Have you ever read something about a topic you know a lot about in the paper? They never get it right, do they? What are the odds that they get the stuff you don’t know anything about right? I have to say that this mostly apply to publications that cover a wide range of topics, such as tabloid papers. Even major financial papers, who you’d think knew a thing or two about economics and business, are often so wrong on some topics (that I know anything about), that it’s scary. I’m not talking about a different point of opinion. I’m talking about factual errors. And I don’t really think they care.

So why do we believe them on these other topics? I know I do. I blatantly ignore these experiences, and swallow everything they print. It’s incredible the amount of weight we put on other peoples opinions, when we have no opinion ourselves. And not only subjective opinions. We take everything as facts. Instead of saying “I don’t believe it, until I see it”, we more often go for the “I’ll believe everything, until I can check for myself” tactic.

I know, we can’t go around disbelieving everything. We need a certain amount of trust. But there is a difference between believing and believing something blindly. Be skeptical. Recognize that everything you know and believe could be wrong. Hell, we should even take some joy in being proven wrong!