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RobinHanson comments on Tell Your Rationalist Origin Story - Less Wrong
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I feel that perhaps you are being too cynical. There's such a thing as an insight snapping into place and recoding a lot of old information.
And there's such a thing as force building up for a long time against resistance, and then the resistance breaking; this is not sane, per se, but it's how I would describe my own sharp transition in 2003. I certainly don't think you could describe that as joining a social group.
Actually, I'd think there would be a lot of sources for sharp mental transitions. Just having to choose locally a preference between A and B will generate sharp transitions whenever A < B swaps to B > A and that means other things have to follow.
Yes, joining social groups isn't the only possible cause of sudden belief changes, but since the relevant info should have been coming out pretty gradually, it is still hard to see how a sudden large belief change could be that rational. I suppose one could more suddenly see an implication of evidence one had long held, but then the suddenness should be attributed to have realized that some point of view was possible at all. A sudden move to a point of view one had already recognized as possible would harder to describe as rational.
[I also mean this comment to reply to other comments besides Eliezer's but this system offers no easy way to express that.]
If the belief change we're talking about is becoming more rational, then the implication is that you've been irrational up until that point and failing to integrate evidence.
Saying "I've been such an idiot!" is a further factor discriminating in this direction.