Are those who don't honor logic deceitful egomaniacs?

[Asolsutsesvyl]

Ever since my teens, I've been torn between spiritual and skeptical thought, the main (or at least early main) reason for liking skeptical thought being the inconsistency and often dishonesty in the popular "alternative" stuff. The skeptics have the basic honesty and decency to at least try to make things add up, while "alternative" people very often lack that, indeed the majority of alternative "experts" seem to.

Well, "honesty and decency" is a rather moralizing way of putting it, and that's why I'm torn about the way I'm torn, the moralizing flavor of which has grown over the years, especially after waking up from having been sucked into a cult for a period of years.

I'm going to draw a simple and firm line between personal mysticism and the advancing of claims about stuff in which others and their lives are concerned. "Alternative" people tend to sell ideas above other things, but in doing it, they are often very dishonest in the sales-pitches. Here, there's however a distinction to be made between basic human errors which people deal with in various ways, including cognitive biases which all have, on the one hand, and choices people make related to that, in how to relate to the world and everything beyond the self, on the other hand.

Cognitive biases have been extensively described, and you can search and find plenty about them. For example, many "alternative" explanations rely on the Texas sharpshooter fallacy; more generally, studies have found that people go wrong in judging and deciding in formulaic ways wired into the human brain, automatically filtering information to end up with subjective conclusions sometimes at odds with what's actually there, sometimes merely unsupported by the data. Some think sloppier than others, though, and in large part (no idea exactly how large), effort and caring about accuracy also makes a difference, which however requires a basic willingness for self-questioning. When it really matters, any rigor less than the scientific methodology which "alternative" people often diss is guaranteed to lead to errors time and time again. Regarding that, willful ignorance makes intellectual honesty impossible.

Those who decide that their personal inner authority is greater than logic (including people who decide to believe something external as their "personal truth", when contrary to logic, on their inner whim), are basically placing the ego above all else in the entire creation. Recognition that logic is a greater authority than any and all individuals who exist is key to recognizing something greater than the personal self in terms of truth actually existing, without making it a matter of hierarchical order and authoritarianism. Without that recognition, intellectual maturity is left at the infantile level.

Some people simply prefer to play very fast and loose with claims about facts, despite having the "hardware" to easily be able to do better; it's quicker and easier to BS-think than to actually care about the quality of the thinking, something which always slows people down. People who mainly care about making others agree with things invest their energies into manipulation. I think that mainstream politicians, PR people, marketers, etc., tend to be just as slimy and repulsive in such things as quacks and spiritual charlatans.

Actually, in having a big soft spot for mystics and fringe thinkers who actually care instead of just generating or forwarding deceitful noise at maximum speed, here's a heuristic which may be controversial. Whenever someone "sells" something and there's a systematic pattern of dodging inconsistencies, or using impression management tactics to make people ignore that the inconsistencies are there, then the skeptical debunkers are basically right about that person unless strong evidence to the contrary is found.

Sometimes I want to leave the "alternative" worlds behind simply because of the festering mess of dishonesty which so often forms the core of its fabric. Skeptics, by contrast, acknowledge that humans are flawed and science is messy and unfinished business. I usually find the atheists and skeptical humanists to be better people, simply put, because they have more in the way of basic honesty. But at the same time I'm always inwardly a mystic, and it sucks when there's little good exchange related to that.