I abstract from your interesting remarks, PG, that one of the places lies comes from is cohorts of mutually-reinforcing, self-selecting "like thinkers", which points to the interesting human fallibility of finding comfort in numbers in order to safely borrowed canned thought from the plurality of individuals in the cluster who have done some or all of the work for one, thus saving the thinking effort. In short, one source of lies is mass belief.

It raises the question as to why thought seems painful to folks, such that htey prefer low-quality answers instead of engaging in their own efforts.


A