The question I think we should ask ourselves then, is has the art of rationality allowed us to put together a repository of cultural knowledge with an unusually high quality compared to what you would see in daily life.
Yep. A group can usually collect much more knowledge than an individual. But the individual can (a) choose the group, and (b) contribute to its knowledge. From selfish perspective, the most important result of rationality is recognizing other rational people and choosing to learn from them. Luckily, information is free, so more people taking the knowledge doesn’t increase the costs of those who generate it.
Yep. A group can usually collect much more knowledge than an individual. But the individual can (a) choose the group, and (b) contribute to its knowledge. From selfish perspective, the most important result of rationality is recognizing other rational people and choosing to learn from them. Luckily, information is free, so more people taking the knowledge doesn’t increase the costs of those who generate it.