Steve Pavlina, whom I’ve already mentioned here a couple of times, is one of my favorite bloggers. His posts about improving one’s life are incredibly insightful, brilliantly argued, and a joy to read – not to mention that he (through his posts) actually helped in my decision of quitting my job and writing / blogging full time.

However, lately there’s been a growing vein of new age mysticism in his writing, which is worrying – and, in a way, enlightening about human nature. It also serves as a warning.

A recent example is this post, The Death of Skepticism.

Now, Steve, as I said, is obviously a very intelligent guy, and a great writer. But… there is something seriously wrong in a post like that one. I won’t dissect his entire post here, only some parts which should be ringing every alarm bell in any rational human being.

Apparently it’s cool to be a doubter these days.

Ahem… In which planet do you live, Steve? I’d like to move there, because it sounds much more rational and sane than the planet I live in, where skeptics are called “materialist”, “cold and grey”, and, if you’re in a more fundamentalist country like the U.S., you’re also a “communist”, “traitor”, “terrorist”, “anti-american”, and absurdities like that.

Steve, IT’S NOT COOL TO BE A DOUBTER THESE DAYS! I wish it was, but it isn’t. There are almost no skeptics left – it’s absolutely “uncool” to be one. Religious fundamentalism is rising. Cults and sects thrive everywhere. “Mediums” of all kind are getting rich, and more and more appear each day. If anyone is “persecuted”, or at least discriminated against, it’s atheists, secular humanists, and skeptics in general.

I realized that if the universe were actually subjective, I’d never recognize it as such if I believed it was objective, since I’d simply manifest an objective universe.

I see several problems with that:

1- did you never dream, or imagine stuff? As a child, didn’t you ever believe that there were monsters under the bed, or stuff like that? Did the monsters actually appear? Did they come into existence? I don’t think so.

2- are you the only being in the world? By your “logic”, if thoughts create reality but you weren’t doing it because you believed reality was objective, then others should have been doing it, anyway. Did you see anything? Did anything strange happen? Ever had a neighbor with “weird powers”? Sorry, but I’m betting otherwise.

Unfortunately, testing for subjectivity is an oxymoron. You can’t actually test for a subjective universe. The whole idea of testing implies doubt, and doubt will corrupt the test if the universe really is subjective.

Sorry, Steve, but this is nonsense. This kind of mentality requires – and ends causing – a conscious intellectual reduction, so that you begin to believe things your rational mind knows not to be true. You have to “repress” your reason, and force yourself to believe such things are true – and, after you do, since the human mind is easily influenced, it’s easy to “see” them, even if they aren’t really happening.

If you convince yourself that you have mental powers, that you feel precognitive “flashes”, then you will feel them, but you will only notice – and remember – those that coincided with reality. You’ll count the hits and ignore the misses – even if the “misses” are a much greater number, and the “hits” are no more than the average for any person. After all, you are forcing yourself to believe.

Looking at it from a different angle: if, for your “powers” to work, you need to be completely un-skeptic, free of doubt… then why not ask someone else to test them? You may be doubt-free, and leave the skepticism needed for testing to another person. Or are your powers so feeble that even someone else’s skepticism is enough to hinder them? Do they only work if you’re surrounded by blind believers, who believe anything? Is the proximity of a rational being like kryptonite to you?

Really, it actually does me good to see posts like this. It’s a lesson – even geniuses can fall prey to irrationality, to wishful thinking. Much like freedom, the price of rationality is eternal vigilance.

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Tags: reality, reason

This entry was posted on Friday, August 18th, 2006 at 16:49 and is filed under reality, reason. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.