Your experience probably had more to do with your question-asking style than the regulars not being interested in rationality. Some styles that work well in other environments do not work as well in IRC. I noticed a lot of your questions there (if I'm remembering right -- I could have you confused with someone else) were very broad and sweeping, and you didn't stick around long enough or refine them enough to get them answered properly.

The best way to do IRC is to ask the question (after first narrowing it down to the part you are most interested in hearing an answer to), and stay logged in for a while after you ask it. It may be that the people who are logged in and paying attention do not have anything to say on the topic, but someone who is idling will come back and look through the logs and answer it.

Nope. We're both talking about #lesswrong @ freenode.