My answer to Berkeley is “yes”, provided you define “sound” as pressure waves in the air between 20 and 20,000 Hz.

[Reverend Jim]

Surfaces that reflect mostly light within that range are “red”. Regardless of how any individual experiences it.

You are, of course, correct. I was striving here for strict technical accuracy at the risk of being labeled overly pedantic. That's why I specified "convenient convention". Yes, we agree that red light has a wavelength between 620 to 750 nm, but how that is perceived is dependent on the observer. I know I'm splitting hairs here (the old tree falling in the forest thing) but I was trying to make a distinction between properties like taste and colour, and properties like mass.

One of the problems is that people use "truth" in different ways, as in when people say "my truth" to mean "this is consistent with my world view", which as we have seen can be totally detached from reality.

[JamesCherrill]

For me “true” means “consistent with reality” (ie the <everything> in my previous). Because our understanding is imperfect we are unable to determine truth with any certainty. It’s not the truth that’s in doubt, just our understanding.
Ps E.O.Wilson’s book on Consilience is worth a read. “Every true statement is consistent with every other true statement” - a cunning way of saying there is just one reality. Her then goes to great lengths to show how the consilience between physics/chemistry/biochemistry/biology etc makes modern science the best candidate for an accurate description of reality.