wedfrid’s right, it’s (edit: partly) a selection effect. If they imitated irrational people frequently and well, we wouldn’t identify them as rationalists.
Once again, it’s the difference between rationality-as-winning and rationality-as-signalling.
No, if they imitated irrational people well when doing so was useful we would see many irrational successful people suddenly shift behaviors to different sorts of irrationality or to rationality as their situations changed. We wouldn’t be able to predict future weaknesses of successful rational people from past irrationalities but we can do this with successful people who appear irrational.
wedfrid’s right, it’s (edit: partly) a selection effect. If they imitated irrational people frequently and well, we wouldn’t identify them as rationalists.
Once again, it’s the difference between rationality-as-winning and rationality-as-signalling.
No, if they imitated irrational people well when doing so was useful we would see many irrational successful people suddenly shift behaviors to different sorts of irrationality or to rationality as their situations changed. We wouldn’t be able to predict future weaknesses of successful rational people from past irrationalities but we can do this with successful people who appear irrational.
You’re partly right, I’ll change my statement: I think it’s partly a selection effect.
The most obvious examples are along the lines of pretending to believe in God when atheism is illegal.