Alegrias1
25Avalon
The point I was making Alegrias was that people do believe things without checking for themselves.
Yes, I agree 25Avalon.
But you did say that they might have done a lot of research before believing night is day. Which only goes to show that what a lot people call "research" is just looking things up on the internet without understanding the context, or the bias of the authors.
This can be true (that there are those who believe that 'research' is simply reading the first hit on Google), and I don't think there is anything wrong with asking someone why they feel as they do; but I don't think it is remotely reasonable to expect people to do a peer reviewed investigation of everything they perceive as fact before they form an opinion either. There would be no time to walk the dog or cook the dinner if that were the case, and sites like Gransnet would soon run out of threads.
I do think, however, that we should all be more open to the idea that 'facts' are rarely immutable, and not just shut down the ones that don't align with our own perceptions of the truth. That's how fundamentalism and (potentially) extremist behaviour takes hold. To me, a sign of open-mindedness, and (dare I say it, intelligence), is when a person has the willingness to at least listen to someone saying, 'yes but . . . ' and questioning something they have previously accepted as fact.