Though I'm taking rationalization in the pejorative sense, it does seem a real concern that people would think that way.

As for finding out where the begin, I've recently been in a lot of discussion with Anna Salamon, Carl Shulman and others about this, which has been very useful. If they are free and a person is interested in making a real effort, I'd expect they'd be very happy to discuss ideas and strategies. Anna suggested a thread to focus such a discussion, getting ideas from various LW readers, which should be going up instanter.