[timun]

Originally Posted by Mr.Coffee

I’ll take the hit on laziness and admit it. I just finished working and finally got back here but my reply to you would be this- to what extent should the average voter be expected to wade through and not just research all the various issues to the nth extent expected by people in this thread but also verify and confirm all sources and their respective biases or extent and intensity of such biases? How many hours a night do you expect people to go read through and stay in tune with all the issues while making sure that all the 5 million other obligations in the average persons life are adequately maintained, you know, people with kids jobs, billion other ####ing things to do?

Sorry I can’t keep up to the political wizards in here but therein lies the rub and the breakdown. The many people you suggest are “morons” (which ironically only makes you look like a moron but ok) probably have way too much #### going on in their life to dedicate the 40% of their days staying up to the latest and dialed in on biases and claims and fact checking and debate. Misinformation is spreading and you’re right that is a huge problem but see most regular people used to just read the news and could reasonably rely on it.

So when I get an email and there’s some info in it and I just kind of throw it in here to see people’s thoughts, what is ultra counterproductive to the entire premise of this websites purpose are the replies that have built over years shutting down discussion and discourse and not actually discussing the issues at hand. Luckily some other reasonable people came in and actually participated beyond the usual echo chamber critters purposefully trying to stifle such discussion by just outright immediately dismissing the source. The truth is, everyone has their biases, including the lefty echo chamber team in here and so a real fact based discussion would truly take hours of research from reputable sources on both sides to really wade through all the purposeful omitting of key details on any issue or blatant misrepresentations of key facts. The fact that the lefties just sit around here and crow “nobody can even dispute all these issues from the right!” And then when presented with an issue do their mightiest to just shut down the discussions through attacking a source whilst insulting the poster and calling anyone who has valid concerns or objections idiots is a reflection of the state of those posters and quality of this thread. And further, the extreme lack of self awareness in here of said posters is all the more shameful.

So yeah, after I get my kids home from sports practice, that’s where I am now trying to keep up with this bull####, and then getting my kids to bed house cleaned and then some more work I have to do tonight, maybe I’ll hop on at 11pm and go research all the ####ing key issues and related biases and sources for everything. Seems reasonable? No. Like, this is a message board. Discuss the issue- you have no clue about most things about most of these people participating- so stop being dicks? Or, like I said, maybe all you people are incapable?

So you tell me what a reasonable amount of time for people to stay “up to date” with “facts” should be to honour our democratic responsibilities.

Sorry/not sorry, but this is all a red herring. A false equivalency. I'm not arguing that you need to spend hours and hours doing research. You said:

Originally Posted by Mr.Coffee

Based on what I have seen (can't post it, sorry, received it in an email from a group called "Alberta Institute" in an article written by a guy named Peter McCaffrey- not sure his or this group's political association); but this author makes claims that such a program is anticipated to cost $87 Billion, based on the fact that the current grid is 85% non-renewable energy (not sure if this is true?).

It takes mere seconds to go to https://www.google.ca, type in "Alberta Institute Peter McCaffrey", and hit the enter key.

Frankly this should be part of your own personal, basic media literacy.

You say, "Misinformation is spreading and you’re right that is a huge problem but see most regular people used to just read the news and could reasonably rely on it." You can still just read the news and reasonably rely on it. Instead, you're getting your news from emails. Passed on to you by whom? And why? Why would you rely on information passed on to you by email?

You don't need to research the hell out of something to be informed in a superficial way, and it's fine to be be informed in a superficial way. For example I haven't been following the stuff in the news about the Chinese Communist Party's shenanigans with respect to CPC MP Michael Chong and his family. But it doesn't take a rocket surgeon to do some superficial vetting of sources of your information.

You go on to say it's unreasonable to expect people to do some research of their own because they (you) don't have the spare time, and that it's incumbent on "the usual lefty echo chamber critters" to "discuss the issues" and "stop being dicks" about calling people out on crappy sources of information. That is bull####. The idea that you chuck some information out into the ether and other people have an obligation to not pick apart the questionable source is complete, unadulterated bull####.

THAT is how disinformation perpetuates: a false appeal to some bull#### "all sides, many sides" argument that pretends as though patently biased sources are on equal footing to any other source. They're not. Calling out bad sources IS the discussion worth having. Fuzz is not the ###hole here for calling out BS when he sees it. Just because you got it in an email from someone does not mean anyone else is under any obligation to take any of it at face value, and if it's unreliable information, then it merits no discussion whatsoever.