“When you search online for answers and knowledge, wisdom, and insight – What do you trust? How do you trust it? What is involved? – to decide whether something is true or not true? And it’s not easy at all.”
“When I search things where I fully know the answer, AI gets it right 85% of the time. 15% of the time it’s flat out wrong or didn’t fully understand what’s going on.”
“Don’t trust what the large language AI model is giving you. If it is worth it’s weight and salt, it will give links to where it got that information.”
“What is objectively true really matters to everything I do, say, and think, and produce, and so I check things, double check them, triple check them, verify if my bias is influencing what I’m finding. Am I just choosing what I like, versus what I don’t like? All of that matters. Which is why finding the truth is a hard thing.”
– Neil deGrasse Tyson
Note from Brian Ferguson: The following “13 cautions” are not my work. They are my detailed notes from an episode of Niel deGrasse Tyson’s YouTube channel “Star Talk.” I strongly encourage my readers to watch the actual 15 minute episode. The link is below.
How to Tell What’s Real Online
1. On websites that are .edu, (which is typically a university or other educational institution) you are more likely to get correct information.
2. If the person speaking is defending the industry in which they work – yellow flag. Listen with caution. However, even though a person may have a vested financial interest in their own industry, they may still be telling the truth. Put up a yellow flag and then look deeper to verify or falsify the claims.
3. On a podcast or broadcast, if the host has insufficient expertise to probe, and to inquire, and to criticize or challenge what their guest says – yellow flag. If you really like what is being said, you should find another place to verify the information.
4. When someone is handing you their opinion – yellow flag. If your source tells you how you should feel about some piece of information, they are handing you their opinion with the expectation that it will become your opinion. Instead, you should find sources that contain objective information on the topic, assimilate and digest it, and then form your own opinion – independent of people coming at you with their opinions.
“The internet overflows with people handing you their opinions and I’ve never seen that as a healthy landscape on which to glean objective knowledge about this world.”
“Have whatever opinion you want, but work really hard to base it on objective truths that you obtain for yourself.”
-Neil deGrasse Tyson
5. If you see content that has been lifted from its original source and reposted – yellow flag. You don’t know if it has been taken out of context, and the reposter usually adds commentary to the clip trying to get you to think what they think about the clip. If an item is not on its original platform, in its original format and its original length – that’s a yellow flag. If the clip is just an entertainment item, it may be innocent, but if it contains information that may affect your decisions about things, or if you care about what is objectively true in the world, you should refer back to the original source.
6. If you see content that cites a research result that hasn’t been verified – yellow flag. The result may be worthy of further research to see if it holds true. However, if there are other research projects that conflict with that one result – red flag. If you only share, or make decisions, based on single source, outlier, research, you are “cherry picking” the result that you want – not seeking or spreading truth. You are letting your religion, your politics, your culture, or perhaps just your mood, override the facts.
7. If someone (perhaps in an online video) mentions “conspiracy” – red flag.
“This is not to say that there have never been conspiracies in history of the world. Of course, there have been. I’m just saying the likelihood of something being true when someone needs the conspiracy for it to be true is very low.”
-Neil deGrasse Tyson
8. If someone says you should believe them instead of the mainstream – red flag. If someone says there is something wrong with mainstream thinking and they alone have the answer – red flag. “Mainstream” means “normal” or “conventional.” Be skeptical of any claim or belief outside the mainstream unless presented with strong objective evidence.
9. Anytime someone denigrates an entire demographic (Jews, gays, blacks, Hispanics, etc) – red flag. People, no matter their demographic group, are individuals. The person who looks down upon a whole group of people is claiming to know everything they need to know about another person without even having a conversation with them.
10. If someone indicts entire sectors of society (government, education, a particular industry) – red flag. There is both good and bad in every sector of society.
11. If someone claims to have discovered some process, phenomenon, or material that defies the known laws of physics – red flag.
12. If someone tells you they invented something that will render an entire industry obsolete and that you better buy it quickly before it is suppressed – red flag.
13. If someone says they have met the aliens – red flag. Their “eyewitness testimony” or fuzzy video is not enough. Ask them to present the actual alien. AI can now manufacture video “evidence,” so ask the person to meet you at a set time and place and introduce the alien to you.
Objective truth can only be established with quality, measurable, duplicatable, verified, evidence.
Source:
Neil deGrasse Tyson, “How to Tell What’s Real Online,” StarTalk, YouTube, November 28, 2025. (15:19).
Love that initial quote by Neil deGrasse Tyson. Wise words for all of us.