Thank you very much for reading and for your questions! Truth units are by no means a cure-all for social problems. Its practical focus is people who want to find the truth and common ground, who are willing to hear each other out and negotiate—for them, truth units are a sort of Occam’s razor to facilitate productive communication. One application might be couples therapy if both want to stay together.

Some people happily trample on truth and other virtues to achieve selfish ends. You can’t sway them, but I find adopting a truth units perspective usually cools my anger and frustration. If people fall for lies like you mention and you want to dissuade them, truth units might help you avoid making them feel challenged and defensive.

Your point about majority opinion versus reason and ethics is a good one! I don’t trust consensus personally. Idealistically, I believe consensus only has value when people use reason, critical thinking and open-mindedness to arrive at conclusions.

When Sanders said “the opinion… agreed to by all who investigate…” the key word to me is “investigate.” Given his scientific background, I think he meant serious investigation, like scientific research that is honest, long-term and diligent, like that done by epidemiologists as opposed to anti-vaxxers.

Investigation is just as much an experience as the experience of adopting the prejudices of one’s parents. Maybe I’m elitist to favor investigation (reason, critical thinking, etc) but our experience is it gets better results than the alternatives (better results being an experience too).