Some time back, I argued that if we want to really promote rationality, we need to get people to adopt rationality into a part of their identity.
That might just give you people who boom their favourite beliefs under the banner of Rationality without actually practicing the art or even having a clue about it. Elsewhere on the net, I notice that people who make a point of their intelligence, rationality, and clear thinking are usually trying to smuggle in some empirical claims about the world on the back of that, saying, not only is there this evidence, but I’m really smart so you should believe me and anyone who doesn’t is Irrational and therefore Evil and Wrong.
This was brought up in the comments. My reply was that yes, a rational identity obviously isn’t sufficient by itself, you also need to know what actually is rational. But that doesn’t mean that a rational identity wouldn’t also be necessary.
That might just give you people who boom their favourite beliefs under the banner of Rationality without actually practicing the art or even having a clue about it. Elsewhere on the net, I notice that people who make a point of their intelligence, rationality, and clear thinking are usually trying to smuggle in some empirical claims about the world on the back of that, saying, not only is there this evidence, but I’m really smart so you should believe me and anyone who doesn’t is Irrational and therefore Evil and Wrong.
See, for example, the history of Objectivism.
This was brought up in the comments. My reply was that yes, a rational identity obviously isn’t sufficient by itself, you also need to know what actually is rational. But that doesn’t mean that a rational identity wouldn’t also be necessary.