Soapbox: Think for yourselves!
I get a little frustrated when people seem to be unwilling to think for themselves.
I subscribe to a number of digital newsletters and opinion groups, mainly anti-(some political ideal) or pro-(insert some science here), etc. While I do presume that people posting to these groups will be hardcore towards whatever the page is promoting/demoting, I forget that something the people I find replying there are as blind as their opposition! They can be quick to accept what the OP gives them as gospel, though sometimes the OP has glaring flaws that can be easily shown by simply "Googling" the factoid in question. I find this a lot on anti-political pages.
Society is an intellectual hierarchy, and when I don't know something I have to look towards someone with more knowledge on the subject. I can't know everything, and I can't pretend to be an expert in all my interests. I get a little frustrated when I run into a clump of people who do. What's worse, people formulate hardline opinions on subjects without actually taking even a little time to research, or they get their data exclusively from someone that is hardline. I see this a lot with common people and genetically modified foods.
Once upon a time, all I knew was that there was a company that modified food and it was bad. That company is still around, and so is their food, but I had a friend who had more information than me and was able to point me towards information that showed benefits of genetically modified foods. Seeing that I didn't have a broad enough picture, I took one day, ONE DAY, to dig around and found that there are fantastic benefits to GMO foods (Norman Borlaug, anyone) as well as the bad GMO foods (that honestly started out with good intentions, but just didn't work out like they planned).
Why am I ranting about it? Because after seeing that there was more to it and that I couldn't possibly be an expert on it without becoming an agricultural geneticist or botanist or something, I agreed to stay in the middle and only said what I knew for certain: GMO has done (and can do) a wealth of good, but there can be serious drawbacks when done wrong. But some of these people can't seem to do that! The posts start rolling in about how how awful GMOs are, someone mentions Monsanto, and then I pop in with Norman Borlaug (there are other examples, I just think he's a shining, easy example everyone can get behind, so I use him). People start asking ME for credentials, throwing out my bit of info, while having no credentials themselves.
ACCEPT that you don't and can't know everything.
ACCEPT that there's probably more information on a subject than you've encountered before.
BE THANKFUL when someone else presents you with an opposing opinion and DATA to back it up, because without conflict there is no growth, in ANY FIELD. That's what all those annoying homework assignments were for, to make you work for retention and knowledge.
If your opinion can't stand up to conflicting evidence LET IT GO or at least admit that your opinion might not be stable.
THINK FOR YOURSELVES. ASK QUESTIONS. If someone tells you something is all good or all bad, it's probably wrong.
I suppose I'm just disappointed because I feel like people who subscribe to ideologies like mine wouldn't be so content with forming their final opinions without at least trying to see both sides.
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