[kbenson]

Well, that's because the only way to get through life in this day and age is to pick some people you accept as authorities on sobjects, and listen to their opinion and use it to form an initial basis for your own if you haven't already got one.

The trick, which people seem to be generally bad at, is:

a) limiting the scope of authority you attribute to someone

b) not immediately discounting contradictory evidence but using it to judge whether you need to pry deeper yourself or to discount some of that authority you've vested in them

c) actually remembering how authoritative the source was when repeating the information or using it as the basis for other assumptions

d) actually looking into issues deeper that you decide to care about and find the truth, not just was some semi-authoritative mouth piece repeated to you

For example, I try to make a habit of prefixing or postfixing statements in conversation with disclaimers ("At least that's what I heard or seem to remember reading, but I'm not sure how that I'm not sure how true it is.") if I'm not fairly certain of the information.

[icelancer]

Or just judge them by their actions, not anything that is said.

Examine their voting record, lobby donations, and primary information and action. Decide from there.

[ithkuil]

At some point you have to trust some sort of authority that provides you with those records, along with the required context.

[chiefalchemist]

Why is that? Why can't you keep an open mind, traverse multiple sources and draw your own conclusions? Think of it as a diversified portfolio. I'm not asking for more time, just that it we spread out.

Without that, we get the barely binary system that we have. The MSM can be lazy and non-journalistic because no one bothers to notice. No one cares.

[ithkuil]

unfortunately an average of two opposing lies is not always the truth

[Natsu]

True, but some evidence is harder to fake than others, especially when there are multiple independent items that corroborate some fact or another.

Granted, there are definitely things that aren't amenable to this, but it's not exactly hopeless, either.

[ithkuil]

No it's not hopeless, but when done right it becomes indistinguishable from true investigative and research work; wouldn't be nice if you could share the results of that extensive effort put into uncovering the truth so that others could benefit? Oh, wait...

[icelancer]

Are you insinuating that voting records are faked? Because raw data of voting is what I'm referring to.