Only the individual can search for Truth!
Truth is a very difficult thing to come by. The universe is mostly random and mostly full of false beliefs, and so truth requires a lot of rigor. The goal standards for truth are that you have to test it against a larger system that will give you objective feedback without remorse.
Other humans are the worst thing to test against because we are socially driven to collaborate. Groups need consensus, or they fall apart. Only the individual can really search for truth, and the individual gets feedback through two systems that are objective and remorseless.
One of those is nature. Nature, you know, physics doesn't care. You run a physics experiment, it doesn't care who you are, what you think, or how badly you want it to work. It's going to tell you the truth. Chemistry is going to tell you the truth. A microscope's going to tell you the truth; you just have to be able to see it.
The other one is free markets. When you get enough people together, voting in their own self-interest with money and anonymized, they have no desire to tell you a falsehood just to make you feel better. So, nature and free markets are the gold standards, and anything...