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Promo'SM 🎶

Great presentation! With regard to linked items which were discussed and included in the 'chat' section. Would you please consider including those links in the Decription or a pinned Comment here as well?

'Promosm'

There is some very useful information in this video, and in the previous videos, that I can get behind. However, I am curious whether or not the author of this series would ever level this same intensity of critique against so-called "left wing" sources. I think it would be beneficial for students to be shown that the people teaching them can set aside their own biases to evalute "friendly" sources with similiar intensity. That sounds fair to me.

FactsCan is reliable because a media bias site says they are reliable. Ok, fine. But why didn't the video explore whether the media bias site is reliable? Why doesn't the video explain how much depth should be explored when seeking to verify the authenticity of an online source? As a university resource, you are telling students what they should deem to be authoritative. But if you do not do your due diligence in explaining how to come to a proper conclusion, then you are pointing them toward the university as the sole source of authority. Even when citing other universities as credible and accurate sources of information, the university is the one giving those sources a thumbs up. So, the power to legitimize sources of authority is still within the university even while it points to secondary sources of authority. However, what if another source of authority criticizes or discredits the university? Will the university still regard that secondary source as credible and accurate? This is further demonstration that there is a system of verifying sources of authority in place that is not consistent or in-depth; it is circular and self-serving. According to these videos, it seems that we can be satisfied with the authority an online source has if it affirms what the scholarly community we're appealing to also affirms. This appeal to community authority is not objective in nature, but subjective. The community we’re told to appeal to also acts as the gatekeepers of what is or isn’t authoritative. Consensus of the majority does not determine truth. In fact, time and time again we discover that “consensus of the majority” is a thinly veiled ideology of “tyranny of the majority.”

Why choose such an easily verifiably false example to show students how to be critical thinkers? If you want students to learn how to think critically, shouldn't you use examples that require critical thinking to discern? By choosing such low hanging fruit, it seems like the university is presenting an agenda rather than a mere example. In this video, produced in July of 2021 (during the height of the Covid-19 era), it seems like the goal is more related to vaccines and antivaxxers than providing an example of a bad source of authority. Surely there were more crafty and subtle scholarly examples to present than this dude. I have no reason or compulsion to agree with the dude presented in the video, especially if the case presented against him is fully accurate, and I have no desire to try to prove him innocent. With that said, I do hope there is a "de-mythologizing" of the "experts" also taught in this course. Just because hundreds or thousands of people with credentials all think in the same manner does not mean they are correct. True discernment is not based on arbitrary rules, but on presuppositional principles that stand the test of time. Principles rooted in the logic of reality as it really is. These principles demand answers, not speculation. This means that the presuppositions of every expert's view of reality -- how they ascertain truth, their consistency to upholding truth (even when challenging), and what is rightfully at stake if they abide by truth -- all these things must be tested; nothing must be taken for granted for the sake of convenience or reducing tensions. That is, nothing must be taken for granted if the test of authority is being taken sincerely and seriously. No one currently on this Earth is perfect. So, to fail consistently and constantly in testing and re-testing these things is a failure to validate true authority which is a failure to validate truth. Anyone who fails to authentically validate truth -- without confirmation-bias -- evidence they cannot vindicate their ability to be determined as a source of true authority. In the case of unvalidated and unvindicated sources of "authority," there is a deeper issue. The stance of being authoritative must never be dependent on self-granted, nepotistic, ideologically “incestuous” authorities within the scholarly community. If there is no way for newly proposed sources to be objectively and fairly assessed as authoritative (or not) apart from reliance upon existing, established authorities, then the concept of “authoritative sources” is ideological, not rooted in truth. In this case, the ideology of established authorities becomes the arbiter of whether something is or isn’t authoritative. Furthermore, it makes those determinations according to inconsistent, arbitrary, self-biased rules. In such a case, where the present authorities become the sole, infallible gatekeepers of “authority,” we aren’t actually discussing the concept of “authority” in a truly scholarly sense. Instead, we would be discussing authoritarianism. When any community regards itself as a self-existent authority, despite failing the tests of presuppositional principles rooted in the logic of reality as it really is… well, anything that cannot be questioned or criticized likely regards itself more akin to a god than to women and men of finite and inexpressibly limited scope of reality (as it really is). Why? Because a god answers to no one. Do we?

Thank you for the quick overview!

Will the account be uploading a recording of the Literature Review & Writing Process seminar from Feb. 16th?