Are certain areas of the world, specifically within the United States, more or less rational than others? If so, which ones and why? I am trying to determine what parts of the country would be ideal for me to live in the future and any help would be greatly appreciated.
Whether people are more rational is not necessarily a good reason to live somewhere. That said, here's some data that might help:
If you think that religion is strongly correlated with a lack of rationality then looking at how religious the population is might help: here gives the fraction of the US by area which identifies as "no religion." But note that "no religion" is potentially very different from atheists. When you give people the options of "no religion" "atheism" and "agnosticism" the "no religion" looks demographically quite different. For example, see this recent Pew study which shows that atheists/agnostics know a lot more about religion than people who identify as "no religion." This is likely due in part to the fact that "no religion" includes people who a) have not thought about the issues much b) don't know what the word "atheism" means or c) identify as "not religious but spiritual" or something like that. That last should also include Protestants who claim to not have a religion but have a personal relationship with Jesus (the GSS data suggests that in some areas especially the South this isn't that uncommon). Note also that there are other complications, such as many Jewish atheists who would if put down religion would say "Jewish" but have an allegiance that is more cultural than religious.
There's unfortunately very little data about whether atheists are more likely to be rational about other issues. Although note that some of the GSS data suggests that agnostics are less likely to believe in astrology and a handful of other pseudoscientific ideas than atheists. See this post.
Another possible weak proxy might be fraction of the population with a college education. According to the US Census data, (which I can't track down at the moment) the educational attainment percentage tracks pretty closely to the "no religion" graph linked to earlier. Note that the GSS data confirms this also.
So both proxies give somewhat similar estimates. I don't think either of these are terribly great proxies though.
I suspect "atheists", "agnostics" and "non-religious people" describe people that have roughly the same beliefs about the world (in terms of expectations as to what physical things will happen), but have different signalling; atheist signalling that they are affiliated to scientists and hostile to religion; agnostics signalling that they are wise and cautious and not hostile to anybody, "non-religious" just not signalling affiliation to any group based on religious opinion.
Arguably, the same could be said of many moderate and educated religious people: they have the same actual expectations about the world, but choose to affiliate with a religious group for mostly social reasons.
If this were a different kind of forum the answer would be "Blue states lol."
If you really want to know about rationality, strictly speaking, though, I'd think of examples of irrational economic choices, and see how common they are, location by location. Look where people play the lottery the most; also look where non-professionals day trade. If you had a lot of time and great statistical tools, you might be able to calculate where hyperbolic discounting or loss-aversion is the highest.
On an easier (but less accurate) level, look at home foreclosure rates -- this is evidence of when people across the economic spectrum bet wrong on something important to their own lives. Betting right is almost the definition of rationality, isn't it?
In addition to whatever differences in rationality level there may be between places, there are also significant differences in how you tell a person in a given place is unusually rational. (This is an automatic consequence of beliefs being correlated with geography.)
For example, atheism seems to be a much better filter for rationality in the United States than in Europe (where it is not nearly as much of a "contrarian" position).
What are some good regional litmus tests?
To ask such questions, you must first define a scalar measure of "rationality" that can be compared between people. I don't find the choice of this measure at all obvious, or even that it can be meaningfully defined.
To ask such questions, you must first define a scalar measure of "rationality" that can be compared between people.
Not necessarily; there just has to be an ordering. Clearly people's rationality can be compared, as extreme cases illustrate: Eliezer Yudkowsky is more rational than Kent Hovind, for example.
Sure, but very extreme examples aren't interesting. The real question is how many pairs of individuals (or groups) can be covered by that partial ordering. Not very many, I'd say, unless your definition introduces some criteria for which there is ultimately no rational justification, in any meaningful sense of that word.
Your question implies that there exists a quantifiable measure of "rationality" that can be applied to rank not only individuals, but also societies that span whole geographical regions. How exactly can this measure be defined, according to you?
Looking for a place to live is one case where the difference between group rationality and individual rationality is really important. I would not want to live among otherwise nearly perfect intellectuals who nonetheless had a weak grasp of game theory, a strong distrust of markets, and misanthropic attitudes. No one would ever get anything done.
It's probably not as simple as looking up a demographic stat.
There is the Inglehart–Welzel Map but, as far as I know, it offers no breakdown for US areas (I haven't checked their PDF though).
Are you looking for places with a higher proportion of very rational people than is usual? A higher typical rationality level in the middle of the bell curve? Relatively few very irrational people?
Or are there specific sorts of thing you're trying to be around and/or to avoid?
I would ideally like to be in a place where the "rationality waterline" has been raised across all sections of the population. Failing that, I want a place where there are a higher proportion of LW-level or above LW-level people than normal.
Well there happens to be an LW conference in California coming up... Perhaps you mean longer term, though.
I think you are unlikely to find a place where the waterline is significantly higher than elsewhere; the original post introducing the term made the point that the waterline must be depressingly low even across science for a theist to win a Nobel prize. A dedicated community like Lesswrong is about the only place where you can find that kind of thing, and last time I checked we haven't established a utopian rationalist commune in the real world yet (though I see the idea has come up before; amusingly enough).
As for places where there is a higher proportion of LW-level or above people than in other locations, it seems to me that, in the absence of explicit rationalist training for their people, locations with a high proportion of intelligent beings who are trained in empiricism and the use of mental models of reality (e.g. polytechnic university towns) would be promising starts. Another, more direct approach would be to see where LW members live, and either try to spot some trend or move to an area where they seem unusually concentrated. Do we have one of those Google map thingies where people of a community can post their locations? If not, we should. It would probably help with all those meet-up events, too.
Not sure if there is a way to do this intra country, but if you are looking for an inter-country comparison, you might check for this criteria.
See how close is their stock market to a random walk, statistically speaking. If you have significant variation from that, then I guess there is a lot of hidden irrationality in that society.
That's the crux, isn't it? How do you know if an upward trend line is irrationality or wealth creation?
If you want to measure how close areas are to a competitive market, I would suggest looking at profit margins in non-monopolistic industries. Of course, you'd have to control for regulatory differences and relative concentrations of different industries. But, all else being equal, the place where profits are higher is farther from being a competitive market.
How high-priority is this among your criteria? I hope that cost of living, availability of employment, climate, and (if applicable) proximity to friends and family are also right up there.
Whether people are more rational is not necessarily a good reason to live somewhere. That said, here's some data that might help:
If you think that religion is strongly correlated with a lack of rationality then looking at how religious the population is might help: here gives the fraction of the US by area which identifies as "no religion." But note that "no religion" is potentially very different from atheists. When you give people the options of "no religion" "atheism" and "agnosticism" the "no religion" looks demographically quite different. For example, see this recent Pew study which shows that atheists/agnostics know a lot more about religion than people who identify as "no religion." This is likely due in part to the fact that "no religion" includes people who a) have not thought about the issues much b) don't know what the word "atheism" means or c) identify as "not religious but spiritual" or something like that. That last should also include Protestants who claim to not have a religion but have a personal relationship with Jesus (the GSS data suggests that in some areas especially the South this isn't that uncommon). Note also that there are other complications, such as many Jewish atheists who would if put down religion would say "Jewish" but have an allegiance that is more cultural than religious.
There's unfortunately very little data about whether atheists are more likely to be rational about other issues. Although note that some of the GSS data suggests that agnostics are less likely to believe in astrology and a handful of other pseudoscientific ideas than atheists. See this post.
Another possible weak proxy might be fraction of the population with a college education. According to the US Census data, (which I can't track down at the moment) the educational attainment percentage tracks pretty closely to the "no religion" graph linked to earlier. Note that the GSS data confirms this also.
So both proxies give somewhat similar estimates. I don't think either of these are terribly great proxies though.
I suspect "atheists", "agnostics" and "non-religious people" describe people that have roughly the same beliefs about the world (in terms of expectations as to what physical things will happen), but have different signalling; atheist signalling that they are affiliated to scientists and hostile to religion; agnostics signalling that they are wise and cautious and not hostile to anybody, "non-religious" just not signalling affiliation to any group based on religious opinion.
Arguably, the same could be said of many moderate and educated religious people: they have the same actual expectations about the world, but choose to affiliate with a religious group for mostly social reasons.