Voted up for the (in retrospect) good question.
1.
People are more often rational than otherwise when the rational answer happens to say good things about them.
Good things in this context is synonymous with good signals. Its easier to be rational when being rational or the conclusion that you reach make imply good things about you to other people.
2.
I hope people here agree that learning to be more rational will necessarily at least in some areas change your beliefs (unlikely any one person is right about everything).
People who learn rationality will likely change some of the beliefs that did not have a rational foundation before. And they are likely to (eventually) question all of them. Pre-rational beliefs are more likely than not things that are either neutral or send good things about you to your social group.
Putting 1. and 2. together make it seem that people who are rational might get into trouble by either opening debates about a subject (even if they eventually reach the "approved" conclusion) or by reaching a conclusion that would make him look bad in front of others.
Point 3. leads me to believe that the scenario of the previous paragraph would be true more often than I feel it is if I was more rational than I currently am, since I am to a certain extent selective at employing rationality, using it more often when it gives a convenient result.
If one is very rational one should also be better at ways to avoid sending bad signals, but point 4. seems very strong in people and may overwhelm this, hence 5. seems true.
A clear way around this at first glance seem to be the Dark Arts, but I don't want to use them because some seem unethical, while others may cause bad habits that reduce my own rationality. Thus I decided to ask the community the bolded question.
What signals are you talking about?
Could you please rephrase this question? I'm afraid I'm not sure what exactly you're asking about. I thought the link to signaling would clear up my usage of the words signaling and signal, but I assume you are familiar with that use.
Here is a summary of what I think you are saying:
"Acquiring the skills of rationality changes you. You will acquire new ways of assessing beliefs, and will forsake some old beliefs for new ones. This change may result in your fitting less well into the social niche that you occupied. This may be a disincentive to making such a change."
Yes, this is a standard observation in all fields of personal development. The greatest resistance to change comes first from the person making that change, then from those around them, in order from the closest ou...
Edit: This is old material. It may be out of date.
Or is that just a point of view?
I'm going to assume familiary with the common use of the following two terms on this site:
Otherwise don't worry, I've hanged out here for ages and I still need to update my cache of terms quite often. If you have questions about either after reading the wiki please feel free to ask since there are people much more knowledgeable than me that will probably answer them. I don't know if other users agree, but the Discussion section seems like the best place to ask questions that might have been already covered elsewhere for people who have trouble despite extensive study, in a way this OP is basically an example of this.
I'm also making the following assumptions:
The main question of this thread:
How can one work around 5. without employing Dark Arts to sanitize the feelings accompanying a conclusion? Is it even possible? Can or should we talk about this and try to find and catalogue ways to do this since many of us are not skilled at social interactions (higher than average self identified non-neurotypicals visit LW)?
Notes:
- I also wish to emphasise that not only do some conclusions send bad signals, wanting to open *some* topics to rational inquiry in itself often sends bad signals even if you do eventually end up with a conclusion that sends good signals.
- I feel that, even if it isn't possible to hide bad signalling, the better map of reality one enjoys will off set these costs in other ways. Despite this, considering we are social animals I think many people would like to avoid this particular cost quite strongly, myself included.