In the past, even I got caught up in the delirium of seeing something that fit with my world perspective and jumped right into the reference with both feet, often passing it along because it had to be true, since it fit my world view. But what I found out was that despite the overall intent of my good world view, the reference I was using was not up to the truthful standard it was implying or advocating. So what I do now as much as possible is to not only check for the veracity of references I find but I also compare them with other studies or stories on the same subject. Often what we get are subjective stories that tell one side of a policy or law, without offering the countering view. Now the countering view is important here. We cannot accept the idea of knowing a subject without knowing the pros and cons of it. The smart idea on this is to prepare as if you were going into a debate. When you know the highs and lows of both sides, your debate opponent will not catch you off guard and you will likely have a rebuttal to their countering viewpoint. So it is with references that fit nicely into our personal and public narratives. My intent always forms my viewpoint and when starting from the foundation of equality, fairness and justice, I rarely find that I am on the wrong side of any argument. From there it is just accumulating the evidence necessary to argue my viewpoint from a human point of view. So let's all just take a deep breath and when we do advocate for some policy based upon a reference, let's make sure the reference meets our high standards of arguing truth and not lies.
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