Which sources of knowledge - books, websites, the media, personal experience, authorities or some other – do you consider most trustworthy, and why?

The internet is an excellent tool for finding information as it is world wide it encompasses the views of many people who have an internet connection and are willing to have a go at building there own sites and registering them for free on various servers. There is an overwhelming amount of information to be found that often it can take as much time to find specific pieces of information on the internet then going to a library and this is without actually getting up and walking around looking for books. There are several programs that allow almost anyone who is even remotely technically literate and with a modicum of creativity to design there own website. And herein lies the inherent problem with the net. Because there are so many people who have access to the Internet each one of these people has the potential to create there own web site. There is no way of telling who wrote the contents of the web page, for all we know the page could have been designed by a child, and there is always the risk of hackers changing the contents without the site administrator realising for periods of time. Because there is no way of telling who put the website up there is also no way of knowing whether the information is correct. The contents of the page have not been through publishers so there is no ‘filter’ in which standards can be kept. And once again there is always a risk that the web designer is biased.

The accuracy and reliability of the media is very much dependent on who it is written/recorded/broadcasted by. Most newspapers, magazines and current affairs shows are mostly concerned with there ratings and subscription basis being as large as possible because by attracting television ratings or increasing the number of subscribers will in turn create more money for the company. As a result of this they will try to present the writing or the shows in the most interesting and attracting way, which pretty much reads as exaggerating and sensationalizing the actual events, in a bid to attract the most ratings and therefore the most money. This exaggeration will inevitably lead to a distortion of the truth. There is an element of time in this as well as whoever brings the most exciting events to the public first will have a much greater chance of profiteering from this but because of this rush they are unable to check the facts before they release the information to the public. Generally the most accurate source of knowledge is science journals as they are written by professionals for professionals. They are written by extremely knowledgeable people and they have little to gain by exaggerating their claims, as the target audience is quite small and therefore the author would not gain much money from it. It is more a medium for people to share there views then a means of profiteering.

Personal experience, one would have to think, would have to be the most trustworthy for a person because what they gather from their senses they know has actually happened. If you can’t trust yourself and your own experiences what can you trust? But it is not as clear-cut as that. Things are misinterpreted all the time and it is possible for people to see what they want to see rather then what happened in reality. Emotions can get in the way of a persons judgement and induce a bias so that when that person recounts their story or experience there will be errors in his/her recollection. How the person perceived the particular event could be different from someone else’s perception of the same event. It may be as simple as seeing it from different angles or an elaborate illusion for example the figure below is impossible to make.

Lastly knowledge by authority is given to you by another person or group so its reliability will depend on that person or that group and their interests. The reliability of the information will depend where that person has gotten their information from and wether there is anything to be gained by giving out false information. For example political parties who are running a campaign for an election will say bad things about the opposition by twisting truths and so on to get the results they want. Censorship of letters in wars also distorts the truth. The government will try and make themselves look as good as possible even if it means that its own soldiers take the blame for their own mistakes.

So it can be seen that all the forms of knowledge listed have various strengths and flaws, some more then others, and there is no one form of knowledge that clearly stands out as the best. Each source of knowledge will be better suited in certain situations then another. To sum up there is no ‘ultimate’ source of knowledge that’s is the most trustworthy as there are many different situations where one is more suitable then the other and it would be best to choose sources of knowledge based on the present situation