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Nick_Tarleton comments on Is it rational to take psilocybin? - Less Wrong
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Meta-comment: why ask "is it rational" rather than "should I take psilocybin" or "who should..." or "what are the pluses and minuses of..."?
"Do not ask whether it is “the Way” to do this or that. Ask whether the sky is blue or green. If you speak overmuch of the Way you will not attain it."
Well, I wanted to specifically ask whether taking psilocybin will help me optimize my preferences. In other words, whether it would be rational to take them.
Asking "Is it rational to X?" is a way of saying "I value rationality. Should I X?" The part of the title which is a question is equivalent, but the mention of rationality provides extra information about the author's values. This would be clearer if the value statement and the question were split into separate sentences, but his meaning was clear enough.
"Asking "Is it rational to X?" is a way of saying "I value rationality. Should I X?""
No, it isn't. That implication only exists in a greater context. The question itself asks only whether a certain action has a certain property, without bringing up ideas of value or desirability.
I agree with Annoyance below. I value rationality. I also value other things. I think that it is true for some X that it is rational to X and I should not X, as it conflicts with things that I value more highly than rationality. I'd have to do some work to find an example, though.
This only makes sense if you think that "rational" only applies to a subset of your utilities. I can't see how X could be "rational" to do if its negative utilities exceed the positives, using my definition of "rational".
Because declaring something to universally belong to a category is much, much easier than specifying conditions under which it's X or Y.
It may or may not be rational to do something, but if we declare it to be inherently rational or irrational, we don't have to give it any further thought.
It's a basic form of the Oversimplification Fallacy.