I find this odd. Shermer is not being presented in such a way. He is giving his philosophical views about philosophical topics. No one is saying one should ask Shermer to give a doxographic account of liberalism. Rather Shermer is giving a philosophical account of his own views. This may be problematic(in the specific and the general) but the issue is elsewhere. He is not giving a doxographic course of philosophy.

I don't just mean appeal, I also mean correctness. The correctness of a philosophy is not about the history of philosophy or a doxographic account. That is not the discussion, such issues are only of interest for exams or such academic pursuits. The question "should I cheat on my husband?" and "what did Nietzsche mean by eternal return"? are two different kinds of questions. One is philosophical in its content and the other in its form. An academic philosopher will give you a very competent response to one and a very unwise response to the other.

Sure. That would also be the case for academic philosophers. If I want to know, for example, whether X is moral or immoral, an academic philosopher could lead me astray more than a pop philosopher or give me an unworkable solution. This is in relation to practical wisdom vs technical sophistication. People like pop philosophers because they are trying to gain practical wisdom that relates to their own lives and this is useful and probably more useful than the technical sophistication of someone within a given school or tradition that will probably clash with the technical sophistication of another academic in an opposite school/tradition.

Pop philosophers are definitely philosophers

> And beside, it's not like any other form of knowledge seeking will ever bring you truth either. Most of them can't even describe the rules of this simulation.

That is because the religious truth doesn't need to deal with the rules of the simulation. It can go meta of it. For example, the nature of how I should think and live are the same regardless of the scenario and the simulation. Virtue, for example, is universal and would be universal in all planes of existence, be them simulated planes or non-simulated planes. The rules of the simulation grant control of the environment, but have nothing to do with the intrinsic being-ness of our psychological nature, or at least not directly. No simulation provides in itself existential orientation, which is what religions aim to provide.

As for whether truth-seeking is absurd or not, without truth that becomes irrational statement. You are claiming that to be true("it is true that truth-seeking is a waste of time"). But there are different kinds of truth and scopes of truth. I do not require an absolute truth because I am not an absolute entity.

> if it isn't accessible by science it isn't reality, it's delusion.

That's a terrible philosophical outlook. It is to be ridiculed as much as flat Earthers. Who argues that nonsense?

> Science does say: "This is true to the best of our knowledge."

No, it doesn't. It says here's the model that best fits the observations we have. Nothing to do with truth, and not even relevant, to what I said, profound truths. It makes no metaphysical claims, no ontological claims, requires a philosophical model for its limited epistemic claims, and it says nothing about the human experience as such. It doesn't answer as to the essence of humans, as to the very experience of reality, as to the nature of reality, as to the source of reality, as to morality, as to meaning, and so on. Science is useful only in its limited practical scope, nothing more.

I'm not sure what you even mean.

> It's all just a experiments, predictions and replication, and you are free to join.

Sure, but what has that got to do with truth? What is meant by truth? That you have a coherent model of practical tinkering(like I said before) has little to do with truth, especially existential truths. If we are in an illusion, for example, the models and the experiments would still be useful and practical, but they would not be truth.

> If they wanted to have a deeper understanding of reality, they'd do science. But the stories science tell might not be the ones they want to hear and they can get a little complicated, as they are based in reality, not fantasy.

No. What is reality? Is reality accessible to sense-experience? How do you know? We have scientific evidence to the contrary. Naive realism is dead and it's not coming back. Science is useful for practical reasons, but the claim of truth or existential truths is just ignorant(I don't mean this in a rude way). It doesn't ask the questions nor posits to have answers, all the questions it makes are of an immediate sort to the sense-experience to gain control of the environment and from that we make models of prediction. Truth is not in-built into science, only observation, community trust, experimentation and on a later stage theoretical models around prediction.

Again, what is the relevance of that to truth, and how do you understand truth?

What do you mean by truth? What has science to do with truth? Science is not aimed for truth. It is aimed at models of prediction and practical tinkering. At best it may speak a very limited, localized and shallow truth. But humans seek a deeper understanding of reality, not accessible or relevant to science. They have different goals in mind. Science never says "this is true" because it doesn't seek it