I am reading The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan, which by the way is a wonderful book so far.

I am a practical, results-oriented person who doesn't fully trust my own immediate perceptions, so I tend to assume others do the same. I have noticed in the past that my own memories can change, and sometimes I am not sure if a memory was a dream or if it really happened, so I am skeptical--at times even of my own thoughts. But at times I realize many others are simply not the same, and this book refines that thought for me.

Many people define Truth by how it feels to them, and once they have felt "Truth" (or a "truth") it is nearly impossible to convince them otherwise with evidence and facts, for they Know what the Truth is. (Note capitals.) Several chapters of the book summarize similarities between unscientific and pseudoscientific beliefs and scams (faith healing, charms/talismans, transcendental meditation, visions of Mary/saints/aliens, ghosts, speaking with the dead, etc.). One common thread among those who experience and spread these things is their unwavering faith in their belief and that they serve as a channel between our reality and their belief. (Note that the common theme is that they are privy to a special truth and are specially chosen to deliver it; furthermore you need to interact with them--uncritically--to learn the truth for yourself.)

So naturally I thought of hocus. Here is an avatar or man that intuitively felt something amiss with discussions of SWR and returns even though he fully admits a lot of the math is beyond him. Over time he refines his feeling and at some point feels Truth. Now He is here to help us understand this Truth and is invulnerable to evidence challenging the Truth. How are we to learn the Truth? By joining his Community and conversing with Him, He who discovered and channels this Truth.

It kind of helps me understand why he's so impervious to logic, facts and evidence.

Another chapter delves into psychotherapy and patients, particularly in cases of recovered memories (of familial/alien sexual abuse or alien abduction usually). While not dismissing all recovered memories as confabulation, Sagan notes that two people can invent and refine a powerful false memory without necessarily being aware of it. The therapist may intentionally or inadvertently guide the patient into building a "memory" of an event, and in cases where patients later decide the memory was false they indicate that they wanted to tell the therapist what they wanted to hear; they wanted to make the therapist happy. This actually helps me understand the hocus-JWR team. I don't know if one is a therapist and the other patient--and if so which is which--but two people enamored to an idea or vision is all it takes to keep it strong. And one doesn't have to fully respect the views of the other in this case. Come to think of it, in terms of math JWR is the therapist leading and correcting (poorly) the details while hocus is the patient adapting his vision to JWR's guidance. And even if the therapist doesn't believe in the vision/recovered memory, once the details are fleshed out the vision or memory is so powerful for the patient they usually can't be convinced it is false.