Remember person A is the odd one in his society. He dosen't share most other peoples map of reality. Other people have very good reasons to doubt his rationality. Easily cured ignorance of person B is all but so.
Certainly a particular person B might just have not gotten around to realizing this. But I think generally you are missing what was implied in the comparison. Being person B seems to have greater fitness in certain circumstances. And we know there are mechanism developed in our own minds that help us stay person B.
I think we actually know more about the typical person B than just he that he is ignorant. For starters we de facto know he is less rational than A. Secondly its much more likley than with person A, that the mentioned mechanisms are doing their job properly.
Remember person A is the odd one in his society. He dosen't share most other peoples map of reality. Other people have very good reasons to doubt his rationality.
But by assumption, his society is irrational, so their reasons for doubting his rationality are themselves irrational. Needless to say, all socially desirable beliefs in our society are of course wonderfully beneficent, but let us instead suppose the society is Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany, or any society that no longer meets our highly enlightened stamp of approval. Are you better off associated with the fake Nazi or the sincere Nazi?
Clearly, you are better off associating with the fake Nazi.
This is thread where I'm trying to figure out a few things about signalling on LessWrong and need some information, so please immediately after reading about the two individuals please answer the poll. The two individuals:
A. Sees that an interpretation of reality shared by others is not correct, but tries to pretend otherwise for personal gain and/or safety.
B. Fails to see that an interpretation of reality is shared by others is flawed. He is therefore perfectly honest in sharing the interpretation of reality with others. The reward regime for outward behaviour is the same as with A.
To add a trivial inconvenience that matches the inconvenience of answering the poll before reading on, comments on what I think the two individuals signal,what the trade off is and what I speculate the results might be here versus the general population, is behind this link.