An obvious example of the failure of reason alone is philosophy! How such sharp intellects could accomplish so little or even cause further confusion.
The problem with reason alone is that without the grounding of fact it turns to affect to fill the gaps. In fact most people’s world views ‘make sense’ to them logically, they can string together a bunch of affective constructs in a way that seems infallible and yet as you mentioned with the right perspective it is really laughable.
Hence as Richard wrote “it is impossible to combat the wisdom of the real world”, it has been woven so intricately, with each belief having reference to another so seamlessly, the end product appearing so reasonable. And yet the PCE shows the whole lot to be incorrect.
It is fascinating that each human being has the capacity to see the cracks in this construct though. I often talk with my mum about various aspects of the ‘human constitution’ and there is usually at least 1 thing that clicks, some illusion falling away and a fact seen.
‘I’ cannot experience actuality and thus ‘I’ am precluded from actual wisdom, however ‘I’ can be naive. I have a lot of fun doing this with anything and everything really, to look at any situation or any bit of ‘human wisdom’ naively and just watch as the cracks begin to show 