[pacificwhim]

I tend to agree with Larry Boy. There really are two intersecting "magesteria" (to use Steven Jay Gould's term) of thinking in the materialistic paradigm: the individual's bias and the societal/institutional bias. Each influences the other, but I don't think it's too much to say that the larger societal bias against psi and the paranormal influences the individual much more.

The whole ecosystem is very self-reinforcing, and the Internet doesn't help. If you are of a skeptical bent and you start to profess belief that experimental psi or survival work has produced evidence that supports the reality of the phenomena, the larger societal bias—whether it's in academia, skeptical groups or what have you—is going to slam you in no uncertain terms with scorn, derision, loss of stature, questions about your sanity, etc. Plus, if you look online you can quickly find information and like-minded people to support whatever view you wish to hold. It's the Great Echo Chamber. It's not surprising that this powerful force shapes our biases and makes it hard for us to let go of them.

I tend to split between both camps for two reasons. First, humans are complex. We're all a stew of conflicting motivations and biases, some contradicting each other, some confirming each other. For myself, I tend to ping-pong between my belief that psi has been strongly confirmed and a strong passion not to be fooled or allow myself to self-delude, and I think those two qualities make me a true open-minded skeptic. Others have different dualities. Some dogmatic skeptics I've talked with are clearly intelligent and open minded people, but they are overly influenced by the Echo Chamber. Others have built their self-esteem on being tireless hunters of "woo-woo." Therefore I think it's tough or impossible to tease out any single description of most individual's motivations.

Second, there are many types of people in the skeptical movement. There are plenty of dogmatic psi-bashers who don't give a whit about the evidence and would rather beat people over the head with Occam's Razor without even being able to spell or explain it. They're worthless. Then there are those who have actually looked at the evidence and, based on their perception of reality, believe it to be invalid. Remember, the villain never thinks he's the villain. We're all right in our own minds. That's why this may be a fool's game.

I suspect many prominent, well-educated skeptics are also major hypocrites. They have seen the data and in their private thoughts, know that it is valid. But they have built careers, reputations and livelihoods around denial, scorn and debunking and they don't dare let those lives go. So they're stuck denying what they know in their secret minds to be valid. Maybe that's why so many pseudoskeptics are so angry.