New Rule: maintain mental "last updated" metadata

I was once in a conversation with a member of my parents' generation who had quite a number of very loud opinions on what constitutes responsible sexual behaviour. As the conversation progressed, it became apparent that they were unaware of the existence of dental dams, or that anyone had ever thought of addressing that particular need. Now this individual doesn't need that information for their own personal life - they've been married since before AIDS. They had all the sexual health information they need. However, it never occurred to them that this information may not be up to date.

We've all heard of things like this happening. Grandparents who put their newborn grandchildren to sleep on their stomachs instead of their sides (or whatever you're supposed to do now - don't rely on childfree bloggers for advice on how to avoid SIDS!) because that's what they do with their own children. People making declarative statements about how the school curriculum works based on what it was when they were in school. I'm probably guilty of this myself in ways I'm not even aware of. To use a fake example (because I'm obviously unaware of the real ones), I haven't given a moment's thought to HPV since I got Gardasil - I haven't had any reason to think about it. For all I know they have a test or a treatment now, but I'm still walking around with the assumption that there's no treatment and no way to tell if it's dormant but contagious.

So what we all need to do is be aware of when the information in our brain was last updated. You know how the files in your computer have a "last updated" attribute, so you can sort them by which is newest? We need to keep that in our brains, so as not to spread misinformation or make fools of ourselves.