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0 pointsthrowaway6753093y ago0 comments

This is a pointless whataboutism, but I'll humor you.

I can pick up a college textbook on interval calculus and be reasonably assured of its veracity because it's been checked over by a proofreader, other mathematicians, the publisher, and finally has been previously used in a classroom environment by experts in the field.

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pixl973y ago

It's unfortunate but the vast amount of human literature is not up to those standards.

yura3y ago

The vast amount of human literature is not worth a read. As long as you pick reputable sources, read great books and so on, they will be up to those standards.

Of course, it's not a trivial task to find the reputable sources and the great books about a subject you don't know about. But there are many ways to find that out, for example by checking out the curriculum of respected universities to see which textbooks they use.

altilunium3y ago

> I can pick up a college textbook on interval calculus and be reasonably assured of its veracity because it's been checked over by a proofreader, other mathematicians, the publisher, and finally has been previously used in a classroom environment by experts in the field.

Well, even a very popular scientific theory, that supported by the whole consensus of academic society at its time, could be proved wrong decades later.

ihateolives3y ago

> Well, even a very popular scientific theory, that supported by the whole consensus of academic society at its time, could be proved wrong decades later.

Oddly enough that's usually only the case for big theories, but not for everything. You'd hard pressed to prove wrong our understanding on how to build bridges, for example.

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