Questioning Assumptions
Our attitude to information should depend on the use to which it’s put. For example, I’m under the impression that the sun is 93 million miles from the earth, give or take. In a quiz, I’d be happy to use that information. But if I were an astronomer, I’d want to examine it and check that there was good evidence to back it up. Likewise if someone asked me to bet my life savings on it.
Our attitude to information should also depend on its source. If a piece of information comes from an individual, you judge their motivations for giving it. If it comes from a social institution, you examine the institution’s structure to find its motivations for giving the information.
In general, social institutions do not do things that undermine themselves; they do things that promote themselves. In the same way that natural selection works on the biological characteristics of organisms, an institution whose rules undermine itself would tend not to survive as long as an institution whose rules promote itself.
To give a very obvious example, authoritarian organs of propaganda tend to give information that encourages people to accept and obey authority, and tend not to give information that encourages people to challenge authority.