[PolygonSheep]

> I’m not sure, and that’s important: being trapped in a torrent of self-reinforcing falsehoods is something I fell for in my teenage-goth-New-Age phase, which Carl Sagen condemned in The Demon-Haunted World.

Genuinely curious here: how can you tell you've escaped one set of self-reinforcing falsehoods while being sure you haven't fallen into another, different set?

[ben_w]

You can’t be certain of not falling into a different set of false beliefs, but you can look for inconsistencies in your beliefs and be less and less wrong.

Spotting inconsistencies in my beliefs is what pushed me out of New Age mode, and ironically what pushed me into it in the first place (from Catholicism).