Are you troubled by the firehose of questionable information today? Stop worrying, with these simple tips:

• Question always
• Trust nobody
• Verify everything

... and apply it to everything you hear and read, wherever! Easy, isn't it?

Well, not really. Constantly questioning everything is a constant cognitive effort. You may not have been educated about actual critical thinking practices like looking for logic, errors, fallacies, rhetorical trickery. Even if you know how, doing it all the time is kind of like living in Cooper's Condition Yellow. Combat may sound like an inappropriate analogy, but it's apt. Some would say there is a war on for your mind, an information war. One might as well take it seriously. After all, what could happen if you get it wrong? According to some twit named Voltaire:

‘Anyone who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.’

Sounds serious, and it really is. When you're called to vote, to comply, to judge, you should aim to get your facts correct, or at least not incorrect. Doing the whole cognitive analysis every time is hard for most people. But, being a reader of this here blog, you are in luck!

I have condensed for you a variety of green / red flags, using which you have a chance of assessing the truthfulness of random information. Whenever you encounter information that might matter, you can relax when you see plenty of these positive factors, and worry when you see plenty of the negative. Even with red flags, you only need sufficient courage to say/think: "I'm not sure. I don't know.", and move on. It's okay to not know!

The Frank™ brand list of Positive factors:

• (The opposite of any of the below.)
• Venue invites relatively uncensored third-party commentary.
• Venue / writer has earned a good reputation among people you care about.
• Topic is something many people would find boring.
• Material includes usable citations to sources.
• Material makes an effort to be logically structured, brief, and topic limited.

The Frank™ brand list Negative factors:

• (The opposite of any of the above.)
• Venue / writer is corrupted by financial, material, or reputational impact of your audience & belief.
• Topic is connected to any major political controversy.
• Material shows signs of emotional manipulation, whether making you feel angry or tribal or affirmed.
• Material shows signs of stylistic sophistication / attention engineering to appeal to your subconscious.
• Material scrupulously avoids quantifying risks, harms, probabilities, phenomena.
• Material that calls for urgent action.