Sorry for the late reply, but sometimes I'm not inspired with an immediate response to a comment, but maybe better late than never.

Epistemology is a philosophical debate and it certainly is directly related to the ideas of this post.

And I will agree that the scientific method has little to say about philosophical debate (similarly it has little to say about math, although math can have plenty to say about science). I only meant to use the scientific method as an example of one way we can employ critical thinking methodologies, as opposed to relying on the opinions of others. Logic is another, and that one even works in philosophical debates.

As to why I didn't go deep into epistemology, it's because I haven't spent a lot of time studying the philosophical arguments of others in this area, so I don't consider myself an expert (although it wouldn't shock me if I get forced down that route at some point since we already see commenters claiming there are many types of truth).

But I'm not really proposing a definition(s?) of truth, I'm just looking at the issue pragmatically, in terms of how we mostly rate the truth of information now, and how we could improve those methods. Philosophers can and probably will argue for our entire life times about what it means for something to be true, but in the meantime we'll all be using our own methods for deciding what we believe to be true.