True or false?

Because if it costs money, the person is just trying to make a buck, so how could you trust the knowledge or information?
This is how I think - but is it true? (Other than the obvious, people who actually 'do' something for you or teach you something such as attorneys and professors.)
I tend to distrust any book that's not available at my library or any text that I cannot find for free on the internet.
Can anything such as career advice, for instance, be valuable and trustworthy if someone's trying to make a buck off it?

What do you think?

I see it like this. Even if someone's "job" is to help you, they still got to eat.
They might not have written it "to" make a buck, but they still put a lot of time and effort into writing it and would like that time and effort (their resources) acknowledged by selling their work for money (your resources).
It's the same as any system where one person gets something from another person.
You gotta pay for food, they gotta pay for food.

(oh and money's just an I.O.U extension to the barter system)

Oh I get that they should be paid for their work, but how to know if they're just trying to make money. (okay that sentence made no sense, but I guess I'm asking how to know if something is really valuable or someone just needs money, so they made it (again making little sense  )
is knowledge a tangible resource?

I see nothing wrong with selling knowledge.  If someone wants to buy it then so be it.




Janet

It sounds like you want to be able to tell if someone is selling you a load of bs or a load of knowledge.


The problem today, is just like the bible, you can interpret it, or find someone who can make it saw whatever you want. Your own knowledge and research is the only way to wade through the BS.

On the other hand, how do you know you can trust free information either?  Maybe someone would rather influence your thinking than gain financial reward, depending on their own agenda - after all, propaganda is free!

All information should be free but it is not. Information is power and currency in the virtual world we inhabit.

You can employ the eight rules of critical thinking and test the knowledge as much as possible before accepting it as truth.

The more you pay, the more it's worth.

What's the value in something that people are giving away?  Perhaps it's not worth anything, you can't sell it because it has no value.

Granted a lot of stuff is guild - fancy paint on a crappy table or big words from a barbarian's mouth, but some of it is worth paying for because its solid gold through and through.  The difference between Harvard and the local Community College is that one tends to have better students and teachers than the other.  Which is not to say that the CC does not have any, they just don't have it consistently.  Nor is it to say that 'everyone who goes to Harvard/Yale/West Point is going to be a lot better than the CC counterpart.  We know that's not true.  Its possible to get a good, or worthless education in both. It's just that in the end Harvard has a)more better students and you're going to learn more from them than from the teacher, and b) more students going full time, so you have the opportunity to teach each other.

And hey, if you think that knowledge and understanding are expensive, look at how much ignorance costs.

The beauty of paying for something is that if you discover that they have lied to you or sold you defective products there is often legal recourse. If it is given to you with out cost then you have very little protection if you suffer harm form that product or advice. 

Quote from: Syne on September 19, 2009, 06:46:00 AM
All information should be free but it is not. Information is power and currency in the virtual world we inhabit.

I'm not trying to be argumentative, but where do you draw the line?  Should your personal history be freely available?

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Post Merge: September 19, 2009, 11:31:03 AM

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Quote from: Cami on September 19, 2009, 10:28:00 AM
The beauty of paying for something is that if you discover that they have lied to you or sold you defective products there is often legal recourse. If it is given to you with out cost then you have very little protection if you suffer harm form that product or advice.

It's so annoying when people complain about free things that come with a express or implied disclaimer.

QuoteWhat do you think?

I think anything worth having is worth working for. The media is always trying to influence you through many types of marketing. Nothing is free it all has a cost. Mostly to control your behavior. Now facts can be had in different ways but they all require some type of work. Education is a matter of understanding facts and how they are used. Everyone should contribute something of value to society. Writing books is just one of those things. If we are going to use money as a measure of value than those people need to be paid for their contribution.

I gotta say reading the first post: Even when information is free the person providing it will have some agenda to push...if you get your information from humans it will be biased and not 100% trustworthy...however often time bought information is more trustworthy as business owners have reputations to maintain if they want to continue making money.