I sometimes get a feeling of jealous admiration for people who can so eloquently put down in writing their opinions about things that are happening in the world and can clearly choose sides with their seemingly irresistible arguments. If I wanted to write my opinion about something publicly, I am afraid I could be attacked with counter-arguments and would not be able to properly respond to most of them on the spot. Then I need to retreat and think them through. This renders me unable to express my opinion because of this uncomfortable situation. I don't think it's a big loss though because I can still do it in my private circle.

Sometimes this inability to distinguish facts from fiction, hearing seemingly rational arguments from two opposite sides and trying to choose one side causes such mental fatigue that I simply want to go with my gut and ignore the other side completely. Then again, one day I learn that what I believed to be right before, I believe to be wrong now.

I am genuinely interested, do you have any ideological or political leaning? How do you then know that they are correct and you are not being lied to?

I'm a terrible debater. Perhaps like you, I steer clear of debates and think about things slowly on my own. I do have an ideological leaning, but I try to keep it separate from parties, so it's not a "they," and I can weigh one against the other.

One thing I can do is take stock of things in between election cycles, and ask myself if I regret my previous voting patterns or not. So far I haven't ever felt a reason to switch sides. This includes both primary and secondary elections -- local and national. So far I have never regretted my votes in secondary elections, but in practical terms, partisan gerrymandering renders my vote irrelevant. I have changed how I think about primary candidates, over the years.

I listen to my kids. They are quite smart and critical minded, plus they have more at stake than I do. I'm willing to support their interests. I once took my daughter to a protest march because she was too young to go by herself, and I was worried about her safety.

> It's hard because "everybody is lying" might be one of the lies.

This seems very obvious. A gereralization about everyone is almost never true. In my interpretation you're implying that people will interpret that as more than "i don't know whom to trust" with an emotional undertone, which seems odd to me. Do people accustomed to critical thought take such statements literally?

My rule of thumb is if media engages me emotionally... then I doubt it's meant to be informative. I have a distinction where I try to identify if my emotional response seems wanted by the content creator or is "my enthusiasm for the topic" or a touchy subject for me...

I don't think you can expect to take anything that comes your way by a medium directed at masses as "truth". This is something that people seem to forget in times where life generally goes well.

> It's hard because "everybody is lying" might be one of the lies.

Absolutely - note it it a deliberate information warfare strategy to make people doubt all sources equally.

Indeed, if rational dialogue becomes impossible, then the world belongs to those who are not restrained by rational dialogue, such as thugs, oligarchs, and dictators.

There can be a deluge of facts that are each individually true and are still misleading, or that are collectively meant to bring you to a specific conclusion. In that sense, it doesn't matter if everyone is lying, because your personal philosophy isn't built on whether a fact is ruled true or false by some fact-checker (hey, it's materially true, but we "debunked" it), but rather on how those facts and the reactions of those around you affect your life.

> It's hard because "everybody is lying" might be one of the lies.

See: the legitimacy that Russia would actually invade Ukraine. While there was definitely a lot of hype and "IT'S HAPPENING!!!" across various media and social media, at the end of the day it seems like US intelligence got this one pretty right.

Jon Stewart's The Problem podcast spent two episodes talking about misinformation recently. Jon's views are informed by him being an outsider during the Iraq War in saying that the war was unjustified early on. He used this to justify that the mainstream media shouldn't always be trusted to tell the truth.

He then goes on to say that engagement is key, but I don't buy that at all. Engagement is what is being maximized by lies. The money men are already in control of the information flows and it makes money to spread misinformation. You can clutch the 1st amendment forever, but the world has changed around it and we need new thinking if we want to pull up from dystopia.