On Research

Dear Readers,

For an Aspie, or at least for me, life is can get very confusing, very quickly. But most problematic is knowing whether something is fact or fiction.

When someone tells you some sort of trivia, I very rarely have the time, means, or inclination to look it up. So I assume that they must have done the research themselves and accept it as fact.

You can probably see why this would become fairly problematic. I can think of several ways that can come back to bite me later:
1. They may be messing with me, or being sarcastic, and I just didn't realize. (This has always been INCREDIBLY frustrating to me, since it's kind of unfair.)
2. I may end up mishearing or misunderstanding them. (This happens more often than I like to admit.)
3. THEY may have misheard or misunderstood THEIR source. Albert Einstein once said something along the lines of "never believe a fool, even if he is quoting a genius; for he will have had to put it in words he can understand." I may have misquoted that. (And yes, I do see the irony there.)
4. They may not have done the research.
5. They may be bending the truth to suit their purposes. (Like in science fiction, where it is based on real data, but the conclusions drawn are not necessarily true. And yes, I know if it's fiction, I really shouldn't believe any of it. But sometimes, they are right.)
6. Their source could be wrong. Depending on how you operationally define certain variables, otherwise identical scientific experiments can have completely different results. Technically, that's the fault of the one quoting the source, but there have been times when an experiment drew incorrect conclusions from a result.

Usually, when it's trivia, it doesn't matter. But a lot of times, those things stack up.

It's a lot like Sudoku is for me; you put a number in the box, because it seems to be the only number that can go there. But then, based in that conclusion, you have to put another number in a box, and you use your previous number to help narrow down the options. And you continue, until you get to the end and only then can you find out whether you were wrong or right. But if just ONE of your conclusions was wrong, the entire thing is wrong. And since you have no idea where you made a mistake, you have to start all over again. At which point, it's a gigantic pain in the butt.

Take something like, for example, the earth being round. In order to prove that fact, you have to go through a process that is something like this:

How do we prove that the Earth is round? We can see pictures of the Earth in space, and it is a sphere. Where did that picture come from? A satellite. Who owns the satellite? NASA. Is there a way to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the photos were NOT faked? Not really, no.

I can almost hear people saying to their computers, "but NASA is trustworthy! You don't need to question them!" Here's the thing: Aspies (or maybe just me) have a really hard time telling who is and is not trustworthy.

I'm going to let you in on a little secret: PEOPLE LIE. A lot, I've found. It's a daily thing for many people. ("Does this dress make me look fat?" "No, of course not.")

Am I saying that I think NASA is lying? No. I believe them. But I have nothing but a feeling to base that off of. How do you prove that someone is trustworthy? How do you prove that someone is NOT? I don't know. And I don't know how often "common sense" can even be trusted. After all, the Mythbusters prove regularly that "common sense" isn't always right.

And "the earth is round" is one of the EASIER claims to tackle. What about trying to prove whether or not a certain food is "healthy"? I'm taking a Nutrtion class at the moment, and I've found that the chain of conclusions is much, MUCH longer. I'm starting to think I'm going to need a medical degree to actually know the answer to that.

What about trying to find out whether a certain product is really better than another one? Thankfully, you can more or less test that yourself. But if you were going to find out the statistics, the research that led to that claim... How would you know who to trust?

And you would have to do that kind of extensive research to be 100% sure about anything anyone ever said, ever. Even something as innocent as "hey, did you know that _______ happened?"

Just thinking about it is exhausting...

And unfortunately, that's all I really know of my options; either look up EVERYTHING until I was 100% sure about it (which I'm pretty sure is impossible) or just cross my fingers and hope I'm getting the right information.

I have actually considered making a list of everything I am 100% sure of, but actually, if you examine it closely, the answer is pretty much nothing; even something as simple as "the world is round" can't be 100% proven.

I also have a hard time keeping track in my head of which things I'm SORTA sure about, mostly sure about, and 99.9999% sure about (like the earth being round). Eventually, as I am inundated with information, all of it crashes together like teetering stacks of paperwork, until all that's left is a pile of information I can't really verify.

I have no built-in BS detector, either. I have no idea whether or not someone is a credible source or not. So I literally have no way to tell who is trustworthy.

Basically, I'm just screwed.