From Humanoid Faults to Manipulated Consensus, 4

It’s not that we are hopelessly dull. It’s that we take for granted and we don’t care to inspect and test. Our idea of “thoroughly” is not even remotely close to what is really needed to be effective. We do have the faculties; we just don’t decide to use them hard and painstakingly enough. The quality of our judgement is not at stake, at least not as much as the quality of our information is.
The quality of judgement cannot be better than the quality of the information it is based upon; proof being the change of evaluation following the change in knowledge. And the distance between the quantity and quality of the information fed to us and the full and detailed truth – that is, the information actually needed to know, understand and evaluate what’s really going on – is enormous.
But if the quality of our information is poor, well, the quality of our willingness to seek, inspect and test is far worse; the point is we are passive, not active: we buy what we’re fed and we’re not aware of not knowing. As a result, our opinion, our judgement, our vote are controllable by controlling our information – and controlled they are.
This fault is treasured by the mainstream media; there is a thing called second level censorship: controlling what is fed to you, rather than your opinions about it. This treasure is the loot of the wars where the control of the media and parliamentary agendas is at stake. The winners of these wars win the power to manipulate us by controlling what will be fed to us and to parliaments; a citizen or a parliament whose time and attention are absorbed by an issue is thus effectively diverted from another issue.

We’re unquestioning:

That is, not only we’re not watchful of gaps, of what we’re not fed; we’re not watchful of what we’re fed too. This fault has to do with the second facet of information: is what we’re fed verifiable? We lack the approach of detecting and discerning what is verifiable from what is not: what is specific from what is undefined.