The Importance of Public Agreement on Truth

The big idea of this book is that one of the hardest things for any society to do, maybe the hardest, has come to some kind of public agreement about truth. The way most societies have dealt with this problem is to establish an authority, a fixed authority and say "this is what we're going to believe" And if you don't believe it, you're going to get punished. That's how Creed wars are very common down throughout history. What if we put no one in particular in charge of deciding what is true? What if we set up a system where people are going to have to check each other and criticize each other? So everything is always open for question.