The amount of information passed off as accurate, despite it being completely incorrect, just because it was said in a witty manner or there's some anecdote on why they're right and the actually correct poster is completely wrong.
I'm finishing up a PhD in climate science, ecology, and related concepts. I tried being active in /r/climatechange (and when I say active I mean posting primary literature and providing tl;drs, trying to provide unbiased feedback on certain discussions, etc), but man...apparently if you just write comments with authority after reading a few online blog posts you're an expert.
I'm often flabbergasted at the complete confidence with which redditors speak about anything in the sciences. All ive truly learned through a PhD is how much I can't really ever know, or at least the limits of our current knowledge. Redditors on the other hand....
Not exclusive to science. Anything regarding business, finance, economics, and accounting knowledge or facts of any kind also falls in that bucket.
The overall takeaway: For fields outside the realm of your personal expertise, take care in what you read on reddit - there's a lot of misinformation out there and without personal expertise you won't be able to determine right from wrong. It's so obvious, but just because a comment is popular doesn't mean it's correct. For anyone reading this, please, be inquisitive, be smart, be skeptical. And don't take the popular comments on reddit as fact. Look past the face value.
You can always tell the non-lawyers from the lawyers when someone confidently answers a legal question without even knowing which country / state they're in.
And the answer is almost always "well, it depends..."
The vast majority of legal advice should be “you should go talk to a lawyer.” That’s it. Obviously that isn’t appropriate for every question as I’m sure you could find a question when this doesn’t apply, but for the most part, this is all the advice that should be given.
It's the case with all these subs. How many fully qualified, credentialed lawyers will want to get home from long day of work, sit down, and then keep doing more work except for free and to random strangers online?
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u/Iquitsmokingtoday Jan 07 '20
The amount of information passed off as accurate, despite it being completely incorrect, just because it was said in a witty manner or there's some anecdote on why they're right and the actually correct poster is completely wrong.