If we can agree that "garbage in garbage out is true"    ... How do we get more good stuff to stick in that area between the ears?  There is a lot of stuff out there that from my point of view is garbage and it can  get incorporated both at a young age and older.  Older folks may even be more susceptible to assimilating fiction as fact.  So much of what governs our filters and decisions is subjective and hard to quantify with "success" metrics.