I think a surprising refined "meta" solution has come up in the last decade or so.
You can read an article, and figure out if it is crap for yourself.
But then you can check your work by reading the discussion around it (like HN comments). Look at the top (and bottom) comments. Match your thoughts against the opinions and comments of other critical thinkers.
A lot of critical thinking has already been done for you.
This doesn't always work, but a good comment/upvote/moderation system can be a surprising bullshit filter.
My comment does NOT apply to automated systems, or systems were money/seo/gaming have a payoff for someone. So please ignore this for facebook, for anything with sponsored results, for product reviews, or for wikipedia pages of wealthy or prominent individuals.
You can read an article, and figure out if it is crap for yourself.
But then you can check your work by reading the discussion around it (like HN comments). Look at the top (and bottom) comments. Match your thoughts against the opinions and comments of other critical thinkers.
A lot of critical thinking has already been done for you.
This doesn't always work, but a good comment/upvote/moderation system can be a surprising bullshit filter.
My comment does NOT apply to automated systems, or systems were money/seo/gaming have a payoff for someone. So please ignore this for facebook, for anything with sponsored results, for product reviews, or for wikipedia pages of wealthy or prominent individuals.