Simply put, when I say of someone, “I don’t trust her,” I’m not commenting exclusively about “her,” I’m saying something about me, something about her, and something about a difference between us.

When my daughter says, “I don’t like hamburgers,” we don’t wonder what’s wrong with hamburgers. When my wife says, “I don’t trust that bungee cord,” we understand that we are learning something about my wife, not about bungee cords.

Things get a bit more complicated when there are people on both ends of the words “don’t like” and “don’t trust.” What does not change however is the nature of the statement. When people say, “I just don’t trust her” they communicate something complex about a relationship and something noteworthy, but obscured about themselves.

If a voter interviewed about Secretary Clinton said, “I don’t think she is qualified,” we would recognize this as an opinion held by the voter and would expect the interviewer to inquire about the basis for the opinion. Why then when the same voter says of Clinton, “I don’t trust her,” have we come to accept the comment as a shortcoming of Clinton’s?

Imagine an airplane passenger decides not to board after observing the flight crew. The passenger tells us, “I just don’t trust the pilot.” We would undoubtedly want to understand how the passenger reached his conclusion. Perhaps the passenger explains, “The pilot’s shirt was wrinkled. I refuse to trust someone with so little regard for their appearance to fly a plane safely.” Some of us might be persuaded by the argument while others of us would still board the plane. We may have learned something about the pilot, but we have definitely learned something about the reluctant passenger.

Whether some people’s lack of trust in Clinton is about them, about her, or about all of the above, it probably still results in a tick of the box for Trump. I just wish we were talking about what a lack of “trustworthiness” and a lack of “likability” also tell us about the electorate.

There I was nodding along with the headlines and commentary on my Facebook newsfeed when a startling realization unnerved me. One moment my internal dialogue consists of thoughts like, “well said!” or “damn straight!” and the next moment I realize that I am being fed a steady diet of my own opinions. I am blissfully taking in information designed to enthrall me.

Amazon and Netflix tell us what we might like to purchase or watch. Google notices our search history and helpfully presents us with what we most likely want to find. Social media connects us with our like-minded friends, colleagues, and communities. Our social media applications and blogs notice what we pay attention to, what we share, what we comment on and thereby prioritize what we will see.

The cumulative effect of all this curated information is a dangerous righteousness about our lifestyles and world-views.

Many have been shocked by the ascendency of Donald Trump. On the other hand, millions of others who have been railing against our institutions and political processes recognize Trump’s popularity as inevitable. It is easy to miss emerging trends when an invisible algorithm decides what information you get.

Philosophers, psychologists, sociologists, and more recently neuroscientists have warned us about a quirk of human cognition known as confirmation bias. Confirmation bias is the human tendency to interpret new information as evidence of what we already believe or assume to be true. Chris Argyris, a scholar and organizational development practitioner who taught for many years at Harvard used the term, “reflexive loop” to highlight the cycle of holding a belief, selecting data that confirms a belief, and then using what we take to be evidence to reinforce our commitment to the belief. We are spellbound by a pernicious cycle of clicking and liking our way to the fantasy of being well informed and right.

Ironically, the more information we have at our fingertips, the harder it becomes to see something new and to hear from people with different priorities, values and life experiences. We lose the capacity to be both upset and curious.

We all have the one guy among our Facebook friends that we haven’t seen since high school who shares a story that makes us wonder why we liked him in the first place. “What happened to him?” we wonder. What would my newsfeed look like if I were to repost, share or re-tweet the story? Would I start to see different advertisements?

Writing in the aftermath of the Second World War, and with an intention to shed light on the subject of prejudice, Else Frenkel-Brunswik introduced the construct “intolerance of ambiguity” as a distinct personality trait. She conceptualized intolerance of ambiguity as a mechanism arising from a need to cope with insecurities about feeling excluded.

Given the way we take in information, perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised by resurgence of a fascist intolerance of diverse opinions. Maybe we would be better off if we paid more attention to what our long lost friend from high school has to say. We would be well served by adding variety to what we allow the Internet to feed us. I love bread, but we need our vegetables too. One cannot live by digital breadcrumbs alone.