I'm through with truth.

I never had a scientific intuition. In college, I once saw a physics demonstration with a cathode ray tube -- moving a magnet bent the beam of light that showed the path of the electrons. I had never seen electrons before and it occurred to me that I had never really believed in the equations in my physics book; I knew they were the right answers to give on tests, but I wouldn't have expected to see them work.

I'm also missing the ability to estimate. Draw a line on a sheet of paper; put a dot where 75% is. Then check if you got it right. I always get that sort of thing wrong. Arithmetic estimation is even harder. Deciding how to bet in a betting game? Next to impossible.

Whatever mechanism is that matches theory to reality, mine doesn't work very well. Whatever mechanism derives expectations about the world from probability numbers, mine hardly works at all. This is why I actually can double-think. I can see an idea as logical without believing in it.

A literate person cannot look at a sentence without reading it. But a small child, just learning to read, can look at letters on a page without reading, and has to make an extra effort to read them. In the same way, a bad rationalist can see that an idea is true, without believing it. I can read about electromagnetism and still not expect to see the beam in the cathode ray tube bend. I spent ten years or so thinking "Isn't it odd that the best arguments are on the atheist side?" without once wondering whether I should be an atheist.

Should I break down that barrier? I'm not sure. I'd do it if it would allow me to make money, I think. But not if it came at the cost of some kind of screaming Cthulhu horror.

You know what I really wish I had? Team spirit. Absolute group loyalty. Faith. Patriotism. The sense of being in the right. In Hoc Signo Vinces. I have fleeting glimpses of it but it doesn't last. I want it enough that I keep fantasizing about joining the Army because it might work. I always wanted to be a fanatic, and my brain would never do it. But I'm starting to wonder if that's hackable; I'm sure enough sleep deprivation and ritual would do it.