One of the things that rationalism has noticeably done for me (that I see very sharply when I look at high-verbal-ability, non-rationalist peers) is that it’s given me the ability to perform socially unorthodox actions on reflection. People generally have mental walls that preclude ever actually doing socially weird things. If someone’s goals would be best served by doing something socially unorthodox, like, e.g., signing up for cryonics or dropping out of a degree), they will usually rationalize that option away in order to stay on script. So for them, those weird options weren’t live options at all, and all their loudly proclaimed unusualness adds up to behaving perfectly on-script.
One of the things that rationalism has noticeably done for me (that I see very sharply when I look at high-verbal-ability, non-rationalist peers) is that it’s given me the ability to perform socially unorthodox actions on reflection. People generally have mental walls that preclude ever actually doing socially weird things. If someone’s goals would be best served by doing something socially unorthodox, like, e.g., signing up for cryonics or dropping out of a degree), they will usually rationalize that option away in order to stay on script. So for them, those weird options weren’t live options at all, and all their loudly proclaimed unusualness adds up to behaving perfectly on-script.