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Critical thinking does not mean that you dismiss the information. It just means that you take the potential bias into account.

The media are often pretty bad at doing this: they will often make some kind of average on what is being said, like "the scientific consensus says that cigarettes are killing you, but a study sponsored by Philip Morris says that they are not, so... well we don't know". Where actually it should be pretty obvious that Philip Morris is extremely biased on that, and the scientific consensus is not.

Not every voice is worth the same. During covid, there was a tendency to relay all kinds of opinions, without making the difference between actual experts and non-experts. Sometimes even saying "this person is a doctor, so they know", which is wrong: being a doctor doesn't make you an expert on coronaviruses or epidemiology.

Whenever we get information, we should think about how much trust we can put into it, how biased the authors maybe (consciously or not), etc. Elon Musk saying that going to Mars can help humanity is not worth much. Because he is rich and successful does not make him right. Yet many people relay "Musk predicts that [...]", as some kind of truth.

I guess I had public discourse in mind when I was saying people to readily invoke claims of bias. Also alternative media which tends to be on the other extreme of being overly cynical.

If PM appeared on the news obviously no one would believe them.

That said in Australia we in the last few years we’ve increased the cigarette tax, smoking hasn’t really decreased, but treasury has reported decreased revenue. It clearly looks like the tax has been increased too high if sellers are illegally selling untaxed cigarettes.

It would be very dumb of a cigarette company like PM to come out and point this out (as it would just be a springboard for proponents of the tax to play attack others pointing it out the issue atm), but if they did, it wouldn’t mean it’s not happening. Even if they have a bias it would be irrelevant.

Speculation around bias is just treated too much of smoking gun, and claims of it are more often motivated reasoning not critical thinking.

I couldn't agree more with this.

Small typo though: I believe you meant "crutch" not "crotch" in:

> feel people online to readily get hung up motivations and it’s sometimes a crotch for a readers inability to engage with ideas they find uncomfortable.

Cheers, yeah I did, I think missed that while tired

> people just aren’t as aware of issues with it compared to other forms of media.

Really? I'd think it would be the opposite. Wikipedia has always been decried by academics (and primary school teachers) as "not a real encyclopedia", without giving anywhere near as much of a critical eye toward other sources of information.

Sure, I think Wikipedia's reputation and public image has gotten better over the years, but that stigma of it being created and written by "unprofessional anonymous people" is still there to some extent.

And regardless, the kind of person who is going to watch Fox News or CNN without applying any critical thought to what they hear there... well, probably is going to do the same for Wikipedia pages, or any other source of information.

I think academics are too critical for a source of general surface level knowledge. But it’s no substitute for primary sources

I don’t think the problem is anyone can jump on and edit Wikipedia, they have process, but it’s the processes, informal institution’s, where the issues I’m referring arise. The average person hears there a process and assume this means it’s legitimate and flawless and are over confident in its quality.

It’s a great resource but I tin it’s helpful to be realistic about its limitations.

The problem with Wikipedia as an Academic source is that it's impossible to cite. You have no idea whether the information on there today is going to be there tomorrow or was there yesterday.