I decided to move my last topic from this thread to one of its own, called Be the Authority, since these are both topics that should be considered, but are not the same.
Haha. When I click on the hyper-link in your post, it brings up my user info. Are you certain you weren't referring to anyone in particular??
The topic is using your own brain. Your views are more important to me and, I trust, to most people on the forum, than are those of any expert or published authority you might link to. That doesn't mean they are necessarily more credible, or less credible, for that matter, but I've probably already read all of the published authorities that I'm interested in. You might consider that they are deemed authorities because they are willing to advance an agenda, not because that agenda is credible or true. Feel free to post a link, or embed a video, if you think that it will advance whatever it is that you have to say, but don't let the article or the video say it for you. If it supplements your voice, fine, but don't let it be your voice. I'm more interested in what you have to say. After all, this is a discussion forum, not a news aggregation site. Your views are as valid as anyone else's. Your knowledge counts. Don't give your brain over to the experts, and don't let the published media be your voice.
It must be a glitch. I wondered why it turned pink after I had posted it. Not sure if it happened right away or when I came back to the thread later. I don't think I can reword it at this point, but I'm fine with @Ken Anderson deleting the whole post. Not sure anyone will click on it, but it's just too weird to have a post hyperlinking to your personal information. (Ken...........Post # 16 is the post being referred to.)
The closure on the quote that preceded it wasn't closed properly so it made a link out of it. I fixed it.
A lot of new people have joined us since I began this thread, so I thought I'd bump it up again. I think I made some points that are worth considering here, so I would like you to consider them. Be your own expert, if only in the things that you say here. Your opinion counts, your opinion matters, and your opinions are far more interesting than the pundits and the experts. If you believe in God, consider that God gave you a brain for a reason. If you don't believe in God, you may consider that there is a reason why you evolved to have a brain. Use it.
@Ken Anderson Glad to see this topic resurrected. Nothing is more insulting and aggravating to me than to post about something I have thought out and have knowledge of, both experience and education, just to have someone reply with "cite your sources." In my opinion that is a response from one of ignorance that has no ability to use their own brain.
When a good bit of your job involved writing technical reports, providing justification and references is a difficult habit to break. I'm trying hard to learn not to do that now that I've retired, but only for this forum.
@Nancy Hart I hope you didn't misunderstand what I wrote. I too once wrote technical and medical articles that required citing sources. What I have run across on forums and recently on a health forum when I made a post on vestibular virology and it was from my understanding of years volunteering in a research lab and personal EXPERIENCE and instead of people reading and understanding what I wrote and asking intelligent questions or making intelligent comments from their knowledge, they responded with "cite your sources." I was the source of what I wrote.
I wasn't directing the post to you, Faye. Just the topic in general. Very few ideas are original unless you are into some sort of research. I dislike (to put it mildly) talk radio and unmoderated TV call in shows, like C-SPAN.
Whilst true and I do agree, most statements sans personal likes and dislikes should in some way be a reflection of certain facts that have been derived from an axis of absolutes. The problem is that a major portion of people either do not know how to “divide the word of truth” or do not want to because of some emotional ties or a lack of good reasoning and logic. Now, in a case of point, if I were to want a great electrician and you told me of one, I’d have to have ask about whether your opinion of the guy came from experiential evidence or because he looks like Tom Selleck. Ya know, “ the book and its cover” kind of thing. If, on the other hand your opinion came from something you heard 2nd or 3rd hand, I’d have to to use my own brain to make sure he’s the kind of person I want for the job. Get the evidence and go forward. I like opinions and I have quite a few of my own but to me, opinions and advice should be doled out very sparingly because the person giving them rarely has to suffer when said opinions are taken as an absolute and treated as such by someone who doesn’t know how to use basic common sense. Another case in point, The beloved person on cable news spouting out opinion rather than reality. Without even using their own brains to investigate fact or fiction, people go out and repeat said opinions as facts and wind up making the wrong decisions.. 1+1=2, that is an absolute whereas if I said that 1+1 can equal 3, that’s an opinion and not a very good one at that but still an opinion.