In what cases you shouldn't just rely on your gut feeling telling that everything is likely fine for the near future, and instead have to work on understanding the situation better? That gut feeling doesn't require additional work, and it does inform you about the current situation.
I'd expect that if anything so serious as to require action on my part was going on, and it would be possible to know it given more effort, my attention would be drawn to it, without the need to research things in advance. (This is the kind of state that I intended when asking for examples, and it's not clear what such examples are.)
My apologies for deleting the above comment -- after writing it, I concluded that it was unsatisfactory and decided to rewrite it. I wasn't aware that you had started writing a reply almost immediately after I had posted it. This was careless, although it wasn't my intention to be inconsiderate, and thanks for replying in any case.
Basically, the point at which we disagree is the following:
...I'd expect that if anything so serious as to require action on my part was going on, and it would be possible to know it given more effort, my attention would be drawn
There is a tendency to downvote articles and commentaries with a political subtext with a remark on how politics is the mind-killer. I completely understand that nobody wants his mind to be killed, however, I disagree on the employed methods. I don't think anybody can really afford to ignore politics. It's a fact about any group of even a handful of people. Thus instead of shunning politics I think it's better to build one's rational defenses. Understanding that politics is a problem is only the first step. If you stop there, there will always be a big part of life where you are not rational. Therefore I suggest that, as long as it doesn't get out of hands, there should always be room for political discussions if not on the main site at least in the discussion section.