There is evidence all over this thread of people who are not really good at using the internet and show no critical thinking skills. I've compiled here a list of "The 7 Deadly Sins of Using the Internet to Write or Form an Opinion". Using this guide is a good way of protecting yourself against conspiracy theories 1. Cut and Paste. Saying something is “cut and paste” is not an argument; it is merely the transfer of someone's writing from one screen to another. It isn't even necessarily unoriginal work, but dropping a wall of pasted text without your own synthesis, framing, or critical evaluation adds zero analytical value to a discussion…it may be just getting your own work off your computer and putting it on a site that's your opinion – so saying “cut and paste” is actually meaningless without an explanation. 2. Confusing Search with Research Searching is transactional: you're looking for a specific piece of existing data—checking a bus timetable, finding a phone number, or looking up a word definition. You have a target, you retrieve it, and you're done. Research is true investigation: It is a systematic, iterative process aimed at building new understanding, evaluating evidence, or reaching a reasoned conclusion. Research involves gathering multiple perspectives, cross-examining data, identifying biases, and synthesising findings. 3 - Treating Search Engines as Sources … Google itself is not a primary source, a publisher, or an authority on a topic. It does not "know" things; it points to web pages hosted elsewhere. Claiming "I found this on Google" is equivalent to saying "I found this in a library." The credibility depends entirely on the specific document, journal, or site retrieved—not the engine used to locate it. 4. Misunderstanding AI... Generative AI is not a search engine, a source, a factual database, or an oracle, and it doesn't do the thinking for you. AI is a drafting, reasoning, and synthesis tool. It can structure ideas, summarize long texts, or spot logical fallacies, but human oversight is strictly required to verify claims. It can organise notes or pull an outline together, but the human running it must still provide and inspect the primary data before putting their name on the final claim. 5. Mashing Up Sources & Blaming the Messenger People frequently confuse the messenger with the message, accusing a poster of claiming something when they are simply reporting what a source says. Furthermore, web users constantly fail to distinguish between the three tiers of information: a - Primary Sources - (The Raw Data): First-hand evidence—official government figures, original research data, legal court documents, or direct eye-witness accounts. b - Secondary Sources - (The Analysis): Peer-reviewed journal articles, expert commentaries, and analytical reports that take primary data, test it, and put it into context. c - Tertiary Sources - (The Summaries): Encyclopedias (like Wikipedia), travel guides, and general reference lists. These are great for getting a quick 10,000-foot overview, but tertiary sources—which are the most common on forums—should never be relied on as the final word in a serious debate. 6. Confusing the "Internet" with the "Web" Most people don't know what the internet actually is: The Internet (The Infrastructure): The global hardware—a massive web of physical wires, undersea cables, routers, and servers linking machines worldwide. It is the carrier that moves all kinds of digital data back and forth, handling many backend services that do not use web pages at all. The World Wide Web (The Content): What most people wrongly call "the internet." Invented in 1989, the Web is merely a service running on top of the internet infrastructure, consisting of text, pictures, and videos linked by URLs and viewed through a browser. 7. The "Absence of Proof is Proof of Cover-up" Trap Unfalsifiability - Treating a lack of evidence for a claim as "proof" that powerful entities are hiding it. In critical inquiry, a claim must be falsifiable—meaning there must be a defined set of facts that could prove it wrong. If every piece of counter-evidence is dismissed as "fake news" or part of a cover-up, the argument leaves the realm of rational investigation and enters unfalsifiable belief.
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