“Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes” (Walt Whitman)

What are some of your contradictions, anon?

I’ll start: I’m a cold rationalist, a skeptic at heart, a party pooper for the mystics. I believe that reality is what physics is attempting to probe. I must see data and evidence. James Randi was a hero of mine.

Suggested reading:

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/09/magazine/the-unbelievable-skepticism-of-the-amazing-randi.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Fort

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Morning_of_the_Magicians

And yet, so were Fox Mulder & Charles Fort, who “wanted to believe” in the supernatural & never gave up the search.  My formative reads have not only included fiction writers such as Poe, Maupassant, Barjavel, Lovecraft; but also “The Morning of the Magicians” which was a genre-defining supernatural exploration

I also love magic (like, performance of illusions based on taking advantage of perceptual biases, which you aptly pointed out here!) 

Magic helps illustrate how much of what we perceive is filtered, which is something pointed out from both scientific and spiritual perspectives