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W. McCrae's avatar

It's taken me some time figure out how to respond to this piece. I had to sit with it a while--still not 100% that I've worked out my thoughts, because as much as I love to see your breakdowns of the kind of psychological dysfunction that comes from (or results in?) ideological rigidity, I can't help feeling like there must be *more* on the far side of this process--more than the passivity of gently spinning in place, satisfied not to seek truth, and having given up on meaning entirely.

I have the intuition that to hold and nurture epistemic uncertainty should be something of an instrumental choice--something done consciously and willfully, in order to place oneself at the center of an ideological superposition where one can to effect maximum reach across many different ways of thinking. There might not be any real truth to be found in this world; maybe everyone needs to construct a truth of their own in order to ultimately feel okay existing at all. Of course, going about this requires wisdom and a pretty rock-solid moral center, of the sort that is difficult to actually establish when you've decided to put yourself in charge of delineating your own truth... No, I don't have a solution to the issue. We're operating on vibes here.

Might leave this thought half-finished, because it's been one of those days and I can't find the words to round it off. But thanks as always for the hard work you put into these pieces, Mike. (Hope I didn't lose the plot in the process of trying to digest a long-form essay; hope I haven't terribly misunderstood any of your points. What a fool I would feel like then!)

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