#PKMChat 2015-04-21 Challenging Learning Sources

A life long learner should remain attentive to the validity of his learning sources

A self directed life long learner should remain vigilant like a driver on a long highway. Even reputed influencers eventually let go some unverified or discutable opinions. A very shiny online course on a topic like Marketing, Self-development or Psychology may easily carry some objectable messages. I have seen it several times while reading or attending webinars and MOOCs. It is specially striking when suddenly the discussion takes examples from topics I know very well and have a first hand experience like software development or travelling. What other signals do we have to detect ungrounded opinions being presented as truth or knowledge bombs. Should we systematically verify whatever source we decide to use to learn? We could read from disputable or untrustworthy sources without being affected by the style and just the information conveyed as material. However doing so end up affecting our vision. Negative, pessimistic opinions repeated time after time, bad news, critics eventually hit home and affect us. Suffice to switch on the radio to get some examples of it. The simple effect of repeating some news and skimming others is a twist in information. Marketers use it a lot as well and combine verifiable or common sense truth with their messages. You should be clean to be in good healh (ok) do it with our soap (questionnable). If we use the source for learning or adopting ideas we should be even more careful. A quote or a link can be questionned as well. How far the writer did question the source himself.

“There’s nothing so absurd that if you repeat it often enough, people will believe it.” — William James (1842-1910) The father of modern Psychology

I did some homework for this one. I searched until I found multiple sources and the exact sentence, still couldn’t find the exact source. A simple comma (before or after enough), a word change (but -> that), an changed meaning or a contemporay connotation of a word, an approximate translation can be enought to affect the meaning. Verifying a quote can take up to 10 minutes. Writing verified texts is a very time consumming experience.

Now on the other side we can’t become obssessed and totally critic and analyze everything we read. From time to time we have to bet on trust. We need to take the decision quickly, as we read. This means we apply some kind of heuristic: A cognitive shortcut to a long reasoning. Are there heuristics or biases? Do you know some common biases? What’s your take on this topic? Join us and let’s chat. This chat is the first to be in Agora Mode. There is still a topic, some readings, some preparation and some questions but it is a less conducted, less moderated form of chat. Questions will not be numbered. PKMChat being about Personal Knowledge Management encompass Knowledge lifecycle in general. Our first chat was about learning, acquiring Knowledge. Our second is about sharing it. Week after weeks we will switch from one end of the lifecycle to another while exploring all the channels that could be used: social, formal, writing, videos. Feel free to suggest topics by tweeting to @pkmchat.

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