ahem:
Inkling, I'm getting the inkling you might need meds.
Yes, I hear that skepticism and the ability to use a search engine ARE indeed
medically treatable conditions. I will look into that.
Lying? Most sources say that lying involves intent
Indeed. I never said you were lying. I said that you were EITHER lying or
you passed on extremely implausible and illogical "fact" without even making
an attempt at fact checking.
Several people made excellent deductions just from looking at the photo
and hearing the story that it seemed impossible that he lived. Their
basic reasoning skills served them well it would seem.
If your source was indeed a trustworthy friend with a good track record
of avoiding groundless rumors, then I do indeed owe you an apology.
In the future, citing you source or at least their credentials
would be a excellent way of insulating yourself from fault.
Honestly, if a friend of mine who was, say, a police officer or EMT
personally emailed me that picture and told me that they or a team
member had been on the scene and SAW him live, I could see myself
passing that story along as trustworthy.
If this source has never before passed along a sensational story,
and you trusted him, then the fault lay with your source more that you.
As for the word "peril" I was using the a phrase with slight
hyperbole. That fact is that this sort of false-fact propagation
happens all the time on the internet, due to the ease of information
transfer (so easy to click send/post before thinking) and the lack
of editors and fact checkers found in the professional media.
Many times this misinformation in banal (like this time) but other
times the passing along of bad medical of safety advice without
checking sources can indeed literally kill.
He who has good critical thinking skills in trivial matter has good
critical thinking skills more serious matters.
May we all take a lesson from this, and I didn't mean any of this
as rude or hurtful.
[inkling]
