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We all have access to the same information. We can all see what’s going on around us. We can all see creation. We can all see humanity. We can all observe and study everything and anything we see. We can all talk to each other about what we’re observing and studying. We all have access to the same information, and we all come to different conclusions about what it means!

On top of that, in this day and age we have access to nearly the entirety of human knowledge and research through and over the Internet.

And we still get things wrong all the time!

It’s almost as if we have biases. It’s almost as if we’re going to believe what we want even if we can be proven wrong. But if you’re actually going to research something to see if you’re right or wrong, then do it the right way. Once you find out the truth, whether you like it or whether you don’t, you should believe it and go with it.

It takes work to research something. Sometimes you’ll find conflicting views, proofs, experiments, and observations when researching. That means you have to sift through and find out which ones are correct and which ones did their own proper research, and before you know it you’re doing research on research. We’re lazy and don’t like to take all that time (because we have to spend it watching cat videos and arguing with strangers on social media) and exert all that effort (because sitting and surfing the Internet is so physically demanding and our brains can’t possibly think that much at once), so what we do is find the first few articles that pop up on an Internet search and skim through them. We then pick out what we already want to believe anyway and call it a day. We’re done researching and we now have a fully formed and “well-researched” opinion.

But if you don’t do research on your research and check all your sources, then the opinion you form or the belief you take won’t be much stronger or informed than it was before, if it is any better at all. The painful part about doing real research is that you have to go where it leads, even if it takes a long time and even if it leads you to the truth that you don’t like. But research can show you all sorts of things you never knew. Sometimes you do lifelong research, finding out more beautiful and intricate details to things that you thought you were the expert on!

Read and reread. Search and research. Check your sources. You only get out what you put in. Do the work and you’ll be rewarded. It’s an adventure to be sure!

More on answer searching: You Are Allowed to Ask Questions