I've been having some sort of half-formed thoughts recently that this has brought back into my foreground that I'm curious to see other people's thoughts on.

It seems to me that the likelihood is quite high that there are people on here who have inherently competing utility functions (these examples were chosen merely because they are fairly common, directly competing, not obviously insane sets of motivations. I intend no value judgment on either of them). Thus, making one of the people whose utility function is dramatically different from yours more rational could be an extremely counterproductive move for you to make in terms of satisfying your own utility function. Imagine a libertarian rationalist accidentally training a socialist guerilla, who goes on to be very successful at fulfilling his own utility function, and thus dramatically harmful to his teacher's. Or perhaps more realistically, a socialist teacher trains a libertarian who goes on to found a company that does business in the Third World in a way that the teacher disapproves of.

How would we avoid this? Should we avoid this?

A few months I ago I was roundly, and rightly, rebuked for suggesting that rationality will lead you to certain political positions. On the other hand, people have also presented the idea that being rational will lead you to value various "instrumental ethics" I believe was the term? I can't find the article right now, unfortunately. Do you (this is directed at everyone) believe that simply by making people more rational, we'll make them more likely to do things we approve of, in the sense that they further our utility functions?