It has become inarguable that we live in an era of misinformation. Even the diehards now must accept that most of our online information is driven by what pays, rather than what is necessarily true or morally right.
Being pragmatic and driven to outcomes rather than tedious discussion around the obvious, how to survive in this new era of confusion then?
Let’s be a typical well informed, ordinary citizen of the world and do a quick Google or Internet search.
Let’s say you just won the Lotto or want to spend your retirement and hard-earned cash in the best and healthiest place in the world.
Firstly, you may be interested in which is the best city to live.
So here we go.
A quick entry and click, click… ‘best cities to live in the world’
Result:
Now you may also wish to live longer to enjoy as much of your hard-earned cash and be as happy as you can. You have done ‘online’ research and now you know that cancer and cardiovascular diseases are the biggest killers in developed countries.
You now Google countries with the highest per capita cancer rates and cardiovascular disease.
Result for cancer:
and heart disease:
We all know we should avoid stress to have better cardiovascular health and reduce the odds of getting cancer.
So next you may want to avoid stressy places and search for the worlds ‘most stressed out cities’:
Result:
We started wanting to get on the next plane to Auckland, New Zealand, as the place to be to enjoy a happy lifestyle. Yet, it appears under the topmost burnt-out cities. It is also number two ranked for cancer!
Furthermore, we see it uses 7.3kg pesticides/ hectare of land. We know (at least we should) there is a link between pesticides in our diet and cancer.
Reflecting on our no more anxious search in anxious times, and attempting to reduce our biases by visiting a few different sites, it still leaves us flabbergasted.
How does best lifestyle equate with having a higher chance of getting cancer, cardiovascular disease and being emotionally burnt-out??
If anything, what can be gathered from our confusing search results? Clearly driven by the money hungry search engines of Google and the Internet it cautions us to be much more careful and also wiser.
Careful we will be, and perhaps already are, but how to gain wisdom in such confusion? My advice is read outside the Google driven ‘must reads’ or highly reviewed or ranked.
Wisdom is hard to gain and certainly not driven by the greedy search engines on the internet. Without reading widely and often outside your own discipline confusion will progress into ignorance.
It can certainly be helpful to consult philosophy books where age-old wisdom can be tested against time or consult books on mathematical logic, but it is not vital.
Many unreviewed lower ranked books contain hidden wisdom on numerous topics.
A simple method is hidden in the first chapters of the rather unnecessary complex text of Spheres of Perception, (2020)
Don’t be a cynic be wise!
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