I really like this author's writing style. The prose flows and is fairly tight yet colorful.
That said, his angst seems to be misplaced.
When younger, he seized upon Sagan's rules as though they were The Way(tm)... and now he's disillusioned that they haven't made him invincible. Then he tries to use mostly logical argumentation to explain how the Baloney Detector Kit is flawed. That's ironic.
I guess he has a brain that wants really badly to see everything in black and white - but at least he's smart enough to reason past that.
I would argue that the baloney detector kit, his skepticism, and similar logical mechanisms are all that has kept this individual from going over the ideological cliff into unshakable belief syndrome.
That said, his angst seems to be misplaced.
When younger, he seized upon Sagan's rules as though they were The Way(tm)... and now he's disillusioned that they haven't made him invincible. Then he tries to use mostly logical argumentation to explain how the Baloney Detector Kit is flawed. That's ironic.
Looking at his other blog posts, you can see similar angst at a lack of comfort being completely absorbed in a specific ideology: http://plover.net/~bonds/nolongeraskeptic.html#jump
I guess he has a brain that wants really badly to see everything in black and white - but at least he's smart enough to reason past that.
I would argue that the baloney detector kit, his skepticism, and similar logical mechanisms are all that has kept this individual from going over the ideological cliff into unshakable belief syndrome.