One of my professors from Pepperdine is pretty vocal on social media about his distain for most infographics. While inforgraphics can be used to communicate complicated information, in a world where too many only read the headlines and can’t be bothered with the details, infographics is often the vector for passing on bad information. Just like the rest, determining information reliability requires information about the source and context (FULL context!). Just because it’s on the Internet doesn’t mean it’s true. Just because sources are cited, doesn’t mean the sources are reliable (or in the age of ChatGPT, are even real). And just because there’s a graph, graphic, or chart doesn’t mean the information is either reliable or properly displayed. 

Add to that that raw data is relatively meaningless without context. And for most humans we need for the information to be translated into narrative. It reminds me of the charts that illustrates the difference between data progressing to wisdom. 

data-info-knowledge-insight-wisdom
data-info-knowledge-insight-wisdom

You just need to make sure that you don’t go too far into conspiracy thinking.

data-to-conspiracy
data-to-conspiracy

Enjoy.

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