What is that, exactly? Does that mean that one can simply short-cut around contradictions on the various reasons you gave such as “Jobs, family, friends, health and play”? As in ‘well, I don’t have time or energy to think through our family retirement plan using facts and logic, so I’ll just take a stab at something that seems vaguely good from an ad or what other people said on the notion it is “probably” good?’

And if so, you can call that pragmatic, but really it is just evasion of responsibility to think in favor of an emotion, just as I said. Hope? Wish? Whim?

And yes, as I said in my post above I am aware that Skeptics dislike Ayn Rand. Your own reason is thin. Rand clamed axiomatic truth only for her metaphysical foundation. This was the posit of objective reality and only objective reality, a position I would be befuddled to discover a Skeptic disputing. She did not claim this base as true because “…she is more rational than everyone else” but rather because it is irrefutable reality in and of itself, requiring no human reason to be so.

Any facts built upon or falling back upon the foundation (objective reality) were never held to be axiomatically true and thus Rand was always open to a rational argument against her system (but not against the absolute truth of objective reality). Her modus was ruthless self examination, quite the opposite from “…never questioning whether or not she might be wrong.”

Last, is there an answer to my query: ‘how do Skeptics arrive at a proper ethics and politics?’

As for Ayn Rand… If her philosophy works for you, then I’m glad for you. However, I think you’ll find that there are quite a few people who are skeptics that have read Ayn Rand and found her wanting. I’m sure you’re as familiar with the arguments against Rand as you are her own arguments so I won’t repeat them. However, if asked to say why I find Ayn Rand objectionable, it is because her whole philosophy hinges on her belief that she is more rational than everyone else and then proceeds to derive everything from that starting point, never questioning whether or not she might be wrong.

First: “Skepticism” as a self-contained and self-named movement deserves credit for rigorous shredding of magical thinking.

Second: I support all effort to hold the quest for truth based on reality as indeed a positive moral good. No “what harm could it do” please. I agree with Leo that too many people “are not so concerned with objective reality” and bail out based on emotion. Sadly, too few call them on the inconsistency.

Third: since Leo mentioned Objectivism . . .as an Objectivist I have often found Formal Skeptics to be enemies of Rand’s philosophy. I usually find lurking inside a “Radical Skeptic.” This is the position that while one should always hop on the Deductive Reason Train when evaluating religion, astrology, reincarnation etc., one should be unconcerned about the departure station. They will not follow the tracks back to Rand’s metaphysical foundation. Or alternatively, even if directed back, they slough it off as trivial tautology, bristling that she induces an ethics and politics (normatives) from the facts (Is-Ought invoked). How do Skeptics arrive at their ethics, then? Apparently by ad hoc magic, the very thing they publicly decry. If I am wrong about that I would be willing to be shone the light.