zlacker

You must be filtering by speaker at some level and in some contexts, though, right? I assume you have opinions on e.g. scientific topics that you don't understand in depth. The only way I know to form those opinions is by doing my best to work out who to (provisionally, partially) trust.

Likewise, you talk about devoting your attention to the most important arguments -- but how do you decide which arguments deserve that attention? You can't be doing that 100% independently, you must at some point be allowing other people to raise issues to your attention, and to shift your priors a bit by virtue of the credibility they have earned via their track record (of being right, of being honest, of caring about things you care about).