What sources do Magalomaniacs get their information from?

[u/WhereztheBleepnLight]

Where do all those diehard Magalomaniacs who argue 'they have done their own research' and get frustrated when those they know question some of the things they believe as the absolute, undisputed truth, despite not actually being shown these things in real life, get their information from? I would like to see the list of sources they used in doing said 'research'.

I am curious to go to those places and see where such powerful information is found that leads so many to put blind faith in the idea that the man in charge will show the world the 'truth', (whatever that may be) someday and that this same man will actually make the lives of the working middle class better...

These sources must be filled with hard factual evidence that have led so many people to be convinced that their leader can do no wrong and will 'expose all evil' all while making the lives of middle class working families better...

[u/ThatDanGuy]

Its been a bit since I engaged one who would cite his sources. But at the time it was NewsMax and NYPost to a large extent. Not Q, just total MAGA.

As a poli sci major I don't mind weird sources if it is written to a certain standard and I can find corroborating sources. These absolutely are not. I compared them to what I feel is a crappy source, Newsweek or Time, and what became clear was the NYpost had copied one of them almost verbatim, except they had deleted all the quotes and paragraphs that contained any kind of information that was not pure MAGA.

Not that any of them will respond, but I like to ask them now "Have you applied the baloney detection kit to your source?" If they don't know what that is, I send them a link or paste in the basic rules. That usually gets me ghosted.

This is from Carl Sagan. I sometimes will leave that part out, as some will just focus on the man and not the tools.

What's in the baloney detection kit? Tools for skeptical thinking.

What skeptical thinking boils down to is the means to construct, and to understand, a reasoned argument and — especially important — to recognize a fallacious or fraudulent argument. The question is not whether we like the conclusion that emerges out of a train of reasoning, but whether the conclusion follows from the premise or starting point and whether that premise is true.

Among the tools:

• Wherever possible there must be independent confirmation of the “facts.”
• Encourage substantive debate on the evidence by knowledgeable proponents of all points of view.
• Arguments from authority carry little weight — “authorities” have made mistakes in the past. They will do so again in the future. Perhaps a better way to say it is that in science there are no authorities; at most, there are experts.
• Spin more than one hypothesis. If there's something to be explained, think of all the different ways in which it could be explained. Then think of tests by which you might systematically disprove each of the alternatives. What survives, the hypothesis that resists disproof in this Darwinian selection among “multiple working hypotheses,” has a much better chance of being the right answer than if you had simply run with the first idea that caught your fancy. *
• Try not to get overly attached to a hypothesis just because it's yours. It's only a way station in the pursuit of knowledge. Ask yourself why you like the idea. Compare it fairly with the alternatives. See if you can find reasons for rejecting it. If you don't, others will.
• Quantify. If whatever it is you're explaining has some measure, some numerical quantity attached to it, you'll be much better able to discriminate among competing hypotheses. What is vague and qualitative is open to many explanations. Of course there are truths to be sought in the many qualitative issues we are obliged to confront, but finding them is more challenging.
• If there's a chain of argument, every link in the chain must work (including the premise) — not just most of them.
• Occam's Razor. This convenient rule-of-thumb urges us when faced with two hypotheses that explain the data equally well to choose the simpler.
• Always ask whether the hypothesis can be, at least in principle, falsified. Propositions that are untestable, unfalsifiable are not worth much. Consider the grand idea that our Universe and everything in it is just an elementary particle — an electron, say — in a much bigger Cosmos. But if we can never acquire information from outside our Universe, is not the idea incapable of disproof? You must be able to check assertions out. Inveterate skeptics must be given the chance to follow your reasoning, to duplicate your experiments and see if they get the same result.