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Aurini comments on What Cost for Irrationality? - Less Wrong
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Why does general "rationality" skill prevent these things, rather than (or better than) situation-specific knowledge? Yes, if you were a good rationalist and could apply it to all parts of your life with ease, yes, you'd dodge the problems listed. But does this generalize to calling the development of rationalist skills a good use of your time per unit disutility avoided?
Rationality, I think, has to develop in you pretty well before it becomes the source of your resistance to these problems.
So I'm not sure if these are costs of irrationality per se, but rather, of lacking both well-developed rationality, and a specific insight.
Up vote, because you're right, but Kaj's intention here was to provide real-world examples for convincing the layman of rationality's value. A similar example for the world of politics:
"I don't care about politics."
"But you smoke weed, right? That's a political issue - politics boils down to whether or not you have to worry about the cops knocking on your door and busting you for non-criminal behaviour."
So while his examples aren't perfect from our perspective, what he's really aiming for is situations which can be exploited through the dark arts to convince people to be rational. If I can come up with any better ones, I'll post them later today.
Well, then it seems like exaggeration to the point of lying. It's more like if you said, "you should exercise so you can look like Arnold Schwarzenegger / Megan Fox and get roles in big Hollywood movies!"
Is it possible? Sure, if you put an insane level of effort into it and are in just the right circumstances, but it's not a accurate picture to present to someone of the benefits.
I think instead you should teach a specific rationalist skill (like making knowledge truly part of yourself) and justify it by the more reachable benefits.